Branches Software Rewind

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I wrote several posts about Branches genealogy software last year after the NGS Conference where I was first exposed to it:

*  First Look at Branches - Genealogy Software
*  Using Branches Genealogy Software - Post 1: Navigating an Existing Tree
*  Using Branches Genealogy software - Post 2: Adding Unrelated Person
*  Using Branches genealogy software - Post 3: Adding a Spouse and Parents

I received an email yesterday from Mike Miller of Branches, which included this information:

"Normally I would not send out a general email, but I wanted to let you know that we have reduced the price of BRANCHES family tree software to $14.95.  This is the lowest price for a full featured Windows family tree manager ever offered.  I encourage you to download the 30 day free trial again and try the new and improved version ( http://www.branchesgenealogy.com/).  We have reset the time limit to give you another 30 days.  As in the past, the onetime license fee is good for all the computers you own and includes free upgrades. 

"If you are comfortable using your current family tree software, consider using BRANCHES as a utility to view and manage your data as many of our customers do."

I love free trials, so I downloaded the program today (Version 1.2.0.5, dated 29 April 2011), uploaded my 40,000 person GEDCOM file created by RootsMagic 4, and did some learning on how to use the program.  Here is a screen shot of the biggest tree in my database:

This is a graphical program.  The user navigates around the tree by using the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out of the tree, and using the left mouse hold and drag to move the tree up, down, right and left.  The right mouse button is used to access menus to perform actions for persons in the tree. 

Note the small Mini-Map in the upper left-hand corner of the screen - it shows you where you are in the larger tree.  I zoomed into my tree, and moved to the right and zoomed some more in order to see some of my earliest generations.  The screen below shows a view of a small portion of my tree:

When I reviewed and tested Branches last year, I had some problems:

*  The program and database size swamped my older computer.  I have no problems now with a computer with a much larger hard drive and RAM, although Branches is using over 187 mb of RAM at present.

*  I couldn't figure out how to do certain things.  My readers helped out with suggestions, and the Help function is useful.  My biggest problem was with adding children to a family - the "right answer" eluded me in Post 3 until reader GeneaPopPop told me to run my mouse over the vertical line connecting husband and wife - a green line appears and a right-click permits a user to ADD Children.

*  Another problem I couldn't figure out was how to edit an Event.  Right-clicking an Event permits "Edit Event" which opens a text box to edit the information.  Adding a source to an Event is done with a right-click of the Event and selecting "ADD Source citation to event" (thank you, Deborah Andrew!). 

*  Adding an unrelated person to a Tree can be done by right-clicking in the "white space" and selecting "ADD Individual."

*  The user can right-click on the white space and select "EVENTS Off" and/or "SOURCES off."  In the screens above, I have them On, and they really clutter up the screen.  My preference is "EVENTS On" and "SOURCES Off."

I'm not sure if I will pay for Branches after my 30-day free trial, but I feel a lot more comfortable with it.  It is fairly easy to learn navigation and editing, although the reports and charts have significant limitations at this time, in my opinion.  I may write another post about the Report and Chart options. 

What other topics do my readers want to know about Branches?  What do you like or not like in Branches?  Tell me, and I'll report back.

Using Branches Genealogy Software - Post 4: Using the Help Function

This is the fourth post in the series about using genealogy software named Branches. Previous posts in the series include:

* The first post demonstrated navigating around a database uploaded from a GEDCOM file.

* The second post demonstrated adding an unrelated person to the database (similar to starting a brand new database).

* The third post demonstrated adding a spouse and parents to a person, but complained that adding children was way too difficult.

In this post, I am going to show the Help screen, and how to add a child to a family and then explore other "Family Options."

Some readers helped me out in comments to find the "Family Options" and the "Add source to Event" and other options - of course, if I'd read the Branches Help screen, I would have not embarrassed myself by whining about it when it was in plain sight.

The Help function is in the top menu row of the Branches screen. It appears to be full featured, typical of most genealogy software programs. Here is the Help Introduction screen:




If I had read the Help screen before Post 3, I would have known that any vertical line on the Branches Screen represented a Family. If you run your mouse over a vertical line, as I did in the screen below, a green message appears at the bottom of the screen that says "Cursor is over Family. click the right mouse button for options:"

When I right-clicked the green vertical line, the "FAMILY OPTIONS" dropdown menu opens:

The "FAMILY OPTIONS" menu includes:

* ADD children

* ADD Event to marriage

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* DELETE Family

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* REORDER Children

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* LINK this family to an existing child

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* PRINT reports

I clicked on "Add children" and entered the child's name and gender to the fields:

After clicking "Save and Exit," I saw that the child had been added to the family (see screen below).

