Over at Open Thread Thursday at Geneablogger, they are asking about running multiple genealogy software programs.


There are a lot of them choose from (Cyndi’s List of Genealogy Software and Computers is a comprehensive sampling of what’s available); for many years, I preferred using Personal Ancestral File (PAF) as my primary desktop (laptop) program and then would export a cleaned GEDCOM file from that for use on my genealogy website, LookingBackwards.net, with occasional supplementation from an older version of Family Tree Maker (FTM) (link is to the most recent version, I was using version 7 way back when).


A couple of years ago, I switched from using PAF in favour of FTM 2010. While there are still things about FTM that make me want to scream, I do like the built-in search capability for ancestry.com (as well as other sites, and you can add additional ones to your search menu); PAF was limited to only searching on FamilySearch.org.


I’m still having to export a GEDCOM file to upload to my website, plus make some additional clean-up/corrections to it; my eventual goal is to exclusively use my website for both data collection and display, as each version of Darrin Lythgoe’s The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding becomes more robust with each new version.