Family Tree Maker 11 review

If you've always suspected you were a cut above the hoi polloi in your neighbourhood - here's your chance to prove it.

With Family Tree Maker you can trace your family back down the generations, trace those blue-blooded ancestors, print reports and even create a book of your family's pedigree.

Family Tree Maker is a genealogy program that not only stores all your family tree details, but can reproduce them in a variety of forms, including graphical trees and charts. It's now in version 11, which dispenses with all the useless CDs of American data that came with previous versions, and costs a lot less into the bargain.

What sets Family Tree Maker apart from its competitors is the versatility of its printed reports, particularly its 'Book'. This lets you string together selections from all other reports in any order that suits you, then print them as one volume. The Book comes complete with added text pages, a map and timeline, automatically-generated Table of Contents and Index, and pagination of large trees across multiple pages with cross referencing. Version 11 of Family Tree Maker adds to this versatility by letting you export your Family Book as a PDF file. This makes it much easier to send, by e-mail or CD, to other family members who may be interested in your research. You can also preview the complete layout of your Family Book, again as a PDF, exactly as it will print.

New features include the ability to back up your data files to CD and customise your display with tabbed preference panels. More useful are the facilities to merge two data files together, open and work on two Family Tree Maker files at the same time and copy and paste individuals, family branches or an entire tree from one Family File to another. Version 11 also retains the familiar features from version 10. You can still produce text and rich text files, allowing you to spruce up your reports in a word processor.

Family Tree Maker 11 also contains templates that allow you to make your own family trees and charts, and you can now use your own photos as background images. You can add as many photographs as you like, assigning them to an individual's scrapbook and choosing preferred pictures to be reproduced in chart boxes and family group sheets - but not, unfortunately, on the genealogy report. The scrapbooks can include not just photos but sound, video and text formats. One useful report is the blank Standard Pedigree Tree. Devoid of any family data, it can be very useful for research at the library or elsewhere in the field. Like most other genealogy software, Family Tree Maker lets you record the source - certificates, books, word of mouth - of all your information, including an image of the source where relevant.

Family Tree Maker's interface is beginning to look a little tired, though. You can't change colours, it shows less information on screen than most of its rivals, and the 'child' tabs can slow navigation for larger families. Nevertheless, data entry and record-keeping are easy and versatile, and Family Tree Maker remains a good buy for beginner and expert alike.