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 List Price: $29.95 Sale Price: Too low to display. Availability: unspecified 
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Awarded "Editor's Choice" by Heritage Quest Magazine. RootsMagic is an easy to use family tree program with extensive family history reports, multiple navigation views, photos, publishing, and website creation features. RootsMagic supports unlimited people, families, events, notes, and photos. Users can print complete books (where the program writes the sentences for each event), spectacular charts, forms, lists, and even create custom reports. RootsMagic program also provides multiple database support (with drag and drop), SourceWizard, todo lists, powerful merge features, and more. Full GEDCOM support allows users to easily share their data with others, or to easily import their data from other programs. Import directly from Family Tree Maker (v16 and earlier), PAF, Legacy, or Family Origins. Create shareable CDs of your data and photos to send to your family and friends.
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I discovered RootsMagic (v3.0) fairly recently. First, some background… I’m working with roughly 2000 names, and my goal is to research and publish the data, along with personal stories. I started with Family Tree Maker several years ago, but I didn’t like the lack of citation capabilities with that earlier version. So, I switched to The Master Genealogist (TMG) which provides great source management but has a clumsy interface. The newer release of TMG has not improved this. Because you spend a lot of time entering information, the interface needs to be fairly painless and transparent. So, then I looked at Legacy, GenBox and RootsMagic, which have the necessary functionality but are also easy to use. It was a difficult choice between Legacy and RootsMagic, but I chose RootsMagic because I felt that it had a slight edge in its source management and that this feature was comparable to The Master Genealogist.
Installation was easy. After I exported my old TMG database files to a single .gedcom file, I used RootsMagic to import it. It was fast and the data loaded quite cleanly. RootsMagic lets you import GEDCOM files, Family Origins database and backup files, and PAF database files. Also, for anyone working with LDS, you can create and read TempleReady files and handle ordinances.
The interface is easy to use and it provides three views: Pedigree, Family and Descendants. You can access an individual or family by selecting the name from a list and loading it into the views. To modify an individual’s data or relationships, you can right-click on the name (in any view or list) to access options from the popup menu. RootsMagic provides master lists for Sources, To-Do, Addresses, Repository, Correspondence, Places, and Fact types. Also, you can modify places, which contain addresses/locations, to include Latitude and Longitude coordinates, describe the history of the place, and include multimedia files (e.g., maps and photos).
Of course, this tool’s major advantage is its source management capabilities. You can assign one or more sources to an individual, a family, or an event. Whenever you create a new source, you can define the information through a Source dialog box that has multiple tabs (Source, Text, Multimedia, and Respository), and link multiple media assets to the source (e.g., photos, files, sound, and video). Also, each time you assign the source to something, you can enter descriptive text for just that specific assignment.
As you enter data into RootsMagic, the application writes to an .rmg file for which you can create multiple backups. You can also export to the GEDCOM format for easy importing into other genealogy applications. When you export, you can define what will be exported and manage privacy options. You can generate books and reports (in many different formats). You can also publish to a web format (although I don’t like the way RootsMagic outputs this). Also, I found some search capabilities to be better when they’re done through the Reporting functions. Other RootsMagic options include calculators (relationship, Soundex and Date), shareable CD creation, timelines, color-coding of individuals, and charts (including wall-sized ones).
In conclusion, do not let the lower price or the easy-to-use interface dissuade you. This application has some serious citation/source capabilities that makes it competitive with The Master Genealogist and ahead of some other similar applications.
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I’ve tried ‘em all. This is clearly the best genealogy software I’ve used. RootsMagic is the most intuitive software on the market. My database has over 50,000 names in it and this software handles the load effortlessly and quickly. It can create very nice charts and web pages. The publisher listens to the users and continually upgrades the software to meet their needs. He stays on top of the changes being made by the LDS church’s Family History library system and updates the software to work seamlessly with the library’s systems.
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When I first starting looking for family tree software I noticed some of the other software packages were companies that would try to get you to subscribe to online programs or heavily tried to get you to buy additional products. One thing I liked about RootsMagic was that this company does not do that. They let you buy the product and then leave you alone.
