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Monday, November 30, 2009

Getting Help for Family Tree Maker 2010

There are two places that a Family Tree Maker 2010 user can get instructions for using the program or obtain help to answer questions or solve problems.

The first place is within Family Tree Maker 2010 itself - on the Help menu item shown in every workspace. When a user clicks on the "Help" menu item, a window opens with a Welcome screen, and tabs for Contents, Index and Search are in the left-hand sidebar:




Using the "Help" menu, a user can usually find an answer to a specific question or step-by-step directions to perform an operation.

The second place to obtain help and instruction is from the Family Tree Maker website at http://www.familytreemaker.com/. If you click on the "Support" tab on the top menu of the site, you get the "Getting Help with Family Tree Maker" page:



There are an umber of links on this page to different FTM helps. For instance, the Getting Started Guide to Family Tree Maker 2010 link provides a PDF file (for downloading) with directions to begin your first Family Tree Maker project and master the program’s basic features:


The Knowledge Base link provides a long list of articles with up-to-date information about Family Tree Maker and related products and services:



If a user clicks on one of the articles listed, or an article found by using a Search query, the article provides detailed information about the subject. for instance, here is the article titled Uploading my file from Family Tree Maker to Ancestry.com:



Back on the FTM Support page, there is a "Tutorials" link in the left-hand sidebar for Family Tree Maker 2010, which lists eight different video tutorials:



Another link on the left-hand sidebar is titled "Webinars." Clicking on this link takes you to the Webinar page specifically for Family Tree Maker (all recent variants):


Webinars are, when they are online live, interactive with the speakers discussing and showing a presentation, and the online audience can ask questions and participate in surveys. After the event, any user can hear and view the webinar content by registering to do so.

What if you have a question that you cannot find help for, or have a great idea for a new feature or capability for Family Tree Maker? Well, you can click on the "Enhancement Requests" link on the "Support" page. When you do this, you see a form that requests your email address, your idea or problem, and a description of your problem or idea:



The Family Tree Maker "Support" Page also has links for getting help with earlier Family Tree Maker versions, including FTM 2009, FTM 2008, and FTM Versions 2005, 2006 and 16 (the earlier versions that are completely different from FTM 2008/2009/2010). There are no visible links to even earlier versions of Family Tree Maker.

However, the Family Tree Maker Software Message Board on Rootsweb/Ancestry, and the Using Family Tree Maker message board on Genforum, have thousands of queries from users and responses from other users and FTM volunteers for most of the earlier and current versions of Family Tree Maker.

Lastly, Russ Worthington has the Family Tree Maker User blog that shows FTM 2010 features and functions.

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