It’s our 30th birthday, but you’re getting the presents! Whether you’ve been a part of the RootsMagic family for 30 years or 30 minutes, we want to hear your story! Tell us about the time you “first felt the magic”- that is, the moment you fell in love with our software. Just fill out this entry form by Monday, October 31, 2016.
The five (5) best stories, as judged by RootsMagic staff, will be placed online from Wednesday, November 2 through Wednesday, November 9, 2016 where the public will be able to vote for their pick of the best story.
Results will be announced on Friday, November 11, 2016. The person who submitted the story with the most votes will receive a SHOTBOX Photography Light Box Deluxe Bundle, and autographed copies of RootsMagic and Personal Historian bundles (over $250 retail value). The four (4) runner-ups will all receive autographed copies of RootsMagic and Personal Historian bundles (retail value $79.90).
Don’t forget, you have until Monday, October 31 to submit your entries at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RootsMagic30. Good luck!
I love Roots Magic. It appealed to me the first time I tried it. It is so comprehensive and I am learning more about it all the time. It is so very easy to use.
I love the Place list and use it all the time. It is a great program and meets my expectations.
Thanks for a great program which does make my life easier.
Erika C.
I started using your software with Family Origins version 6. I syill have it but can’t get it updated on Roots Magic version 7. I love everything about the software, please continue on!!!
Happy “30th” Birthday!!!
I started using your software with Family Origins version 6. I still have it but can’t get it updated on Roots Magic version 7. I love everything about the software, please continue on!!!
I am so grateful for your products. The technicians are great since my computer crashed and I had to redownload everything. I just love the software and have much more to learn. It’s awesome
My goal in life is to document my father and mother’s families. Well, got married and have even more of a family. I started with Family Origins many many years ago. I updated to RootsMagic and have my family records for future generations, about 13,500 strong. I am so glad I found this program, it has helped me organize and develop information for family reunions. I can truly say I like being a novice historian thanks to this product! THANK YOU!
Happy Birthday!!
I am using Roots Magic 7 and still learning new things all the time.
Jackie Smith
My mother spent a couple of decades creating a 13-generation genealogy on paper. When she passed away in 1996 I inherited her labor of love–on the original “floppy disks”. She had converted her paper to word processing files. In 2005 a friend worked his magic and turned those incompatible files into text files readable in Word. Still, what was I supposed to do with that? Then another friend recommended RootsMagic, and I signed up right away, with version 2 as I recall. I’m still adding data from various sources, and RootsMagic is always improving by working with other prime sources, Ancestry and FamilySearch to be specific. It just gets better and better.
The first time that I tried RootsMagic, I was reading Genealogy For Dummies 6th edition. It recommended RootsMagic Essentials; which I tried for about 15 minutes. Then, I was so impressed with the ease of use, the great help module, but the greatest was when I contacted tech support via phone and had all my issues fixed and even received a follow-up call the next day to make sure I did not have any problems.
RootsMagic is the only genealogy software that I will use. Even downloaded Personal Historian Essentials and I am planning to get Family Atlas.
Happy 30th birthday PLEASE keep going for another 30 years….
I used Family Tree Maker for several years after I started doing genealogy. I quickly grew tired of the yearly updates. I found Sierra Generations and loved that software. I was crushed when it was discontinued. I did not want to go back to Family Tree Maker. But I found an ad for RootsMagic. I thought, “what the heck, it’s worth a try!”. So I bought it and I’ve never looked back! RootsMagic is great software and it’s super easy to use. I have gotten several friends to make the switch as well.
It has been 35 years since I have done any genealogy research and all of my old records are on paper. I have just retired and looking forward to taking up where I left off. I did a lot of research on the Internet to find a great genealogy software program and review after review points me to Roots Magic. I downloaded the Essentials version and all I can say is “wow!”. I think Roots Magic will be magic for me and will allow me to enter all of my old data and continue on with the search for more! Thanks Roots Magic!
