Reunion Family History Software For Mac

11-05-2021
 |  [RAND-100] - Comments

Table of Contents

  1. What to Know Before You Buy-A Reunion 10 Review
  2. What to Know If You Buy

What to Know Before You Buy—A Reunion 10 Review

Leister Productions, has created two helpful videos to give you an overview of what’s new and changed in Reunion 10. Review those first, so you can see what it looks like then come back here to get the details and some more detailed videos. Here are the links to their overview videos:

I publish step-by-step, how-to videos on this site. Sign up for my email list so I can drop you a note when I publish new articles and videos. There’s a sign-up form in the sidebar to the right. See it? Good. Please sign up now so you don’t forget.

  • Mac Family Tree from Synium is the only Mac specific genealogy software in this category. Although since Synium released their first version of Mac Family Tree, most of the best genealogy programmes have become Mac compatible, all Mac users will tell you that software fine tuned specifically for the Mac is almost always superior.
  • If you’re a Mac loyalist and family history enthusiast, you’ve probably discovered you have slim pickings in the Windows-dominated world of genealogy software. Enter Reunion 7.0, the lone full-featured, Mac-only genealogy program. This $99.95 package (or $49.95 upgrade) from Leister Productions.

What Reunion 10 Will Do That 9 Won’t

Reunion is a genealogy software program — a “family tree program” — for the Macintosh. Reunion helps you to document, store, and display information about your family — your ancestors, descendants, cousins, etc. It records names, dates, places, facts, plenty of notes, sources of information, pictures, sounds, and videos.

  • Merge people by dragging and dropping
  • Search web repositories for information about people in your family file
  • Publish a pedigree chart for the web
  • Create a chronological list of selected events for marked or all people in your family file
  • Display multimedia usage and whether or not the file is missing
  • Create a narrative obituary from events and facts
  • Filter on privacy flags in descendant charts and reports, pedigree charts, and relative charts
  • Document civil unions and domestic partnerships
  • Automatically maintain links to multimedia files when they are moved or renamed (Reunion stores links to items, not the items themselves in the family file. It does store thumbnails of pictures in its database to speed operations)
  • Show more non-blood relationship types
  • Display people’s ages in different ways on the ages report
  • Export birthdays, anniversaries, and other events to iCal
  • Revisit a recently viewed couple by selecting them from a list of recently viewed families
  • Fit column sizes to contents in one or all columns in a list automatically
  • Set an unlimited number of bookmarks
  • Geo code and map places
  • Share a family view (previously known as a family card) by email, copy and paste, or printing
  • Share your family file with thumbnail images without copying your multimedia files
  • Import and Export sources without people
  • Share a subset of your family file and associated images
  • Exclude places (like iPhoto) from multimedia searches
  • Exchange contact information with Apple’s Address Book app
  • Find all events that happened in a particular year, month, or day
  • Find text in multimedia comments field
  • Find half siblings, full siblings, or all siblings
  • Link to Microsoft Word 2011 documents as multimedia files
  • Simplify sharing and splitting a tree by marking every person linked to a person
  • List the members of a family on a specified date
  • Mark maternal or paternal ancestors, parents of spouses, siblings of ancestors, and non-blood relatives
  • Store bigger event memos (up to 2,500 characters)
  • Get a list of couples in the family file

Why Not Stay with Version 9?

While it’s not going to win any design awards, the look and feel update is reason enough for me. I find navigating my family file much easier with the tree view! And the sidebar makes common tasks like citing an existing source easier.

Will It Mess up My Family Files?

Loading an older family file in Reunion 10 will not mess up your version 9 family files. A new copy is automatically created when you load the file and you are given the opportunity to save it with a different name. That said, it’s still a good idea to back up your family files.

If you’ve created perspective events you’ll be glad to know they’ll not be affected by the upgrade either. Reunion 10 uses the existing Application Support folder where they are stored.

Can I Keep Reunion 9 on My Mac?

You can keep older versions on your Mac because Reunion 10 is installed as a new application leaving your existing applications untouched.

