Choose from more than 30 formats, including customizable narratives, charts, forms, endnotes, and bibliographies, to create reports with professional source citations. Other tools range from integrated historical timelines to correspondence and multimedia logs, and even a to-do list. A tutorial and electronic help manual helps you assess conflicting records, spelling variations, adoptions, and other real-life research problems. You'll also receive a free trial subscription to Ancestry.com, as well as an offer for a free wall chart.
A new note to add to this review. While the functionality of this program does seem superior to other Genealogy packages I've used (Family TreeMaker, Generations, PAF), the manual and help (after the free upgrade) are very limited and do not fully detail all of the tools available in the software. Also, a new CD and Manual for v5 were promised after the upgrade, but nearly 8 months later it has not arrived although Version 5.x is for sale (no more free upgrades from 4.x?) on the Wholly Genes website.
The reports output by TMG are very customizable as to the sentences output as well as the format of the report. Even though there is a long list of items that can be customized, TMG comes configured so that there are defaults for all the reports and settings. Learn as little or as much as you like about customizing tags (events), sentences, and report formats. The charts include fan, descendants, pedigree, and hourglass charts as well as several `book' formats for genealogy narratives. The outstanding chart-printing program allows you to tweak the output to fit onto pages and add photographs or other graphics. These are great for family reunions.
Other tools include a master place list, relationship calculator, and date calculator. The master place list alone has greatly assisted me in cleaning up the place names in my database! You still have trouble remembering what 6th cousin 2 times removed means? Then use the relationship calculator on any two people in the database and let it do the tree climbing. The date calculator is always handy to figure out the birth date from the tombstone or obituary that says age: 21 years 6 months and 2 days.
You should know that this current product doesn't quite behave exactly like windows because it's a windows interface on top of a DOS program. Don't let this stop you from purchasing it though. The Windows product is coming shortly and you can use this product to learn about data entry and how to use the reports to show off your genealogy research.
Wholly Genes has always shown that it is committed to the integrity of your genealogy data. Even when bad things happen like the system powering down while in the middle of data entry, I didn't lose anything except the last line that I entered! I can't say that about many other programs.
Flexiblity, value, and integrity! What more can you ask for in one product?
Jeri Steele, CGRS