At this point, I could go through the tasks of adding a birth event, a death event, a spouse and marriage data, etc. for the child. There appears to be no easy way to do these tasks quickly and easily - you have to click through the sequence. And you have to do this task sequence for every child you want to add to the family.

One of my other complaints was that there appeared to be no way to connect a source to an event, only to a person. I was wrong again. If you right-click on any Event (say a birth date and place) on the Branches Screen, you get an EVENT OPTIONS dropdown menu, as shown below:

The EVENT OPTIONS include:

* ADD Source citation to event

* ADD Multimedia to Event

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* EDIT Event

* SHOW Event place on Google Maps

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* DELETE Event

When I clicked on "ADD Source citation to Event" I received the same source menu fields that I showed in Post 2. I clicked on the "ADD Multimedia to event" and the Windows Explorer box opened to identify the multimedia item in my computer files, and then this "Add Multimedia Object" box opened for editing:

Lastly, I clicked on the "SHOW Event place in Google Maps" and my Internet browser opened and found the event location easily:

So some of my problems could have been easily solved if I'd just read the manual, er, Help function. I seem to learn by experimenting and doing, and then complaining without reading the manual. I need to change my ways!

The next post will deal with creating and printing reports. Then I'll be done with this series because my 30-day free trial has only two days left on it!

Using Branches genealogy software - Post 3: Adding a Spouse and Parents

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This is the third post in the series about using genealogy software named Branches. Previous posts in the series include:

* The first post demonstrated navigating around a database uploaded from a GEDCOM file.

* The second post demonstrated adding an unrelated person to the database (similar to starting a brand new database).

In this post, I am going to work through adding a spouse, children and parents to a person in the database.

In the last post, I added an unrelated person to the database, added birth and death information, and created a source citation for the 1930 census. From the family tree screen, I right-clicked on the person's name to obtain the "Individual Options" menu box, and selected "Add a Spouse:"




The "Add Spouse" menu box opened, and I added the spouse's name, the marriage date and marriage place:

Note that there is no capability to add a Source citation to this marriage event. I clicked on "Save and Exit" and was back to the main screen. Note that the spouse has been added to the screen below. Now I want to add parents for Herkimer Seaver, so I right-click on his name and select the "Add Parents" option:

The "Add Parents" menu box opened, and I added the names of Herkimer's parents and their marriage date and place:

Note that in the marriage place field that the type-ahead feature added the place name after I typed several letters.

I clicked on "Save and Exit" and was back to the main screen that showed Herkimer Seaver with his spouse and his parents:

At this point, I wanted to add children to the family of Johnson and Lucretia (Jones) Seaver - Herkimer's brothers and sisters. This was a large family of seven children. How can I add these other six children and their birth, death and marriage information?

I right-clicked on the name of Johnson Seaver and saw no way to accomplish this task in the "Individual Options" menu box. Surely there must be a way to add a child to a family, but Branches does not offer an easy method at this point in the program development. One work-around would be to:

* For each child, create an unrelated person (using a right-click on the white space background of the main screen) and his/her birth, death, spouse, marriage information.

* Then right-click on each new unrelated person's name and select "Link to a Person as a child to an existing family" from the "Individual Options" menu box.

I didn't do this because it is simply too complex a task. Other genealogy software programs have very easy and intuitive methods to add children and their birth and death information - all on one screen with easy navigation from child-to-child.

A similar task would be to connect Johnson Seaver, who in the entries above is not connected to a set of parents, to an existing set of parents in my large database. I right-clicked on the name of Johnson Seaver, and selected "Link to a Person as a child to an existing family" as shown below:

When I tried to do this, a little "stick-man" icon showed on the screen and nothing happened. After several minutes, I finally clicked on the "stick-man" icon and canceled the action.

I think that this is related to my computer RAM problem where my computer cannot load the large database into memory in order to use it. At one point, earlier, while using the large database, Branches was using over 350 megabytes of memory. That seems like a lot - even Family Tree Maker 2010 uses "only" 191 megabytes for this same database, and RootsMagic and Legacy Family Tree use much less RAM.

