Product Reviews

Tracing your family history is a time-consuming and complicated business that involves a lot of research. RootsMagic 2 UK Platinum Edition can do some of the hard work and help you create a full family tree, complete with dates, pictures and notes. You can add source references and images, as well as notes on leads you still have to follow up.

The Platinum version comes with lots of historical data, as well as tools for organising your family tree. It includes a six million-name index, data on UK landowners since the 1800s and a UK atlas from the same period, plus vouchers for extra census information,

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both online and on disc.

All this data takes some of the legwork out of the task, but the software really comes into its own in helping you to organise the facts. The interface can be confusing at times, but once you get used to it, adding family information is easy. Just create a new database, add in a single individual and build the tree around them, adding relatives and tagging any extra information to their records.

There are three views: Pedigree, which shows parents, grandparents and so on; Family, which shows the immediate family group, including children; and Descendant, which shows a person with their children and grandchildren. Clicking on a record brings up the data you have on that person and, if you have created multiple family databases, you can drag and drop people between them.

Once your tree is complete the software offers a wide range of options for sharing it. You can publish it on the web or print out a wall chart or pamphlet, complete with contents page, preface and other professional-looking features.

While it takes a while to master, RootsMagic is a useful organisation and research tool for anyone who's serious about genealogy.