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Useful Programs

Free Genealogy Programs

  • Legacy Family Tree - Legacy is a genealogy management program designed to help you organise your family history research.  The stardard edition is free and has more limited features than the deluxe version available to purchase.  However, the free version still has lots of useful features and produces some nice reports including the ability to make ancestral books and websites easily.  To compare which edition is most suitable for your genealogy needs, see: General Features of Standard and Deluxe Legacy Family Tree.
  • Ancestral Quest - Ancestral Quest is another genealogy management program designed to help you organise your family history records.  It is available in both paid and free versions.  The Ancestral Quest Basics version is free and is able to produce family group sheets, pedigree charts, wall charts and family history reports, amongst other things.  A full feature list comparing what features are available in the free and paid versions can be found at: Compare Ancestral Quest Versions.
  • RootsMagic Essentials - RootsMagic Essentials is a free genealogy program that contains many of the core features from RootsMagic family tree software. A full list of features for the free and paid versions of RootsMagic is available at: Compare RootsMagic Essentials with Full Version.
  • UK Parish Locator - This is a very useful freeware program enabling you to locate nearly 15,000 UK parishes.  It can find the distance between any two specified parishes, provide a list of parishes within any given radius of a parish and even plot the location of parishes, either on screen or for you to print out.

Useful Apps for Mobile & Tablets

  • Ancestry Family Tree mobile appAncestry - Out and about doing research?  You can now take your family tree with you, add new family members, upload photos and share with your family.  This app is free to download and syncs with your Ancestry Family Tree.
  • Billion Graves Billion Graves - This website is collecting photographs of headstones with transcriptions and asking researchers to submit photographs of their local cemeteries through their iPhone / Android camera application for mobile (cell) phones which can be downloaded.
  • Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) Mobile Apps - Discover the free mobile apps from the CWGC:
    1. Commonwealth War Graves Commission appWar Graves App - This allows you to search for war graves at more than 23,000 locations in 53 countries. A useful app for anyone planning a trip to the war cemeteries, those interested in finding war graves near them or those interested in remembering the 1.7 million Commonwealth servicemen and women who died in the two world wars. The CWGC War Graves App is available for Android and iOS.
    2. Commonwealth War Graves Commission Thiepval App Thiepval Memorial App - Search for soldiers who fought and died in the Battle of the Somme during WW1 and navigate to their name where they are commemorated on the Thiepval memorial. It also reveals stories of some of the men that fought at the Somme. The CWGC Thiepval App is only available on iOS.
  • Find a Grave Find a Grave - Search over a 180 million gravestones and burial records with this free mobile app.  Record your own family grave sites and take photos of headstones to share online.  Help others by responding to photo requests and post your own.
  • Office Lens Scanning App from Microsoft Office Lens - This is a useful free mobile scanning app from Microsoft that can digitize documents, photos and notes and then enhance an image by cropping, sharpening and straightening. Images can by converted to PDF, Word and PowerPoint files and also save images to OneNote or OneDrive. Available for Windows 10, Xbox One and Windows 8 Mobile, iOS and Android platforms.

Other Useful Free Programs

IrfanView Graphics Viewer IrfanView is a free graphics viewer for Windows platforms.  It is also a graphics editor with lots of other features including the ability to resize graphics and add effects to them.

OpenOffice.org Free Office Suite Open Office.org is a free multi-platform office productivity suite comprising a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager and drawing manager.  It is free to download and use.

Paint.net Paint.NET is an image and photo manipulation software that supports layers, special effects, unlimited undo and a wide variety of other useful tools.  This is free to download and use, but please check the minimum System Requirements.