I first met Bruce when I was a supervisor at the ZCMI Deseret Book store nearly two decades ago. He came in during conference week, and on other occasions, to set up a table to sell his programs. It was great working with him and he was very kind and patient to teach me how to use the programs and answer all my questions. I looked forward to our visits and, thanks to his help, was soon put in charge of software for the store and was able to teach all the employees how to use the programs so they could help customers with questions. In that process I bought Roots Magic to use at home and enjoyed using it to help straighten out my PAF files. Later I added Family Atlas and Personal Historian to my computer. It’s fun to track events on the atlas to see where my ancestors are buried, where they were born, where they were married and who came from Europe and when, etc. Also, thanks to the ease of working with Personal Historian, I am now in the habit of writing in my journal every night and have done so for years. I love being able to look back at important dates to recall what we were doing at family activities or special occasions. I also love to quickly search for special experiences or thoughts I wrote about that were important to me. It’s the only thing that changed my habits and got me writing on a daily basis. I am very thankful for how these programs have made working in family history and genealogy such a pleasure and I am grateful for Bruce’s friendship over the years. Thanks for all you have done.
A seasoned genealogist, I have tried every genealogy program since the inception of the old Commodore computers. Roots Magic finally met all my needs. The cream and cherry on top is the support offered and when a fix is necessary this company always comes thru. Thirty Years Congrats.
I Love Roots Magic. I meet your wonderful staff at a the Family History Fair in Salt Lake City, Utah in 2003.
I love the wonderful easy way to enter our information into our computer.
It is wonderful to connect to Family Search and search for family, or check to see if there are names we can do Temple work for.
I started out with Family Origins when it first showed up as I was looking up a program that I could use for my Genealogy project. I was really disappointed when it closed. However, I still used the program hoping that something would show up that had the same features as this program had.
When the original program creators announced that they were planning on creating a new program in place of this one, I was delighted and waited to see how it would come out.
I signed up with Roots Magic when it came out announcing that this would merge with the data from Family Origins, I have been using this for years since the beginning of Family Origins and morphed into the current Roots Magic.
When they announced that they would join up with Ancestry.com, I was very delighted since I had joined with them and still using Roots Magic at the same time. There is one small problem with Ancestry in that they do not have the prefix feature of Roots Magic. I do hope that in the negotiations that both companies will include that feature.
The “Magic’ never ends… so many options and can’t think of anything they have missed. It’s an amazing journey every time I log into my Genealogy Roots Magic. So thankful since PAF ended and I could just drop my information right into Roots Magic, nothing lost and so may more options! Wow!
I have been working on my genealogy for about 30 years, first on paper and then with genealogy programs that kept going out of business. Was very frustrated at the complications of trying to convert files to the new programs and then one day I discovered Roots Magic which was able to convert all my files to gedcom and then to the Roots Magic format. It has been a stop and go process for me but I have managed to compile quite a backlog of information of which I am currently converting to Roots Magic. Still learning about the program and ways to add all this data.
Research has been a major obstacle for me as I am unable to travel to key locations to gather information and the cost of some of the help programs is prohibitive. The LDS website has been a tremendous help in many ways but not always complete. Ancestry.com has been helpful also but when I get to the point of searching overseas documents it is another added expense which I cannot afford.
My mother had researched our family tree for decades. In 1999, I purchased Family Tree Maker so that I could do my own research. The software enabled me to build a family tree; but over time the limitations irritated me.
I decided to sample the trial versions of a plethora of genealogy software.
I settled on Roots Magic 6 as the best of the bunch:
FTM- Windows platform vs. RM- secure data base platform
FTM- inflexible input fields vs. RM- more and flexible spaces for ‘Name’ input; input fields for location description; flexibility in report design, allowing for custom designed reports; flexible color coding; ease in editing location data and source data, which allows one to make one correction that changes all occurrences of place or source data errors in the data base.
And so much more…
As time went on, I discovered so much more to like about Roots Magic.
