Hi Danny: You wrote: >I am seeking advice as to the best software to purchase for research/filing >purposes. If you have any experience with one or more of them, please let >me know. This is going to be my Christmas gift to myself this year! >J Danny Cooper I recommend the Master Genealogist, although it is not easy to learn. It is not for beginners, IMHO. It is MUCH more complicated than the other 5 or 6 programs I have tried over the years. For an easy to use program, I like Family Tree Maker best, but it is hard find specific data in it. TMG takes a lot more time to enter data, but it allows you to see what you have and tie it together more comprehensively. Each bit of data is entered as a "tag." There is a "tag" for birth, marriage, death, and all the usual, but there are many more unique tags, for example, for census or land grants. And you can also create your own unique tags. Tags can be linked to other people. For instance, if you are entering census data, you can put the head (and wife, if one) as the two primaries, then you can enter all the children as "witnesses." Any unknowns listed, such as "Susie Smith, Housekeeper" can also be entered into the system and linked to that census, even if you don't know who she is. Witnesses can be added to any event, even though you don't know who it is. Or if you do know --that he is the preacher. Thus if the same preacher married 5 children in the family and baptized them as well, you could link him to all of them, even though he is not part of the "family." Pictures and other exhibits can also be entered on the tag, such as a scan of the original census record. Your transcription of that record can be entered in the notes section of the tag, as well as other data. Sources can be meticulously documented, including the "depository" (such as the Sacramento Public Library) where it was found, notes that it was sent to you by your cousin Grace, website, etc. Date, place, map coordinates, and other info also have locations on each tag, so all the data can be put in chronological order. You can make many complicated or simple reports and charts, get it to write your "books" for you (if you entered your data in the correct format), make charts, tie into specific timelines, create "flags" for specific purposes--such as noting all the redheads or all of the preachers, and much more. But as I said above, it takes a lot of time and effort to enter everything into the program. If you are entering a census, you have to create the tag and link it to all known people involved. But then it shows up on each of their records. You can transfer data from other programs, but it will take a long time to get it the way you want it. GEDCOMs might be better. I transferred one giant data base on one branch of my family from Family Tree Maker. It took me a full day just to get the PLACE names compatible between the two programs. It has worked very well entering fresh data on new families. In the giant family database, I am still finding tags I have to expand from the FTM "notes" three years later (if there was no specific FTM field to correspond to a TMG field, it put the data all in a "note" tag). So the data is not lost in the transfer; it just has to be separated out into the appropriate tags. All of this may be more than you wanted to know. For more information, go to the Wholly Genes website. There is also at least one users mailing list. Good luck, Teresa McVeigh Katrina refugee, now in Baton Rouge