New Version of Family Tree Maker for Mac and the 2012 Version problem

Since Ancestry.com has decided to release a new updated version of their popular Family Tree Maker program for the Macintosh, I decided to bring everything up to date with the Family Tree Maker 2012 installation problem. First, some comments about Family Tree Maker in general.

Family Tree Maker, on both the PC Windows based computers and on the Macintosh, seem to be good fundamentally sound programs with the added attraction of connecting directly to Ancestry.com. The first problem is that if you happen to have the Mac version you cannot share or update files in the Windows version. Although the two programs are made by the same company, they won't share files. You would be forced to use GEDCOM to move the data.

I was initially attracted to the Family Tree Maker 2012 updated program by the claim that you can share data between your computer based program and your online Family Trees on Ancestry.com.  That is true and it works quite well, although getting the same documents online and into your computer-based program file can be difficult and a challenge. The bad news was, I was expecting to be able to synchronize my FTM 2012 file on my laptop with my desktop computer. No such luck. The program is written so that you can only synchronize one program on one computer with the online Family Trees. If I try to synchronize my laptop, I get an error message and the ability to create a new tree online.

So far, there is little information about the Mac 2012 update, but I am assuming that it will support only one connection to the online Family Trees and will still not share data files with the Windows version. I am simply amazed that anyone, even Ancestry.com, would release a program in today's online world that does not share files between different versions of the same file and even the same files on a user's laptop and desktop computers.

Some of you out there are Mac users and are having trouble installing the FTM 2012 version of the program on a virtual PC running under Parallels Desktop. I hesitated to give out the solution because of the lack of support from Ancestry.com on the issue, but I have reconsidered. The answer is relatively simple, copy all of the installation files from the CD to your Windows program on your Mac and run the install from the computer, not the CD. That did it for me, although you may have another problem not resolved by simply copying the files over.