Legacy

Although I love Family Historian, the software I use to manage the CurryAus data I am frustrated that copying data from other programs into Family Historian requires a lot of data entry or copying and pasting from a second screen.

I was recently helping the host in a Zoom session about Legacy Family Tree Software, I only had a passing interest in this product as I was satisfied with Family Historian. Curiosity made me pay attention, my interest was piqued when I saw how the direct connection to share and extract data with Familysearch was demonstrated. I hadn’t yet looked for CurryAus people on Familysearch, it was in the too hard basket! Legacy seemed worth further investigation.

So, being someone whose mantra is Just do it, I purchased a copy of the Legacy program, imported my CurryAus gedcom into it and started playing. I found Legacy to be a program rich in features but difficult to navigate, I soldiered on.

It wasn’t too difficult to work out how to check my records against Familysearch, it’s just a matter of clicking on little arrows in the respective databases to move data from one to another and all in one screen view. One does not have to share data that is considered unreliable but only take what is reasonable.

Single screen view to exchange data

Both CurryAus and Familysearch benefit from this exercise. I like that this is a give and take activity,  I am growing my database and at the same time contributing to Familysearch by adding data and merging many duplicated in their database as I go along.

I know I will be importing problems from Familysearch with name variations but especially with the location fields, these can be fixed with the tools in Legacy (when I get to know them better). For an outlay of around $AU50 I got more than my money’s worth.

Concurrently with searching Familysearch I am merging duplicates and correcting errors in Legacy. One day I will have a cleaner database!

It’s early days in my matching as I have only checked 8.8% of my Currys in the Familysearch database. What will I do when this number gets to 100%? Will I go back to Family Historian or will I stick with Legacy Family Tree?  I will stay with Family Historian for my own  GeniAus family database.

What to do with CurryAus is a decision for another day.