Manual

From installing to a printed ancestor chart. This page describes version 0.9.

English or Dutch. FamilyTree starts in English; the menu at the top right of the window switches to Dutch. Button names in this manual are the English ones.

Installing

Run FamilyTree_1.0.2_x64-setup.exe. It installs under your own user account, so no administrator rights are needed, and appears in the Start menu. The models for background removal and face recognition and the gazetteer are all inside the installer; nothing is downloaded afterwards.

Opening and saving

Open (Ctrl+O) — pick a .ged file. FamilyTree reads GEDCOM 7 and GEDCOM 5.5 / 5.5.1 (in ANSI, UTF-8 or UTF-16).
Save (Ctrl+S) — always in GEDCOM 7. The existing file is first copied to <name>.ged.bak. Anything FamilyTree does not use itself is left untouched. A 5.5.1 file is converted on its first save; the 5.5.1 version stays next to it as a copy with -voor-gedcom7- in its name.
Save as (Ctrl+Shift+S) and New.
Backup — writes a ZIP next to your file with the same name and today's date, for example FAMILY_2026_09_25.zip. Inside is the file in GEDCOM 7 together with every photograph and document it refers to, in the same folders, so the ZIP on its own is a complete copy. If you make two on the same day, the second one gets (2) in its name.
Undo and Redo (Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y), thirty steps deep.

When you close the window with unsaved changes, FamilyTree asks whether to save them first: Save, Don't save or Cancel.

Language

The menu at the top right switches between English and Nederlands. The choice is remembered and FamilyTree starts in it next time. It also sets the language of everything you export: PDF reports, the HTML site, the map and the comment in ZIP files. What is in your file does not change: the values in the GEDCOM file are always in English.

The first time you open an older file FamilyTree may tell you two things. First, that it converted some values to English — a change from version 0.3 that happens on its own. Second, if your file came from AGES, that it contains validation warnings AGES generated itself, which FamilyTree does not use — its own Checks tab does that job against your current data. They are only removed if you click the button, and the previous version stays in the .bak file.

People

The list on the left is alphabetical by surname. The search box filters on name, nickname, birth date and birthplace, and several words are combined, so devriese 1906 works.

On the Person tab you edit everything about that person. Parents, spouses and children are linked with the buttons beside each block: pick an existing person or create a new one on the spot. A family with no members disappears by itself.

Typing dates

Every date field has a qualifier (exact, about, before, after, estimated, calculated) and then day, month and year. In the year box you may also type 31/12/1946 or 1946-12-31 and it will be split up. The … button switches to free text for things like between 1899 and 1901. Below the field you can see exactly what will go into the file.

Notes and documents

Notes hold as much free text as you like, in as many notes as you like; they travel in the GEDCOM file as NOTE records. + Historical document… attaches a deed, a letter or a scanned PDF to the person; the file lands in images/ with _HD and a sequence number, and never becomes the main photo. When it is not an image, the gallery shows its extension with an Open button that hands it to your own program.

The tree

An hourglass around the chosen person: ancestors above, descendants with their partners below. Click a box to recentre, double-click to open the person. Save as PDF writes exactly what is on screen.

How are two people related?

Relationship with… asks for a second person. The tree then shows their nearest common ancestor at the top (with that ancestor's partner when they are both descended from the couple) and the two lines running down to each person side by side. A line above the tree names the relationship, for example second cousins or great-grandparent and great-grandchild, with the degree of kinship. When there are several common ancestors at the same distance, as happens with pedigree collapse, it says so. Back to the tree returns to the hourglass.

Tagging photographs

Go to Photos and drop a photograph onto the window, then drag a rectangle around a face.

Save portrait turns that rectangle into a portrait for one person. Ticking Remove background makes the background transparent. The untouched original is always kept in images/originals/.
Save family photo keeps the photograph whole and remembers where everyone is in it.

Letting it find faces

FamilyTree finds the faces itself: it draws the rectangles and proposes names. Building the index takes a few minutes the first time; after that only new photographs are added.

Above 45 per cent similarity a proposal counts as certain, between 30 and 45 per cent as likely. You work through the faces from left to right and confirm with Enter. Nothing is ever linked without you.

