Ahnenblatt

You can illustrate your family's entire heritage with a genealogical tree. Unfortunately, drawing a family tree can take some time, especially if you want to include a large number of relatives. Ahnenblatt places numerous features at your disposal, enabling you to create your family tree, faster and easier. Besides the fact that you can erase any mistake with a single click, you can also use a search function, to locate certain members, check for relations that are not plausible, and much more.

Ahnenblatt provides many advantages. The software is absolutely free and it does not have any kind of restrictions. Furthermore, it is available in different portable versions and you can run the application on any Windows platform, from Win 95 to Win 7.

The family members are displayed in a horizontal tree structure. You can add numerous relatives, to individual members, in both directions, from descendants to ancestors. New members are created on a separate window. Besides typing basic information, like the first and last name, gender, occupation, date of birth and death, you can also access different tabs, on the same window, to add parents, siblings, one or more marriages, children or information about the person's religion. It is also possible to add personal notes, sources and attach pictures, documents or other files. Another way to add a member is to click the appropriate label, in the tree structure. The same window will show up, but certain details will be inserted automatically.

Based on the information you insert, the software will fill in certain input fields automatically, as you type, so you can avoid mistakes. What's more, when you insert a parent, sibling or offspring, Ahnenblatt will ask you to specify or confirm the relation between certain people. For example, if you add your parents, when creating your own entry, the software will ask you if they are married or not. If you add a brother or a sister, your parents will appear on a different window, on which you have the possibility of specifying different parents, if you need to.

When there are too many family members to keep track off, certain mistakes can be made. A person can end up as someone's father and grandfather at the same time or a child can be older than a parent. This is why Ahnenblatt allows you to perform a plausibility check, by clicking one of the buttons, on its toolbar. If the software detects any relations that make no sense, it will display them on a separate window, along with short descriptions.

You can export and import your family members, using various formats, including GEDCOM. You may also customize a family tree, to illustrate someone's ancestors or descendants. The software allows you to choose from a variety of frames, select different colors or the information you want to include. Ahnenblatt includes many more features. Displaying numerous statistics, finding common ancestors, creating lists, burning the family tree to a disc and sending it to a pocket PC are just a few examples.