MyHeritage: Family Tree Builder 2.0

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings has posted two excellent entries on working with MyHeritage.com's Family Tree Builder 2.0, a free downloadable program.

His first posting covered the basic open, upload, person and edit screens here. He focuses on the Chart and Report functions here, and he's planning another on the Book Report feature.

What should also be noted is that all information entered into Family Tree Builder 2.0 can be done bilingually. Currently, some 23 languages (including English) are supported for user interface and data entry: English, Hebrew, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese PT, Russian, Dutch, Greek Turkish Yiddish, Portuguese (both Portugal and Brazil, Norwegian, Danish, Lithuanian, Polish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Czech, Finnish and Afrikaans.

Pick an interface in any language, build and print a family tree in any of the languages. A translation wizard automatically translates trees from one language to another. Choose one language for display and another for data entry. There's even a virtual keyboard to enter data in any of the 23 languages.

For an interesting activity, go to MyHeritage.com. On the right side of the screen, there's a globe graphic and a drop-down box for language. Choose one and see what the homepage looks like in Russian, Polish, Hebrew, Turkish and Asian languages (for the homepage, not for data entry or interface ... yet!)

Language capability is a great feature if you want to share a tree with relatives in other countries who may be more comfortable working in other languages. It also helps you see what names look like in other alphabets, which could help in research.

Learn more in a tour of the features here .

For some very recent improvements, click here. A new simple way to navigate and edit your online family tree on MyHeritage has been added. The new Modern Look focuses a family tree around a single individual and lets you add relatives quickly. It allows users to see more people at a time and get a good overview of how people are connected. The Classic (hierarchal) look, is still available and you can toggle back and forth.