Family Tree Builder Changelog

What's new in Family Tree Builder 7.0.0.7099

Apr 19, 2013

Major new features:
Full two-way synchronization
Prior versions of Family Tree Builder supported only one-way publishing from Family Tree Builder to the family site on MyHeritage, and updates could not travel in the opposite direction. This meant that the published family tree was read-only on MyHeritage.com and could not be edited online. It could only be edited in Family Tree Builder.
As of version 7.0, Family Tree Builder not just publishes a tree to MyHeritage.com, it essentially syncs (synchronizes) the tree with MyHeritage.com. Sync is two-way publishing. This means that users who use Family Tree Builder can now also edit their family tree online on MyHeritage.com or via MyHeritage apps for mobile devices, and any changes propagate back to the Family Tree Builder on the next sync.
In version 7.0, editing the tree online is restricted to the tree owner only. This restriction will be lifted in following versions, allowing the tree owner to specify whether other invited site members can edit the online tree as well.
The sync covers all data, photos, videos, audio files, notes, sources, citations and practically anything that can be added to the tree.
For privacy reasons, some data that may be entered in Family Tree Builder is not synced online, such as DNA marker information, SSN fields, plus any additional fields selected as private by the user.
Record Matches and SuperSearch:
SuperSearch is MyHeritage’s new genealogy search engine, containing a growing collection of billions of historical records, such as birth, marriage, death, censuses, newspaper articles and more.
Record Matching is a new technology developed by MyHeritage, designed to automatically find matching historical records in MyHeritage SuperSearch. It enjoys a good balance between power and accuracy, finding many matches that users would not be able to make on their own, with very high accuracy, which translates to a remarkably low false positive rate.
Record Matches are automatically calculated for every person you add and edit in the tree and if positive matches are found, they are indicated visually and are available for review in one click. Automatic calculation can be turned off in the configuration settings.
A tree that is synced to an online family site on MyHeritage.com enjoys additional features of Record Matches on the site, such as a consolidated view of all Record Matches, the ability to confirm matches and save them to the family tree.
Some Record Matches are free while others require a MyHeritage Data subscription.
Record Matches replaces WorldVitalRecords records and the Smart Research feature available in prior versions.
A Research option was also added to invoke a search for that person on MyHeritage SuperSearch.
Full Unicode support:
Version 7.0 has been rewritten to support Unicode.
Data can be entered in any language allowing a mix and match data from different languages.
The file extension for Family Tree Builder projects was changed from ZED to UZED, for Unicode projects.
Minor features:
Facelift of graphics and other user interface components.
Additional languages: Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, Korean and Farsi.
Simplify the process of adding a new personal photo to someone in the tree who already had a personal photo.
Support for BCE dates.
Option to display father’s first name or his initials in his children’s names.
Option to display husband’s first name or his initials in his wife’s name.
Other bug fixes

New in Family Tree Builder 6.0.0.5634 (Dec 27, 2011)

Major new features:
Added a new research facility through WorldVitalRecords.com now owned by MyHeritage.com. Get information from our new database of historical records containing billions of birth, marriage, death and census records, plus newspapers, yearbooks and additional historical content
Family Tree builder automatically searches for information in the online database. If records are found for a person in your tree, an icon or button is shown in the person’s card in the Tree view
Click this icon or button to see the actual results in our website. A separate WorldVitalRecords subscription is required but you can look at records for free under a free trial
You can also use the right-click menu on a person, or the Research menu, to perform research
The automatic research feature can be turned off in Tools>Options>General>Automatic Record Search
Added convenient, seamless integration with your family site on MyHeritage.com. You can now easily access pages in the family site that your Family Tree Builder project is published to
Family Timeline
See your family's events and photos in an attractive, fun-to-use timeline
All your events, photos and videos that are dated will appear on the timeline
Zoom in from a century to a single day
Compare your family's timeline with historical events
The Timeline looks best in Premium and PremiumPlus family sites
Family Timebook
The Timebook is a digital album of family photos, which includes automatically generated biographies for direct relatives
Clever technology generates a beautiful book that appears to have been prepared and edited in meticulous manual effort
The Timebook looks best in PremiumPlus family sites
Profile Pages
Profile Pages enable you to document and celebrate the depth and diversity of your family history
They beautifully display all information about a person in one place, with photos, close family relatives, events, citations and much more
When viewing a profile, double-click any person in the list on the side to view that person's profile instantly
Family Statistics
MyHeritage.com analyzes your family tree and produces 45 beautiful, enlightening statistics like average lifespan and most commonly used first names in your family
You'll also find many unique stats not available anywhere else. It's all free
Family Events
Your family site is the best place to keep track of family events
See all upcoming family events in a list or monthly view
Order a beautiful personalized family calendar in a few clicks, delivered to your home
Optionally get reminders by email or free text messages (SMS)
Never miss an important family birthday or anniversary again
Family Memory Game
This unique free online game automatically generates beautiful personalized picture cards of close relatives and ancestors - based on your family tree
Following the same rules as a typical memory card game, users can play in competition with each other, or against the clock
Played by the young and old alike, the game is ideal for educating the younger generation about their ancestors and introducing them to the fascinating hobby of genealogy
Quick visit to family site
Family sites are free. There are premium subscription plans for huge family trees or photo collections but you don't have to use them if you don't want to
Minor features:
Simplified publishing
Each project can now be published into one family site at most
Improved dialog that explains the benefits of publishing

New in Family Tree Builder 5.1.0.5365 (Nov 29, 2011)