The last two posts have shown that Branches software has serious flaws that, if not fixed, will make it fairly useless for use by seasoned genealogists. These flaws include the complexity of adding vital records and other event data to a person, adding children to a family, and attaching source citations to a person instead of an event. In other software programs, these tasks are handled simply, quickly and intuitively. My opinion is that Branches can greatly improve these tasks by modifying their "Individual Options" menu items.

The large RAM usage is a problem for researchers like myself with a medium sized family tree database using an older Windows computer system with limited RAM. My guess is that the main screen zoom and navigation capabilities, which are the main differentiators between Branches and other genealogy software, is why there is so much RAM usage. A researcher with a small database may not have these problems.

In the next post, I will investigate the Report Options offered by Branches.

Using Branches Genealogy software - Post 2: Adding Unrelated Person

This is the second post in the series about using genealogy software named Branches. The first post demonstrated navigating around a database uploaded from a GEDCOM file.

In this post, I am going to work through adding an unrelated person to the database. This could demonstrate how to start a new database to Branches with the first person in the database.

Here is the screen with my 39,000 person database. To Add an Unrelated Person, the user clicks in the "White Space" between persons in the tree. A small box opens:




The options in the small box include:

* Return to Home Menu
* Events On
* Sources Off
* Add Individual
* Print Reports

I clicked on the "Add Individual" link and the "Add an Individual" box opened and I added the name of my person - "Herkimer Seaver" and his gender "M":




The options after adding the name are to:

* Save and Add Another
* Save and Exit
* Cancel

I chose to "Save and Exit" and was back to my screen with the big family tree. I want to add information to the person I added, but where can I find Herkimer Seaver? Ah, he's at the bottom of the list of the list of "loose persons" in the tree database. I clicked on the "Tree List" menu item (in the top menu on the screen) and scrolled down and there was Herkimer Seaver:



I clicked on Herkimer Seaver in thel ist above, and the screen split into two parts - with the large tree above and Herkimer Seaver all by himself in the bottom part. I closed the large tree and Herkimer Seaver's tree filled the screen:

I want to add Birth and Death and other Event information to Herkimer Seaver. I right-clicked on the name "Herkimer Seaver" and saw the "Individual Options" menu:

I chose the "Add Event for Individual" item on the list above, and chose "Birth" from the list of Events. I filled in the birth date and birth place for Herkimer Seaver. I chose the place name from the dropdown list that appeared once I started typing "Fitchburg, Worcester, MA" (which was in the place name index in the entire database):

I could have added a Note about the birth record, but I didn't. There is no observable place to enter a Source for this Event.

I did the same process to add a Death Event - date and place, as shown below:

Now I have a birth event and a death event for Herkimer Seaver. But I had to do a lot of clicking around to do it. It would be much easier for a user to open an "Edit Individual Data" box and be able to see some fixed Events like Birth, Baptism, Death and Burial, and the option to add additional Events from the list, all in one Individual Data box. That would ease the data input process.

Herkimer Seaver was in the 1930 US Census as a husband of Susan, so I added that Event also. I wanted to add a Source for the 1930 census, and clicked on the "Add a Source" in the "Individual Options" box. In the "Add Individual Source Citation" box, I chose the 1930 US Census master source from the existing sources (all from the entire database), and added the source citation details (the heading says "Film/Volume/Page Number") to the box in the upper left. I added the "Date Record was Made" and extracted the information about Herkimer Seaver in the "Actual Text" box. I didn't add a Comment or Repository to the available boxes. My previously entered data appeared in the grayed areas on the right - the Title, Author, Call Number, Publisher, etc. The screen below shows the filled in Source information:

Note that the Source Option buttons, in the screen above, are "New," "Edit," "Delete" and "Merge" sources. Those are self-explanatory. The "New" source form looksl ike the box above, but without the existing source list.

There appear to be no variations in this "Add Individual Source Citation" box - the box appears to be identical for each type of Event. And each Source is attached to the Individual and not to the Event. This is unlike most of the other modern genealogy programs, which connect sources to Events rather than Persons.

In the next post, I will add a Spouse and Parents for Herkimer Seaver, and try to connect his father to the larger family tree.

Using Branches Genealogy Software - Post 1: Navigating an Existing Tree

I finally got a chance to use the Branches genealogy software program tonight. After my first post - First Look at Branches - Genealogy Software - which ended in my 39,000 person GEDCOM (created from Family Tree Maker 16) unsuccessfully loading into the program, I received an email from Mike Miller stating that they had fixed some bugs relatred to imports from FTM, and he asked me to try it again. So I tried again tonight, and the file uploaded in about five minutes.

