Legacy Family Tree Basic Edition is available at no charge on the Internet at Millennia's Web site. However, if you like the program and want more features, it's worth the cost to purchase the Deluxe Edition. You can download the Deluxe Edition from Millennia's Web site for $ 19.95 or you can purchase the program with the manual for only $29.95. I think it's really worthwhile to pay the extra $10.00 and get a full manual along with the CD-ROM.

When you first load the program, you will be reminded that you can load the very latest edition of the software by using the Customer Number off the CD-ROM sleeve, and downloading from the Internet, instead of loading the CD itself.  This makes a lot of sense for Millennia upgrades their software every few days. I've noticed that if a customer asks for a feature to be added to the software, often that feature shows up within a few weeks of the request. Just try to get that kind of service from most of your software suppliers!

I'm not going to attempt a full review of the entire software in this writing. However, I would like to list some of the features that are found in Legacy 4.0, Deluxe Edition. The following listing is taken from material published by Millennia with some of my own comments added.

The following features are not found in the Legacy 4.0, Standard Edition:

Alternate Names in the Name List
Alternate names (also known as, or AKAs) are now shown in the Name List. This lets you see all the variations of a person's name making it easier to find the correct individual.

New Chronology View and Report 
Quickly see a person and all the events surrounding his or her life, including vitals, events, notes, children, marriages, marriage events, and marriage notes. Different types of events can be color coded for easy identification, and can be produced in a printed report--a timeline of a person's life events.

Index View 
The Index View displays all the individuals in your family file. The information displayed includes the record number (RIN), full name, sex, and the birth and death date and place. The columns can be customized to display many different pieces of information. 

Event Sentences
Each event definition now has its own sentence structure that is used when displaying the event information in reports. Of course, you can change the sentences around to airy way you want them. 

User ID# in the Name List 
You can now show your own file numbering system and sort it in the Name List.

Master Location List Sorting 
All locations may be sorted without including any leading prepositions, such as "of,' "near," "at," "from," "close to," and "off." Now, "of Orting, WA" will sort with "Orting, WA." This new option is on the Sort Location List. I use this sort prior to heading out on a research trip. The resulting list clues me in to what events took place in the areas that I will be traveling through.

Location Notes
You can now add your own notes to master location entries. Record information, stories, and historical background about the places your ancestors came from. This greatly enhances the capability of attaching pictures to your master locations, a feature available in version 3.0.

New Picture Center
In the past the user had to go to an individual or marriage and then assign each picture one at a time, selecting the location and filename each time. Now, with the new Picture Center you can view a list of your pictures and a list of individuals side by side and make assignments with the click of a button. You can assign a picture to more than one person at a time. Just highlight all the people you want to link a picture to and click Assign. It was never easier or faster to add pictures to your family members. 

Event Report 
Legacy has a great new report--a report showing individuals and the selected events related to them.

Advanced Set Living 
Legacy will now intelligently run through your family file and set the Living tag to NO for all individuals who have certainly departed. By analyzing surrounding information and watching the generation numbers, Legacy will set the proper value for all ancestors without any birth or death dates. 

User-Defined Internet Search URLs 
Now you can add your favorite Internet sites right into Legacy and search for anyone in your file with the click of a button. Save groups of your hard-found search sites for quick retrieval. 

Global Spell Checking 
Legacy can search through your entire family file and check the spelling on any type of note field. You can even stop and resume at will. 

Bearing and Distance Calculator 
Those strange latitude and longitude values can now be used for something useful. This new calculator will tell you the distance in miles (or kilometers) between any two points on earth. It will also tell you which direction to travel. You can also convert decimal bearing values to the needed degrees, minutes, and seconds. It even ties into the Master Location List where you can select any two cities (with latitude and longitude values) and quickly figure out how far apart they are and in which direction to go from one to the other. 

Ancestor Coloring Option 
Ancestor and Descendant reports and many screens will allow colors to be associated with one of the four grandparents lines. There is also an option to color males and females differently on reports. 

To-Do Clipboard
You can now ask Legacy to memorize To-Do items for quick playback on other individuals. Often an item applies to more than one person. This new clipboard feature can save you a lot of typing. 

