GEDKeeper

If you need to illustrate a historical figure's pedigree or you wish to create your own family tree, you don't have to do it on physical paper, because there are various software solutions you can try. One of them is GEDKeeper. It lets you create as many records as you want, specify relations between people, generate reports and much more. The software provides full support for the GEDCOM format, so you can export your data and use it elsewhere or import new data from external sources.

Downloading and installing GEDKeeper doesn't take more than a minute, even on slower machines. The software is absolutely free and it works on all popular Windows platforms. There is no need to install any prerequisite tools or services, but you can choose to include a wide variety of plug-ins, during the main installation process.

Family members are displayed in a list, on the main user interface and you can view the available details about a selected individual on the right side of the window. Adding new people to the database can be done on a separate window, on which you have to fill in a series of input fields. Besides their basic details, like name or birth date, you can also specify events, spouses, associations or groups, attach sources and multimedia files and add your personal references.

Relations between people are established instantly. When creating a new database entry, you can specify a spouse by simply selecting an existing record. The software provides you with options for creating new people, places and other entry types, at every step of the way, so you don't have to stop working on a record because you need to add another person. Parents can be added in a similar way, simply by selecting an existing couple.

The list of people, on the main interface, may not look much like a family tree, but you can click different options, on a toolbar, to bring up an actual family tree. You can find separate options for showing a selected person's ancestors and descendants, as well as an option for showing their entire tree.

Besides displaying family members and their relations, the software can also provide you with a large amount of interesting information and statistics, like name frequency, events, phonetics, individual families and much more. Also, the available plug-ins allow you to perform many other operations. Generating a timeline, displaying the data in a 3D viewer or importing pedigrees are just a few examples.

Everything there is to know about a family, or even an entire dynasty, can be illustrated in GEDKeeper, without too much effort.