Integrating Reunion with PC software?

[KellyE]

I know, right?!

But my client has only a PC. I'll be handing off a GEDCOM next week along with charts and reports—they plan to put the GEDCOM up on Ancestry as a private tree just so they can click around, but mainly enjoy the reports and charts.

They think they're not interested in doing further work, or in having it housed on their computer.

Genealogy work, once started, always becomes an addiction, so I'd like to be able to recommend a piece of software for their PC that will take the file I'm sending and get it as close to if they were sitting next to me, as I can.

RootsMagic? FTM?

I'm as clueless about PCs as they are about Macs, so anyone who has experience getting a Reunion file/ GEDCOM to be as lossless as possible when transitioning to a different environment, please help!

[SGilbert]

Absolutely no experience except I sent a Gedcom to a PC using FTM and it worked out well.
I think I understand that Ancestry works well with FTM, so that is what I'd recommend to your client.

[Mark]

While I don't have any specific recommendations regarding Windows-based software, I will recommend that if they plan to use either Ancestry.com or Family Tree Maker, you should select Ancestry.com as the Destination when exporting the GEDCOM file. When that is selected, Reunion will format the GEDCOM in a way that improves data transfer (it basically takes into account some "quirks" of Ancestry/FTM).

HTH

[KellyE]

Thank you both, that gets me a little closer to what I should recommend—and I didn't know that about the destination, Mark, I was definitely wondering about quirks!!

[theKiwi]

And you should recommend to them either Family Tree Maker or RootsMagic - they both interact with Ancestry's member trees, keeping the file on the computer in synch with what's online, and vice versa,

Family Tree Maker is perhaps better suited than RootsMagic, but RootsMagic seems to do OK. Right now RootsMagic is well into testing the long awaited Version 8 which has a native Macintosh version as well as a Windows version.

Roger

[KellyE]

Thanks, Roger!