The Branches program download can be obtained at http://www.branchesgenealogy.com/ for a 30-day free trial. After 30 days, the program costs $39.95 retail. Has anyone else blogged about this software yet? [Reader Finn noted that Dick Eastman reviewed it in osme detail in Branches - A Major New Windows Genealogy Program.]

I have not read the Help screens or the FAQs for this program, so I'm going to explore it as a new user. I may consult the Help screens later.

In this post, I will discuss Navigation and investigate the Individual editing options.

The program took about 20 seconds to open my 39,000 person database, and opened to a screen with a list of 376 different unconnected "trees" in my database (I guess that's how many "loose ends" I have!). I clicked on the biggest one, and worked my way to myself in the tree and made myself the "Root Person."

Navigation in the tree is by holding down the left mouse button and moving the cursor. Zooming in and out is performed using the mouse wheel. This is very easy to perform and becomes natural very quickly.

As the "Root person," I show up on the screen on the left, with my ancestors to the right, and my descendants to the left of me, as shown below:




In the screen above, siblings of my ancestors show up to the left of the vertical line connecting parents. If a person has more than one spouse, then all spouses and their children show up on the screen. The screen above shows ten generations of ancestors.

I scrolled back to my great-grandfather, Frank Walton Seaver and zoomed in on him a bit - you can see the tree below, including the inset box which shows the portion of the tree outlined in green:





To add content to a person in the tree, you right mouse click the person's name. In the screen below, I clicked on Frank Walton Seaver and saw:




The "Individual Options" box has the following capabilities:

* Add Parents
* Add Spouse
* Add Event to individual
* Add Source citation to individual
* Add Note to individual
* Add Address to individual
* Add Multimedia item to individual
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* Edit Individual
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* DELETE Individual
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* Unlink this person from parents
* Unlink this person from spouse
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* Reorder Parents
* Reorder Spouses
* Reorder Events
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* Merge Individuals
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* Link this person as a child to an existing family
* Link this person as a spouse to an existing person
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* Change this person to the permanent Root Person
* Change this person to a temporary Root Person with Descendants
* Change this person to a temporary Root Person without Descendants
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* Print Records

That list looked fairly complete until I started doing some of the actions and trying to do others. Since I uploaded a GEDCOM file, the names, dates, places and events were all uploaded into the tree. I clicked on the "Edit Individual" link in the box above:




I fully expected that the box above would show me the Name, Birth date and location, and Death date and location, with source options, plus the notes for the person. It only showed the Name, Gender, Title and the Notes. The Notes can be edited in the box above (or in the "Add Notes" option), but there are no word processing capabilities - it's strictly plain text.

My problem is this: if I wanted to edit or delete the birth date or location (or death date or location) there is no means to do that. I don't believe that I can delete those items individually, but I could Add a new Event like a birth or death. My preference would be to Edit the Birth and Death information for a person in the Edit Individual screen.

I tested most of the available options and they worked. I have not tried to add a family to the database by hand yet, but will soon.

To Add an Event, I clicked on the "Add Event" link in the Individual Options box, and selected "Burial" from the long list of possible Events. I inserted the date, then clicked on the "Select" button which opened a dropdown menu for the place names. I selected Leominster, Worcester County, MA, as shown in the screen below and clicked "OK:"



That added a burial location as an Event to Frank Walton Seaver's list of Events.
[I know that I have those crazy green lines in the screen above, but just ignore them for now. We'll get to them in a later post.]

My initial impression is that the program works fairly quickly with my medium sized database with many "loose ends." The navigation is simple to understand and use, although much different from all of the other available genealogy software.

However, more work needs to be done with the "Edit Individual" information - namely to add the ability to edit the birth date, birth location, death date and death location.

I thought that perhaps the editing of birth and death information could be done by clicking on the "Add Event" and it would show the Event information, but it does not.

While trying to do all of the above, I managed to mess up the database somehow and now it will open to one of the one person trees in the database, even though it lists all 376 trees in the database. When I select the tree I want, it gives me an error message (System:OutOfMemoryException) - I show that BranchesCE.exe is using 209,948 K of memory and I have only 179,000 K available. I will have to open it again after I reboot tonight.

In the next post, I will try to add persons by hand and then try to connect that "loose tree" to the larger database. Wish me luck!

UPDATED 10 p.m. Added note and link to Dick Eastman's review.