I've had a chance to use all the major genealogy programs for reviews I've written for Family Tree Magazine <www.familytreemagazine.com>. I think RootsMagic (the successor to Family Origins), $29.95, (877) 766-8762, <www.rootsmagic.com>, is one of the best programs overall. It's both easy to use and produces excellent reports and Web pages. It's also hard to beat Personal Ancestral File (PAF), a free download from FamilySearch <www.familysearch.org>. It's very easy to use and does just about everything you'll need. It's probably worth paying a little more to get the full version of PAF Companion with it so you can print colorful ancestor and descendant charts. Family Tree Maker ($29.95, <www.familytreemaker.com>) used to focus only on printing graphical charts, but now it's a more well-rounded program. It's well integrated with Ancestry.com and may be a good choice if you subscribe to that service. But Family Tree Maker does have a few shortcomings. The family group sheets and pedigree charts are poorly designed. Also, you can publish your family tree for free on Family Tree Maker's Web site, but you can't create a report in HTML format for publishing on your own Web site. Another quirk: Family Tree Maker can exchange GEDCOM files with other programs, but not the multimedia links. So if somebody has created links to pictures in another program, they can share their data with you, but not links to pictures. I think The Master Genealogist is too hard to use and doesn't offer any important features that you won't find in PAF, RootsMagic or Family Tree Maker. Rick Crume Contributing Editor Family Tree Magazine PRA Group 17 -----Original Message----- From: pra-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:pra-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Steven Kelly Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 11:47 AM To: PRA Mail List Subject: [PRA] software recommendations Good afternoon, What software do you recommend/use for your documentation purposes? I figure it is time to get all of the hand-drawn family trees my grandfather has done and all of the newspaper articles, photos, etc all together and organized...with a 3 year old running around, things tend to turn up missing!! Plus I need to get it in a format where I can contribute to the efforts here... I have researched and RootsWeb and Family Tree Maker seem to get the best reviews from the various online sites, but I thought I would ask the experts! Thanks for any help! Steve Kelly Group 4