The Master Genealogist (TMG) is considered by many genealogists to be the "Cadillac" of genealogy software, but is also a program that many are afraid to try because of its learning curve. Yet, if you're looking for a program that lets you record every last detail of your research and evidence, and examine it in a myriad of different ways, then you should definitely give TMG a try. The basic features are easy to use right out of the box, so it's pretty easy to get up and running for even the beginning genealogist. As you become more familiar with the program and find yourself wanting to do new things with your data, more advanced features are waiting for you behind the scenes - ready for you to customize to fit your personal research needs.

As Bob Velke described it in a recent interview with Dick Eastman, TMG offers a "pack rat" approach to genealogy - a way for genealogists to record, organize, track, analyze and display every detail of their research. TMG ships with many standard source templates, for example, but also lets you create your own custom source templates, so you can get them looking just the way you want them, or change them to meet a particular required format. A similar customization option is available for modifying sentence structure in your narrative reports. Every tag type (birth, census, marriage occupation, etc.) in TMG can be edited to tweak the way that the facts display when generated in sentence format, to allow for better readability and flow in your narratives. Basically, if you have a fact, a hunch, or just about anything you want to document during the course of your research, TMG can handle it.

The Witness feature (one of my favorites), for example, allows you to link "associated" people to events in which they participted but were not a principal. Examples of this include a witness to a marriage, someone living in the same household in the census, all heirs to a will, or a group of people who migrate together. In the newly released TMG Version 7, a new Associates Window displays all of these "witnesses" who share an event with your ancestor.

In addition to the Associates Window, other helpful new feature in TMG 7 (especially for beginners) is the reminder pop-up windows which appear to help you remember how to use the fields in certain features such as Tag Types, Sources and Source Types. When you're recording a source, for example, the pop-up window wll remind you where to record each specific piece of data. TMG 7 has also added a "check for duplicates" feature long available in many other genealogy programs, which prompts you when you're adding a new person that the software thinks may be a duplicate of someone already in your family tree. Since customization is a key feature of TMG, you can even customize the duplicate matching rules if you wish, to consider other facts such as nicknames and place of birth, or to fine tune the matching thresholds.

Other new features in TMG 7 include the ability to export and import sources and source types; new buttons to make it easier to repeat the previous citation, choose from a list of recent citations, or add a new source directly from the Citation Entry screen; and automatically display relationships as calculated through the spouse (such as father-in-law, or 3rd cousin of the wife). Another nifty new feature -- Exhibit Highlighting -- allows you to "draw" directly on an image to annotate it (e.g. highlight an individual in the census, point to a location on a map, or add a note). Don't worry - the "drawing" is actually done on an invisible layer on top of the image, so the original remains unchanged.

If you're looking for genealogy software to help you analyze your data and present it in a certain manner, then TMG can be customized in a way that no other such program can. Alternatively, if you're a beginner or still unsure exactly what you need in a genealogy program, the standard features in TMG are easy to use, even without the manual. While it may not be the program for you, I highly recommend that you at least download the free trial and give it a whirl. It may not be the easiest to use genealogy program out there, but it also doesn't have to be as complicated as its reputation seems to suggest.

If you want to learn more about how to customize TMG to meet your research needs, I highly recommend Terry's TMG Tips and Lee Hoffman's TMG Tips, as well as the TMG Mailing List and the Wholly Gene's Support Forum.