Need advice from current users of Legacy 7.0

[ET in the USA]

|help| My Family Tree Maker Version 11 has died, so I'm in the market for something new.

I just watched the Legacy 7.0 tutorial & it seems heavily slanted toward USA places & it sounds like the format must be consistent -city, county, state, country - for accurate sorting. They mention that if you don't know the city , County or state, put commas so it will sort accurately [ Seattle,,Washington, USA]

Since most of my research is UK for 1 of my lines & USA / UK for another, how do those of you with Legacy solve this?

UK only - Ripple, Worcestershire, England ? [or do I need more commas to indicate that the state is missing ?]

UK & USA - Ripple,, Worcestershire, England [do you force Worcs.to be a county or a state ?] so that it is consistent with
Seattle, King, Washington, USA :confused:

I don't want to invest in something that isn't going to work. |idea| I tried downloading the standard version & importing my FTM gedcoms so I could see what happened, but :eek: i ended up with 14,000+ people in 6500+ families from 6 sources & not one of them was on the old FTM program I was exporting from. Somehow I got a tree filled with 14,000+ strangers.

Elaine

[carolchipp]

I downloaded the free version of Legacy 7 a while ago and to start with it drove me mad. Are the unknown people from your download or a sample tree that appears when you first download it? I imported my own tree as a gedcom from genes to Legacy and then couldn't find it. It took me a while to sort it out. There doesn't seem to be a problem with the county/state issue as long as you stick to a format for all entries once you start and it does organise everything quite nicely. Unfortunately, I'm a bit lazy and if you aren't used to such programmes (as I wasn't) I think it would take a while to figure out all the options, so I haven't really bothered with it. I've gone back to keeping individual families' records as documents on my PC in separate folders. If you are used to finding your way round this sort of programme, I would think it works quite well but other (more patient) users could probably advise you better.
Carol

[Nicolina]

I've used Legacy for years and never had problems with it, even though I have very few people outside the UK. I also have FTM which, for some reason, won't let me search the Internet now. It keeps saying that I am not connected.

[v.wells]

I downloaded the standard version over a year ago and then upgraded with the thought that it might sway me more, but I just plain didn't like it. All my lot are UK. It didn't import all that I had and left me continually going in and adding things - too much work!

Elaine, you must have somehow merged your FTM tree with the sample tree it comes with. I use A* for my working tree which has side shoots which is private and have a tree on GR. My direct ancestors (and much smaller tree) are on a private tree with Tribalpages. I don't use FTM but have it and do use it occasionally. I don't need anything over-complicated. I back up and save GEDCOMS weekly or daily depending if I have made changes/additions.

Stick with what you know and what you are comfie with. Everyone has their own favourite software genie program, and some don't use a program at all! I regret paying to upgrade the Legacy program since I don't use it and I don't like their charting really - it looks easy in the tutorial but it isn't, at least not for me.

[Nicolina]

I have FTM 2009 installed on an external hard drive (for when I switch machines) it worked fine on my late lamented laptop (that didn't like coffee) running Vista Home Premium but not on this one running Vista Basic. I'm wondering whether I should up-grade to FTM 2010 but then think of what else I can use that money for.

[ET in the USA]

Thanks to all for the input so far. My FTM Version 11 has 'lost' several thousand people & my desktop PC is in the shop to see if they can be recovered.|sad1||sad1| The new FTM program seems as alien as Legacy & gets a less rave review - so not sure there is a "stick with what you know" at this point.

Last March when we made a disc to take to England as reference, we discovered once we were there that it was missing loads of data. At the time we thought it was a fluke & the fault of the laptop. Earlier this week, I made a back up before merging a couple of people. The main program on the PC lost people, & the back up which was made before they vanished didn't have them either.
I bought a new PC in July 2007 & it had Vista Home & Student, so it is possible that even though the new entries appeared [until this week] they were not really being saved . Guess I should have figured this out 6 months ago. |dunce2|

While waiting for the verdict from the techies, I am test driving programs & hating every minute of it.

Elaine |5cups|

[Dorset Girl]

I've used Legacy for several years now - couldn't get on with FTM - apart from the fact it had no ability for RIN numbers - which is part of my filing system! Have had the 7 De Luxe version for over 12 months and am more than happy with it. As for entering towns, counties etc, if I only have a town and county then I put two commas between the county and UK (I think I started this as when searching for the Geo place it looked for the country at the end - I'm fairly sure that was the reason). If you have used the place before it will automatically fill it in for you - not sure if all the other programmes do that.

Personally I think the programme is great - and OH has moved to it from FTM as well.
Marion