Oh what I would tell myself before starting the move to a software program. I have found family tree software to be wonderful and exceedingly frustrating all at the same time. Unfortunately I am to the point where I have had enough and I am returning to my paper files, binders and index reference box.
I thought long and hard about replying to your message. I thought perhaps I should not reply because of my frustration but now I think it would be good to share my experience. I found FTM to be the best software next to the PAF but I don't think PAF is offered any longer. I've become very frustrated with computer software because there are so many issues but that's the nature of that beast. They ALL have some bugs and while I understand this, it's really frustrating when you lose information or worse yet, not even know you've lost it. My current situation is that I upgraded to the FTM 2012 which offered the sync option. My first upgrade 2011 to 2012 did not go without it's glitches but it wasn't terrible. Besides, I thought how wonderful it would be to have my online Ancestry.com tree match with my Family Tree Maker tree without having to duplicate my efforts. Big mistake for me. My tree has had syncing issues from the beginning. I'll never have it fixed. Not only are there so many duplicate people, none of my media is connected and notes with valuable information have been lost. And that's just the stuff I know about. Making a back up didn't help. I don't know everything that went wrong and I didn't stop my research so I would have to remember every single change/update I've made since making the backup. So the hours that I lost working with this are gone and the frustration is insurmountable for me. So after years of trying to find the right software for me, I have given up. I'm not going to enter and renter information into any more new programs. I'm not going to transfer GED files anymore. I'm keeping the FTM 2012 file I currently have and will continue to try and fix it. Once that becomes obsolete and is no longer usable I am going back to the paper files, binders and index box that I began with. No matter what we do, computer programs will always have glitches so as far as software goes, ask yourself what are you willing to live with in terms of lost data or other potential issues that come with using a computer software program. So what would I tell myself? Keep hard copies of everything and continue to keep notes in the notebook. Don't count on the computer. Good luck and I hope this helps.