Cleaning up places

The Places tab shows every spelling in your file with how often it occurs and what FamilyTree proposes. Filter on Unresolved to see what is left to do, accept all the certain proposals in one click, check the rest, and then press Apply. That is a single step: one Ctrl+Z undoes the whole clean-up.

A place is written as postcode Town, Region, COUNTRY. When one town has several postcodes, such as Amsterdam or Antwerp, the postcode is left out.

The map

Choose whose places you want to see and which life phases. Life path joins the points in order so you can see how someone moved. Places the gazetteer does not know appear under Not on the map; use Point out a place and click the map to give them a point of their own, stored in places.json.

Exporting

On Export, first choose who: everyone, or starting from the selected person their family, ancestors, descendants or both, for a number of generations (or all). Spouses and siblings can be added. Living people can be shown, reduced to their name, or left out.

Then the formats: PDF, GEDCOM 5.5.1, GEDCOM 7 and HTML, as many as you like, and whether everything goes into one ZIP or as separate files into a new folder. For GEDCOM and HTML you choose which photographs go along: portraits (optionally only the main one), memorial cards, gravestones, historical documents, family photographs. The summary at the bottom says how many people and photographs are included and which files will be made.

For the PDF, tick what goes in: textual overview, graphical tree, portraits, fan chart, map and family photographs. A preview appears on the right; Ctrl+scroll zooms it.

Ask family

The Ask family tab helps you write to a relative for a photograph, a date or a name, in five steps with a tip at each one. FamilyTree sends nothing itself.

About whom? The person selected in the list, with what is known and what is still missing. With + Parents, + Children, + Grandchildren and so on, the same letter asks about those relatives too.
To whom? Say who you are in the tree (optional, remembered per file) and pick the recipient from the tree or type a name. When both of you are in the tree, the letter explains how you are related. Choose how to address them and the language of the letter; in Dutch also jij or u.
What would you like to know? Questions drawn from what is missing; the first three are ticked. Add your own, and photographs asking who is in them.
How will you send it? An e-mail draft in your own e-mail program, a paper letter to print, or text to paste into WhatsApp. Your contact details go at the bottom of the attachment and are remembered on this computer only.
Check and create. Change the text as you like, look at the attachment, and create. Files go into a letters folder next to your GEDCOM file, and a note on the person records what you asked, of whom and when.

Validation

Checks examines your file for contradictions and broken references and re-runs after every change. Click a name to jump there.

Merging two files

On Merge, choose a second .ged file. FamilyTree reads it and places it beside yours without changing anything, and gives you a foldable list per person.

New — someone you do not have. Ticked by default.
Addition — a detail you are missing. Ticked by default.
Conflict — you already have something and the other file disagrees. Not ticked, and highlighted. Your data wins unless you decide otherwise.
Choice — FamilyTree is not sure who this is and puts the options to you. It does not guess.

Unticking a new person automatically drops everything that depends on them — their family, their photographs — greyed out with the reason shown.

Press Apply when you are satisfied. Beforehand FamilyTree makes a timestamped copy next to your file; afterwards it writes a report listing everything taken over and everything that was not. The whole merge is one step: Ctrl+Z takes you back. The comparison with the same file then reappears below the report, so you can carry on without looking for the file again.

Sources come along too: a source you already have is reused, a new one is copied, and each citation you lack shows up as its own line. Photographs and documents that are not next to the other file are not listed, since they cannot be taken over anyway.

Where everything lives

<the folder of your .ged file>/
  FAMILY.GED
  FAMILY.GED.bak         previous version, written on every save
  FAMILY_2026_09_25.zip  a backup: GEDCOM 7 plus all photographs
  letters/               requests to relatives (PDF and e-mail draft)
  images/                the photographs the file refers to
  images/originals/      untouched crops
  images/family/         group photographs
  places.json            custom points for places outside the gazetteer
  .thumbs/               thumbnails and the face index; safe to delete

Paths inside the file are relative, so you can move or copy the whole folder without losing a single photograph — including to another computer.