5 Things Reunion 10 Won’t Do for You

  1. Create these reports: DNA, documented facts, LDS ordinance, marriage, notes, parentage, photo album, source bibliography, task, and who was there
  2. Create these charts: bowtie, DNA, and extended family
  3. Search New Family Search (nFS)
  4. Syncronize with an Ancestry member tree (AMT)
  5. Publish to iDisk and MobileMe

How Much Does It Cost?

A new copy is $99 USD and an upgrade from any previous version is $49.95 USD.

Are There Any Discount Codes or Coupons?

Leister Productions doesn’t normally offer discounts for a new license. There isn’t even a spot for discount coupon codes in their checkout pages.

The upgrade is %50 off for owners of any previous version.

It’s available on Amazon.com too. If you buy it through my Amazon.com link, by clicking here, it won’t cost you any more than not using my link and I’ll get a few cents.

To Buy or Not to Buy

I don’t recommend Reunion for family history research because it limits the citation data that can be recorded, imported, and exported. It has no ability to link multimedia to a citation and has no facility to store citation specific source quality ratings. To make matters worse, when importing citations in GEDCOM files it ignores these two record types without warning leading to data loss.

See the Comparison of Mac Genealogy Software Feature Comparison and PC Genealogy Software Feature Comparison for other options.

What to Know If You Buy

Tree

How to Get the Most Out of Reunion 10

Sign up for my email list so I can notify you when I publish new articles and videos about Reunion. Do it now so you don’t forget. Neither of us wants that!

I’ve already created some videos I think will help you make the transition. You’ll find them in the sections below. And they’re indexed for your convenience, in the Reunion 10 for Mac Tutorials page.

How to Upgrade without Messing up Your Family Files

Reunion 10 installs just like other Mac software. Follow the directions that come with the package.

Back up your family files before you open them with the new version. See How to Backup a Reunion 9 Family file or one of these videos from the article.

Backing Up a Family File with Reunion 9


Reunion will convert the file and ask you what to name it.

Give your converted family file a new name. Installing the new version wont mess up your older family files unless you give them the exact same name.

When to Delete Reunion 9

Delete the old version after you’ve backed everything up and it no longer works with your version of Mac OS; that could be a while, or not.

How to Do What You Used to Do

Add a Source

Click Sources in the navbar then the plus button at the bottom of the sidebar

Cite a Source

Click the Add source button on the Edit Person view (as before) or select the event or fact then drag a source from the Sources sidebar and drop it in the Source Citations section of the Edit Person view.

Add a Person

Click the add person button on the appropriate family view.

Edit a Person

Click the person button

Match and Merge People

Add and Edit Facts, Events, and Multimedia

Reunion Family History Software For Mac Free

Add pictures to person buttons by dragging and dropping. Edit, remove, or flag (preferred and or sensitive) them by clicking the image on a person button.

Navigate

Reunion Family Tree Software For Mac

Access frequently used functions quickly with the Navbar on the left side of the screen. It puts views, charting, reporting, searching, mass updates, marking, logs, and all the sidebar selections where you can get to them with one click.

Navigate your family file with an hourglass or pedigree chart called tree view.

Ages

Drag the person button to Ages in the navbar.

List Mailing Address

Click Contacts in the navbar.

List Relatives

Drag the person button to Relatives in the navbar.

List Sources

Click Sources in the navbar

Set Home Family

Drag the person button to Home button in the status bar.

List Treetops

Drag the person button to Treetops in the navbar.

Manage Speed Names

The speed names feature and preference pane are gone. The functionality is still there, it’s just referred to as auto-completion. This video will show you how to remove incorrect last names from the auto-complete list.

Rebuild Reunion’s cache if it’s acting strangely by selecting File -> Rebuild Cache Files… from the menubar.