The tutorial was quick and simple. I immediately started entering data. It was extemely easy to learn. I was worried there would be limitations on the amount of data that could be entered and also didn’t know how certain things would work such as re-marriages, divorces, and step families. The program exceeded my expectations on being able to adapt to most all family situations.
I would recommend this program to anyone interested in documenting a family tree or family history. I am very pleased with this purchase.
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I work in IT and I purchased this product for my mom as a gift. She has only owned a computer for about 1 year, but she immediately caught on after going through the fantastic tutorials. She was entering data in no time. It is wonderfully organized and I would recommend it to anyone. We love that you can scan photos and documents, etc. into the software and attach them to people or events.
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This is an easy to use program. I like the fact that you can enter pictures and text of individuals.
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I have used most of the major geneology programs, but when I want to enter a lot of material as quickly as possible, RootsMagic is the program I choose to use. It has all the “bells and whistles” but the thing I love the most is the ease of moving around in the program. I inherited my mother’s 8 file cabinets of unfinished work. I was able to quickly input major facts and copy her text files into the “Notes”. RootsMagic helped me organize the materials as I went along. I am now scanning and entering family photos. RootsMagic has features I haven’t even needed yet, but it’s good to know that when I need them, they are there ready for me to use.
M. Hansen
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http://www.rootsmagic.com lists all the specs, there is a mail list and a forum besides your F1 key and Book available to help with this software. I will not use another software package, as the developer monitors the mail lists and does fix the software if there is an issue. Handles large amounts of data, sources, pictures, and works great with GenSmarts software for finding additional research possibles. Genealogy is a hobby that you need to do yourself. This software is easy to get up and running very quickly.
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RootsMagic is very robust, it keeps a great record of your family tree. I like being able to burn a CD of everything with just a few key strokes. Being about to create a Web Page of your family tree is great too! It is very easy to use as well.
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I have been doing genealogy for over 15 years, and started out with very rudimentary versions of Family Tree Maker. I was never happy with FTM’s management of sources — it seemed to be much more interested in how to make things “pretty” and sources, the heart and soul of real genealogy, always got short shrift.
Then, some years ago, I switched to Heritage Family Tree. I loved this program, even though it could be quite klunky in many ways and the charting software that came with the program was always cumbersome and often crashed. However, its source handling was the best out there, able to format and sort sources in such a way that source information could be entered completely and formatted well. It had other good built in features that I really liked.
However, they stopped supporting it, and although it was supposed to work with Windows XP, I experienced so many crashes with XP that I knew I had to start finding an alternative. The death knell came with Vista, and HFTD wouldn’t even boot up under Vista. And then it turned out that their GEDCOM exporter dropped a LOT of information out of the source material I’d so painstakingly entered.
I had kept up with Family Tree Maker, and they came out with a new version. I decided to try to salvage what was left of my old family tree (over 2500 individuals and cannibalized source material that dropped half the information, cry!). However, this version (FTM 2008) is absolutely awful; the interface is about as far a departure from logical data entry, it doesn’t do a lot of basic charts, and it is just so terribly bloated with crap I will never use that I knew I had to find an alternative. On someone’s recommendation, I decided to check out RootsMagic.
After downloading the trial version, I was hooked almost immediately. It’s simple, streamlined, and has fantastic source handling. When you enter a source, you’re given the option to choose Source Wizard; normally I hate wizards, but this one gives a nice interface for inputting different types of sources (census, death/birth/marriage certificates, books, interviews, etc) in such a way that they are uniform and formatted for footnotes.
One feature I really like is the ability to add a married couple in a census together as “Census (family)”. This eliminates the need to enter identical census information on two people in a family. I do wish they would extend this to the ability to select multiple members of a family, so you could enter both parents and children with one click. I realize that children did not always appear on a census with parents (I have a lot of cases where teenage boys worked on other farms), but a dialogue that would let you choose other members of the family to add to a census would reduce input errors and time. However, there is a handy “Memorize” function for sources, so it’s easy to paste the same source into multiple entries. It’s the next best thing.