Quick Copy to Source Clipboard 
Now, while looking at the Assigned Sources screen, you can quickly copy one or more source citations right to the Source Clipboard. This lets you continue the citation of an existing source faster than ever.

Color Schemes
Define and save your own favorite color schemes in Legacy. You now have more control than ever, including setting panel colors, data box colors, background colors, 3D borders and more.

Customizable Toolbar 
You can now choose which toolbar buttons to include at the top of your Legacy screen. Select from nearly 40 options that are only a click away. Place your most-used options right on the toolbar, for the fill width of your screen! 

Show Events on the Family View and Name List
Now you can select one or more specific events to be shown as part of the customizable fields on the Family View and Name List. For example, you can now show a person's occupation. 

Location and Source Verification Tags 
Master locations and master sources may be marked with a Verified tag to indicate that you have checked them as being valid. For example, you may have a city listed under two different counties in your Master Location List and you verified that they are both correct according to the timeframe they were each used. Marking them as Verified will remind you not to combine them into one location in the future.

More Tags 
Six new tag numbers have been added, for a total of nine. This lets you create many more groups of individuals and marriages

Embedded Text Formatting 
You can now insert codes within your notes and other fields to add holding, underlining italicizing, and superscripting when printing reports and producing Web pages.

Move Non-Sources from Master Source List to Notes
Only true source information belongs in the Master Source List. Often, when you receive information from other people, you will find sources containing things that really belong in the Notes fields. This helpful feature automatically moves nonsource entries into the notes for the individual they belong to.

Move Non-Locations from Master Location List to Notes
Trying to keep your Master Location List cleaned up is a full-time job. When you import information from other people, often the location fields contain information that does not belong them. Using this handy feature, you can quickly move the information from the Master Location List to the Notes fields where it belongs.

Descendant Chart Format
This is a new format option for the Descendant Chart. You can now create descendant charts with leaders indenting each generation. This is a great report that can be easily e-mailed to other researchers.

Produce PDF Files from Previewed reports
They can be sent by e-mail and read in the free Acrobat Reader from Adobe, retaining all the formatting, lines and color of the original report so the recipient can view the reports in all their glory!

Compare Two Files for Duplicates
This utility allows you to see if there are individuals or lines in another file that you might want to import. How often have you wondered if you were related to someone in another person's file? Now you can quickly see if your lines overlap. You will find more relatives than ever before!

Advanced Sourcing
This feature lets you assign sources to a group of individuals or marriages at one time. You can select the fields you want the sources to be applied to. This is in easy way to go back and document groups of records that came from the same source.

Location Index
Many reports can now include a Location Index showing in what pages each location is used. Because the index groups the locations together, you can easily see all the family members that lived in the same places.

Relationship Calculator 
This feature lets you see how two people are related. See if you married one of your cousins. See how many ways you are related to your 5th-great-grandfather. People are often related in many ways to another person. Now you can see them all.

Relationship Charts 
This feature ties into the Relationship Calculator and allows you to produce wonderful charts in color with pictures and fancy boxes to impress all who see them.

Not Duplicates 
When doing Merges you can specify any pair of individuals as being Not Duplicates, Often you may have felt like you were wearing out the Skip To Next button as you came upon pairs of individuals you knew were not duplicates but had similar names and information. Now you can mark these pairs as Not Duplicates so they won't continually show up in subsequent merge sessions.

Last Report
There is a Last Report button on the main screen that lets you quickly go to the report options screen of the List report you last used.

Renumber RINs and MRINs 
You can renumber specific individuals or marriages as well as groups of records. If you always wanted to be #1 in your file, now it's easy to do.

Reuse Deleted RINs and MRINs 
You can now reuse deleted RINs and MRINs when adding new records and importing. No more leaving empty holes within your family file when deleting or merging people.

Color of Boxes
You can now select the color of the boxes on Ancestor, Descendant and Pedigree Charts. This really makes the charts more attractive when printed on a color printer.

If you take the time to read through this list of features not found in the Standard Edition of Legacy (which is no slouch, by the way), then you can most likely see the value of this terrific genealogy program which is very reasonably priced! I'm really impressed, and I believe you will be too.

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