First Impressions: Family Tree Maker 2024 (FTM 2024)

First - Happy Mother's Day to all the moms!

Earlier today, I noticed in one of my Facebook groups, some users were receiving the long awaited FTM2024. I quickly Googled and found it was released yesterday. I advance purchased this last year, and have been anxiously awaiting the release. As with previous versions, the emails with download links are being metered out so they don't overwhelm their servers. My email arrived just a few minutes ago, and I was off to the races to download!

The download process itself was straightforward. As always, be sure you have backup of your existing tree. This is important because the new version converts the file, and if anything goes wrong, you definitely want a backup. I also noted, this is a full installer. Once installed and you've verified it's working, you can safely delete your previous version of FTM. This version has been enhanced to provide better speed and stability for very large trees. My tree is not large, so I may or may not see any speed improvements. After install, I compacted and backed up for good measure. I didn't notice any big difference in the time it took to do this. If you use Family Book Creator, there's also a free upgrade available to use with the new FTM update.

I installed with no issues at all. The conversion process was quick, and my workspace opened with no issues whatsoever. Connecting to Ancestry and FamilySearch were both easy to do. I was disheartened to see color coding hasn't been expanded yet, but I know it's a much requested feature and perhaps it will come in a future release. The new feature I do like is the Easy On the Eyes feature. This allows you to expand the section of the workspace you're using (by clicking a button in the section you want to enlarge. Click the button again and it reverts to standard size). The font size increases in only the selected section, but makes text SO much easier to read. No more squinting and wrinkling up my nose trying to read text in my tree! There are additional new features for Tree Vault users (I'm not one of them) and for those who enjoy collaboration, a Connect Workspace. Additionally, the Turn Back Time feature has been increased to 5000 changes (in case you realize far too late you've changed something you shouldn't have). Photo Darkroom has more new tools for those who like to edit their photo media (again, something I rarely do). The Companion Guide (digital version) is available from the Help menu and goes into more depth on the new features and how to use them.

While I'm sure there are many other smaller changes, the overall workspace itself is pretty much identical to the layout you're likely used to. There are no glaringly obvious changes to the user interface. I suspect most changes are under the hood - preparing for future updates. I did test sync both ways and it worked as expected. Typically, I only sync down, but I edited a few media captions and tested the upload. While it did seem to hang for about 30 seconds, it eventually completed with no errors. Since I generally work on Ancestry, with sync down to FTM, I'm going to have to poke around to look at how some of the other new features work. I suspect they'll be much more valuable to those who work primarily in FTM.

I'm very glad the new release is out, but I do hope we'll see some additional updates over the coming months. The overall improvements for users like me appear to be minimal. None the less, I like to make sure my software is up to date since it is my primary backup of my Ancestry tree. And who knows? I may find more of the improvements as I spend time with the update. All in all, updating and testing it out took less than 30 minutes. I was very pleased with the upgrade experience and I'm looking forward to checking it out further.