I have been using Roots Magic 7 for some time now….
Recently, I decided to see what other genealogy software was available. After trying others, I am convinced that none can compare to Roots Magic in features and flexibility.
The MAGIC of Roots Magic continues to enchant me. Thank you for your commitment to making Roots Magic the Best.
TI began using and teaching PAF in the 2.2 days, and as it became more obsolete, I switched to RootsMagic when Rootsmagic 4 was introduced. After taking a class from Mike at the Ogden FamilySearch Library, I was awed by how much easier it was in RootsMagic to cleaning incorrect place names and incorrect names, but what really awed me was the fuctionality of the automatic merge funtions. It was awesome to be able to combine trees without spending a year merging duplicates. Somehow, all my sources and notes had been duplicated in PAF, and it just took a few clicks of the buttons to clean up that entire problem. When New FamilySearch came out, I found the sync between it and RootsMagic to be flawless; and the ability to download a tree from FamilySearch into RootsMagic very helpful to those who did not already have a well sourced tree. I asked Mike for the ability to teach RootsMagic at the OFSL; and really enjoyed seeing how delighted class members were with how easy it was to use. I am looking forward to the ability to have an ongoing sync with my trees on Ancestry. Hope that comes soon! Happy Birthday RootsMagic, and thanks to all of you who have created it!
I stated with roots magic 5 at the BYU Genealogy week in July 2012, I think. I was walking down the hall and this nice man (Bruce Buzbee)said he would help me if I wanted to learn this new program. We sat for a long time and I bought the program right then and there. Now I have had 6 and 7 and am still using it. I love all the features, especially the connect-ability between roots magic and Family Search. It is truly the best program for Family history ever made. and I get to recommend it at our Family History Center every week.
Roots Magic is the one and only software I ever used from many years ago. I found that I still have much to learn, but I love the updated versions with extended new technology. I love the reports, they keep me straight on statistics. I started out with my family being pioneers. I eventually started adding my husbands family, himself having little information. As research moves along, we are adding more and more to his family history. I know I would never be able to remember everything, and the software will keep it there for reference. Love Roots Magic
I have really enjoyed Roots magic. It keeps my records good with all the things in program to do this.
I Love, love, love, the color coding and groups features. Did I say I love them yet? This makes sorting my very large tree so easy! I have so many branches in my tree that it is very easy to get lost so the color feature allows you to see right away how someone is connected and to whom depending on how you color coded people. You can also then create a group just by going through the names that are already color coded and checking them off. This is also very handy when you are printing custom reports. The ability to isolate certain people together for a report is invaluable, especially with a very extensive tree. Awesome love it, can say that enough. When I discovered this after loading my file I was in love. This program is very easy to use and has so much to it. The nicest thing is with its versatility a beginner can use it and grow into the use of the many things it allows you to do and a not-so-beginner has all the tools and abilities they want in this kind of software. I have tried many different family tree programs and by far this is the best one I have ever had.
I started with Family Tree Maker, but they when they kept having charging for upgrades all the time I changed to Roots Magic
I wish that I had known about Roots Magic thirty years ago! In that time I amassed a considerable collection of papers and notebooks. About a year ago I discovered your program and am still impressed by the scope of “tricks” available – the more I learn about the program, the more fun I am having. I get so excited by the ability to create my own reports!!
Thank you and Happy Birthday.
I have been a user of geneology soft ware for nearly 40 years and after using other users, I find this is the best on the market. Keep doing what you do best.
Jessie Burton
My mother has always had an interest in genealogy and she is the person when she meets someone wants to know their history. Her data collection started on paper as most do and later started using Roots Magic. She is now 89 years young and though her interest in genealogy is still active, she has retired the love of genealogy and the entry of all the data she has collected to me.
It is like waving that magical wand and saying abracadabra how the data comes to life, using the color coding and having the relationships pop off the screen from generation to generation.
Thanks for an amazing program, keep up the good work.