Ancestral Quest Reviewer's Comments
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A simple program for anyone interested in discovering his or her family history. You’ll get off to a quick start with the clear layout and friendly, conversational labels. Opt to integrate with Ancestry.com. Research prompts will appear on your chart while you work—instant gratification. Sharing options are adequate.
Ancestral Quest Screenshots. Click to Enlarge
Feature Set:
When you begin your work with Ancestral Quest, you have several options: start a new family tree, use an existing file from your computer or access an online file with the collaborate option. A collaboration wizard will take you through this process.
Data entry is a simple and thorough process. You will find some unusual events to add like tribe, move, and hobby. As you add events, preview the narrative. You can also opt to make any event confidential. Sources are easy to add: just look for the “S” button next to each entry.
If you enabled the interface with Ancestry.com, the number of trees featuring a particular name on your tree will appear in the Pedigree View—instant gratification, your research is underway. You can also link to Family Search, World Vital Records and your own favorite sites.
Bonus Features
- Enable Page of Testimony to share information you may have on a victim of the Holocaust.
- Activate Ancestral Quest to search Ancestry.com while you are working on other tasks to effortlessly boost your outside research results.
Ease of Use:
Ancestral Quest offers the three standard views: Pedigree, Family and Individual. The layout is intuitive and simple, input screens are thorough and easy to navigate. However, when you click on a name in the Pedigree View, a box pops up with empty fields for spouse and children. Unfortunately, you can’t type them here. Click on Add and proceed. There are drop down menus for new entries consisting of the names you entered for the linked individual. If you have a silly nickname, you’ll see it as an option for all of your linked entries. Ancestral Quest’s extra features are well intentioned, but tend to slow navigation.
Reporting & Publishing:
Unlike other programs, Ancestral Quest hides its Reports and Charts function under File. Find it and you can select from a range of standard charts. Customize fonts, box colors and lines. Use the Publish icon to create a family book to print or save as a PDF file. Select Internet to use the Web Page Wizard.
Help/Documentation:
Ancestral Quest offers integrated help to easily find the topic you have questions about. Choose help on your current view or search the entire help section. For Tech Support, contact by Email or phone. A video tutorial is available online.
Summary:
Ancestral Quest 12 will not disappoint new genealogists. You’ll gain confidence as you enter the facts you know about individuals in your family and will get that thrill of discovery when numbers indicating new facts may be available online. Ancestral Quest is not as pretty as some of the other programs and superfluous features can be distracting, but the automatic research feature will motivate you to find more information. A little push could result in a big payoff.
©2008 TopTenREVIEWS, Inc.
