Legacy

Creating and illustrating a family tree is a challenging undertaking, but it can be made easier with specialized applications. Legacy provides a vast range of features, which can help you complete your family tree faster and easier. Besides the fact that it allows you to assign a huge amount of information to individual family members, the software can also help you track down your ancestors, through an online service, and pinpoint their locations on a map.

Legacy is offered free of charge, but some of its functions are reserved for a Deluxe version, which comes with a price tag. The software can be installed fast, but you have to specify your email address and insert a password before you start the operation. You can use the program on all modern Windows platforms, without installing additional tools and sacrificing too much memory or processing power.

At a first glance, the user interface may look a bit overloaded, but you can get used to its functions and their layout if you take your time and experiment. The software also comes with a sample family tree to help you get started. Family members and their spouses are displayed on separate panels, in the central region of the interface, along with basic details and portraits. Ancestors and offspring are listed above and beneath the aforementioned panels. New database entries can be defined on a separate window, on which you can specify numerous details, like date and place of birth, death and burial and others. You can also edit DNA records, on a separate window.

Other features can be found on the same interface, but on different tabs. You can switch to a pedigree view, access a descendants list, edit chronology information, view and index all family members and more. The software provides a research guide as well, which can help you create timelines, surveys, cite sources and edit a to-do list.

The program's toolbar presents a series of options which can be quite useful. You can search for family members by any characteristics, generate various reports and print them. Furthermore, Legacy allows you to merge your database, in order to eliminate duplicate entries. It also allows you to look up the currently selected family member on the Internet and check a person for ordinance qualifications on the Temple Ordinance Reservation and Tracking service.