Legacy Family Tree Stretches to Include Large Families...But It's Hard to Use

07.08.2012
Legacy Family Tree is a free software tool that can help fill in the gaps in your background and dig up your roots whether they're Jewish, Mormon, Catholic, atheist, or any other denomination.

When you begin to create a new family file in Legacy Family Tree, you're given options to import a Personal Ancestral File (PAF; a free family history organization program from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), Ancestral Quest File, or a GEDCOM file. You can also start from scratch, which will bring you to a dialog asking if you are a member of the LDS Church (also known as Mormons). Legacy Family Tree isn't being nosy; it's linked with the FamilySearch online database, which is currently restricted to registered LDS members.

There are other places too, where you'll notice a connection with the LDS Church. The Temple button, for example (used for church members to add LDS Ordinances) and many reports. All of this appears by default, which makes Legacy Family Tree a great tool for LDS Church members, but may be mildly irritating for users who are not.

If you choose to use the Legacy Guided Startup Wizard to enter names, it's much like GenoPro ($50, family tree and genogram maker), or Family Tree Maker ($40, an ancestry research tool), in that it's easy to add all the pertinent information, names, birth date, birth place, sex, spouse and parentsexcept that you need to start with yourself. If this is not where you want to start, try creating an empty family file (an option within the Guided Start) and go from there.

Legacy Family Tree has a few UI issues, which make it seem like it's harder to use than it actually is. The main screen is sized for the vision impaired, but the popup windows where you enter data are tiny by default. Fortunately, you can resize the windows and the text also resizes, which is a great relief.

Once you've taken some aspirin or resized the windows, Legacy Family Tree is ready to show you its strength: all of the information you have about a certain member of your family can be entered in once placein the Individual's Information window. Much like , this includes names, date, picture/movies, places of residence, nicknames, and pretty much anything else you can think of. I love that there's no limit to the number of images you can add (it's not just one headshot like in ), and that all the information is at your fingertips, plus it's offline, so you don't need to worry about privacy.