It has built-in to-dos, so as you’re entering family members and need to remember to do something, you can input a to-do related to that individual or family. This feature includes prioritization, date opened, date last worked on, date closed, and a place to add notes.
Like any new program it takes a little getting used to, but I find myself able to move easily among individuals and families. The Search feature is particularly nice because it includes not only the name of the individual, but also the birth and death dates so you can see which one you are selecting before you do so. This is handy in cases where you have more than one person with the same name and no middle initials to distinguish them.
Backup is simple; it archives a ZIP file of your day’s work onto any external media you choose. Instead of overwriting the whole file every time, it only overwrites an existing file if you’ve changed it on the same day. Otherwise, it saves them incrementally, so you have the version you worked on last week archived as well as the one you are working on this way. This way, if something disastrous happens, like you discover that the 200 relatives you spent the last week painstakingly putting in are actually not related to you at all, or you accidentally replace all instances of “Gary, Lake, Indiana” with “Inverness, Citrus, Florida”, you can roll back to a version without the mistakes.
The program is simple, straightforward, great for the historian. It’s not as cute and sexy as some other, more bloated genealogy programs, but it does everything a serious genealogical researcher needs it to do and a little more besides. And you can’t beat the price.
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Genealogy has been a hobby of mine for many, many years however, I haven’t had much time over the past decade (really) to work on it. Part of the problem has been that I’ve had so much data stored on old programs that when I’ve tried to transfer it (yes, using GEDCOMs) things become a real mess. Not only that, but I’m extremely neurotic about citing my sources and, as unbelievable as it may sound, most genealogy programs do a terrible job when it comes to ensuring that data entry follows strict guidelines – instead, citing sources consistently has been left up to the whims of the hobbyist. As a result, I’ve had all of my data sitting around and didn’t feel like spending the rest of my life reentering all of it, which has resulted in putting genealogy on the back burner for far too long.
Periodically, I review current genealogy programs, just to see if someone has finally realized that consistently citing sources is absolutely ESSENTIAL for constructing a good genealogy and someone finally did! I’m now in the process of converting things to RootsMagic and am absolutely THRILLED! Not only is it now possible to enter data, from a large number of sources, consistently but templates are provided so that a specific format can be adhered to (such as the methods supported in the book, Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian by Elizabeth Mills (I’ve used that book for a very long time). In the past, I’ve served as a beta tester for two very well known genealogy programs and had SCREAMED for a consistent manner to clearly and easily document sources. The other programs (which shall remain nameless) always agreed that this was an essential feature but never did anything about it (other than, “Oh, we plan to add that feature in the future”). If nothing else, computers should be used for maintaining data in a consistent manner and the gross lack of attention to the topic by genealogy programs has been a disaster. No more thought! RootsMagic finally done did it!
Most importantly, RootsMagic is intuitive. Over the years, genealogy programs have taken one of two routes – the programs are very intuitive but lack sufficient features (esp. concerning how citations are entered) or they are so complex that one needs to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to use them. At the moment, I’m in a state of bliss as I’ll now be able to work on genealogy again – it’s going to take a bit of time to make sure everything has transfered over but the task is going to be a lot simpler that it has in the past (I’ve already spend some time doing so and am thrilled with the results).
Another feature that I like a lot is that RootsMagic will allow you to use your own catalog numbering system and will keep that data attached to each individual (this is another extremely important feature that, to date, almost no one else has done). When I first began with genealogy a few decades (ugh!) ago, I organized my documentation using a numbering system I had previously read about (essentially, I give each document and number that consists of the first three initials of the primary surname, followed by a number). This has worked very well for me, however, most genealogy programs do not have a separate field to store that information. As a result, that number had to be store elsewhere and then manually removed when printing out reports or sharing data with others. No more! RootsMagic has also solved that long standing problem! I am now a very happy person and, time permitting, maybe I’ll get to enjoy genealogy as much as I used to.