New in Family Tree Builder 5.0.0.1149 (Dec 17, 2010)

Major new features:
Better charting:
Added a Chart Wizard that makes it easy to create a chart from any of the
chart types and styles available
New chart: Bowtie Chart
New chart: Hourglass Chart
Beautiful new chart format: stylish charts, with 4 exciting new designs and
no boxes to confine your chart
Better fan charts that can also be saved to PDF and conform to your printer
page settings
Dozens of new box borders and chart frames to pick from
All graphics do not make the program installer larger, as it is now able to
download graphic updates on the fly whenever new updates are available
Better formatting of fact labels and values in charts
It is now possible to include notes in charts, as well as residence addresses.
New huge personal photo size for charts, when photos play an important
part
Beautiful new title decorations
Beautiful new tiled backgrounds
Beautiful new full-page backgrounds
Ability to create and save custom chart styles and reuse them in the future
New, automatic algorithm for picking title and footer font sizes
When saving a chart to PDF it is possible to create a hi-resolution PDF file
for printing, or a low-resolution file which is easier to email because of its
lower size but contains less detail
A new option was added to the General tab of the chart options dialog. This
is the default and only option that existed before. Unchecking this option,
will not take into account the printer page size and instead will create a
chart that spans a single page of any size. This option was added to
support poster printing in the future.
Charts now show multiple occurrences of each fact, e.g. multiple
occupations of a person, if applicable, and not just the first one.
Chart poster printing built-into the program (create a PDF, order it as printed
poster from MyHeritage):
The user can pick the paper size (several magnifications are made possible based on the size of the chart and the size of the papers provided by the printing facility); the paper quality, based on the papers provided
by the printing facility; whether to laminate the chart; where to ship the chart and whether to use regular or express shipping.
Tree Consistency Checker:
Major feature that helps you find mistakes in your data in almost 40 categories; guaranteed to help you improve YOUR tree, catching mistakes that no other genealogy program or service can
Better privacy controls:
Ability to prevent online publishing of specific people, specific notes,
specific facts, or certain facts for all people
See all info that is privatized at a glance
Ability to hide privatized info from charts and reports
Ability to exclude privatized info from GEDCOM exports
A new icon designates people who have been made private for quick
identification
To-Do lists to enter tasks that need to be done and associate them with peopleand with locations; organize the next steps you need to do in your research and prioritize them. Find all tasks associate with a certain person or location to conduct your genealogy research much more effectively.
Export custom report to Excel with fields you pick for the people you select.
Ability to restore published trees from online family sites, via convenient wizard (File> Restore project > Restore from online family site). Also added the ability to restore published photos from any published project, by going to Photos in the program and then selecting Photos>Restore photos from family site. Also made it possible to restore a Family Tree Builder project from a family tree that was built online on MyHeritage.com (and not through Family Tree Builder) and even restore the photos added to it.
Search & Replace functionality in almost every field in the family tree, with multiple configuration options, like matching case, matching an entire word, or any part of the text, etc., and selection of the fields that will participate in the operation.
Minor features:
When importing a GEDCOM file, there is now a new wizard page that asks the user to identify himself/herself in the tree. This helps set the home person of the project as the individual who is the user, to give the user a better experience with the tree.
URLs entered are automatically displayed as clickable links (also URLs supported for source citations)
More configuration options:
Book reports can be configured to produce a report according to the page size of your printer
Book reports can be configured whether to display last names the way FTB does
Improved the look of some icons throughout the program:
Added more icon indicators on person cards in tree view: private person, has to-do tasks, research completed
Added new “More” tab when editing a person to add room for new properties
Added info to photo tooltips including their dimensions, type and file size
Quick access from the Help menu to the online FAQ and help center on
MyHeritage.com
Updated user guide
The email address of the user currently logged on, is displayed in the window title for convenience
There is a new configurable display option that, when enabled, shows people’s ages in the person cards of Tree View
Users who download Family Tree Builder from MyHeritage.com when they are
logged on, will get a personalized installer that automatically registers Family Tree Builder for them and selects its language, so they do not have to manually go through these steps. This reduces the chance of errors such as registering Family Tree Builder with a mistyped email address.
Add a new function in Tools>Options>General to restore browser search settings, that the program’s installer may have modified.
New features for professional genealogists:
It is now possible to associate photos with sources. Perfect for sources that are documents, as now you can add a scan of the document and attach it to the source record
It is now possible to state a date for each residence of a person (so if a person lived in multiple addresses you can specify when he lived in each one). This is supported in the GEDCOM specification but there was data entry support for it until now.
Get warned when adding new people to the tree if they apparently already exist; this can protect you from adding duplicate people and messing up your tree; helpful when cousins marry, too, to keep them in the tree once
Find duplicates in your family tree (useful after merging in another family tree or finding duplicates that already exist)
Enter DNA marker info for individuals, with perhaps the most extensive DNA entry facilities available on any genealogy product.
There is a new setting in the Options > Names section, which allows the user to specify whether married names of women should be calculated from the husband's last name.
Added support for married names for men too.
There is a new configurable display option, whether or not to display suffix in
names (like Jr., Sr. and II), similar to the option on whether or not to display prefix in names (like Dr., Prof., etc).
Ability to mark a person as research-complete and easily find the people whose research has been completed or not completed
Better handling of sources and citations: in source list it is possible to do a quick search, useful for finding a source if you have many. In citation page when selecting a source, there is a new source selector for that which is more flexible than the pull-down list that existed before.
Added support for specifying known number of children per family.