Organizing

  • Record and Manage Places
    • Track and use consistent place names with the help of the new Place database
    • Merge places
    • Store notes about places
    • See places on a map from Google or Bing
    • Store geo codes (automatically or manually) for places
  • Use (or not) silhouettes in place of photos on person buttons.
  • Record domestic partnerships and civil unions by clicking the marriage button on the family view, then click Marriage followed by Civil Union or Domestic Partnership as appropriate
  • Include images from web sites (e.g. FindAGrave.com) by dragging and dropping to a person or source record
  • Sort all children at once or just those with a marked parent
  • Save time during multimedia searches by excluding locations

Discovering

Search selected websites for information about a person in your family file.

Choose when you want to maximize the space available for the family or tree view by hiding and revealing the sidebar area with a click or keyboard shortcut.

See who was in a family and how old they were on a certain date using the On This Date report. You can include historical and add a perspective event set to see the family in the context of history.

Display people’s ages in different ways (days, months, years, years and months, months and days, years months and days) on the ages report.

Export birthdays, anniversaries, and other events to iCal by clicking File -> Export -> iCal… on the menubar.

Automatically fit column sizes to contents in one or all columns in a list by control-clicking the left separator bar for the column then selecting Auto Size Column or Auto Size All Columns.

Navigating

View and navigate your family file as an hourglass chart.

Revisit a recently viewed couple by clicking the history button in the status bar and selecting them from the list.

Sharing

  • Discover and share information about your family with new reports:
    • Create an obituary automatically
    • See the makeup of a person’s family on a specific date in time with the on this date report
    • View a list of events for people in your family file. Choose everyone or just marked people and what events to include.
    • List multimedia usage
    • Display a list of everyone with a specific last name with the last names report
  • Present your family information graphically with new charts:
    • Chart the connections between any two people related by blood or marriage with the new relationship chart
    • Email, copy and paste, or print a family view by clicking the share button in the status bar
    • Share a part of your family file with associated multimedia files by marking the desired people then clicking File -> Export -> Reunion Family File, and selecting what to include
    • Drag and drop contact information between Apple’s Address Book app and Reunion 10
    • Get a list of all people and their spouses by clicking People in the navbar then clicking Couples in the List window’s sidebar.

Here are the select set of resources you’ll need to explore your family’s history.

Start with Software

Your genealogy software is the repository for all the information you discover. It’s the main tool in your genealogy toolbox. Which one you choose will likely depend primarily on whether you use a Windows PC or a Mac.

Already Have Software?

Handy indexes of articles and videos by application are linked below for your convenience:

Free

Still Looking for Software?

I’ve also created a couple of buyer’s guides to help you make a choice between software:

See my recommendations in the following sections.

Genealogy Software for Windows

Family Reunion History Samples

I recommend RootsMagic 7 and Family Historian. There are many good alternatives though.

  • Family Historian
  • Family Tree Maker 2017
  • Legacy Family Tree
  • RootsMagic 7
Genealogy Software for Mac

Reunion Family Tree Software

  • Family Tree Maker 2017 for Mac
  • GEDitCOM II
  • iFamily for Leopard
  • MacFamilyTree 8 by Synium
  • Reunion 12 by Leister Productions

Get Good Books

Setup Folders on Your Computer

You’ll need places to put archival copies of scanned documents, photos, and other files on your computer. This series of video screencasts will walk you, step-by-step, through setting up a folder system and putting files into it. They’re created on a Mac and take advantage of the powerful alias feature in Mac OS X, but most of the system will work well on Windows too.

Get Information About Your Ancestors

Not all of the information about your relatives is online, so you’ll need to do some sleuthing in the real world. But, there is a wealth of information available online. My advice to you is to consider everything, but only trust it after you prove it. That said, these online databases provide a great source of leads! There’s some overlap between the records on these sites and they each have treasured family history that the others won’t. You can search for free to get an idea which holds the most (and most interesting) genealogy data for your ancestors.

  • Fold3.com (Military Records)
  • Newspapers.com
  • NewspaperARCHIVES.com
  • Find out how you are related to the rest of humanity at OneGreatFamily

There are tons more sites, but I want to keep this concise so that it’s most useful for you.

Reunion For Mac

Get a DNA Test