Incline Software Releases Free Ancestral Quest Basics

The following is from Incline Software makers of Ancestral Quest.

Salt Lake City, Utah (February 12, 2011) – Incline Software announces the release of its new free family tree program, Ancestral Quest Basics, as well as a new capability to search over a billion free indexed genealogical records and the availability of translations that make Ancestral Questtm accessible in six new languages. For 17 years, Ancestral Quest has provided genealogists with easy-to-use yet powerful tools to organize, research and publish their family history. Millions of users have benefited from Ancestral Quest and from altered, licensed versions of AQ under such names as Ancestry Family Tree (AFT) by Ancestry.com, Personal Ancestral File (PAF) by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Family Tree Heritage by Individual Software.

Ancestral Quest Basics is a new version of Ancestral Quest that is absolutely free. Users will be able to enter individuals and families, notes and sources just as in the full version of Ancestral Quest. They will be able to print Pedigree charts, Family Group Records, Ancestry charts and Descendant charts, along with several other reports and charts. They will even be able to add pictures of ancestors. Ancestral Quest Basics has all the essential features of a complete family tree program, but the more advanced features and “bells and whistles” of Ancestral Quest are only available in the full version.

In 2008, AQ was the first desktop family tree program to be certified to work with New FamilySearch, and in 2009 it received an award from FamilySearch for having the “Most Comprehensive Syncing” capabilities. Users with access to New FamilySearch, will find that Ancestral Quest Basics contains all but a couple of the most advanced of AQ's methods of syncing with FamilySearch. In short, it has all the fundamental features needed by a family historian. According to Gaylon Findlay, President of Incline Software, “We wanted to provide genealogists with complete, easy-to-use software for organizing their family history at an unbeatable price. And, having made the Windows versions of PAF possible several years ago by providing the LDS Church with the Ancestral Quest code, we wanted PAF users to have an easy transition to a free program that would feel like a major upgrade to PAF, including the synchronization with New FamilySearch.” Ancestral Quest Basics has all the essential features of its big brother, Ancestral Quest, with some of the frills yet none of the cost.

Searching Over One Billion Free Records. For 10 years, Ancestral Quest has been able to search Ancestry.com for a list of records and compiled family trees for any person in AQ's database, and has provided direct links to these resources for subscribers of Ancestry.com. AQ also has had capabilities for searching FamilySearch and other Internet genealogy resources. In December of 2010, FamilySearch released its updated website, www.familysearch.org, with over a billion indexed records which are freely available, and AQ now allows a user to select any person in their database and search these records, many of which provide original images. “It is really exciting to be able to highlight the name of an ancestor in Ancestral Quest, click on a couple of buttons, and see a list of original documents that give details about the ancestor. It's free, and it makes doing genealogy research fun!” said Paul Johnson, a support technician at Incline Software. (This new search of the free FamilySearch records is available in the full version of Ancestral Quest, but not in AQ Basics.)

Incline Software has also tried to provide the Jewish community with special features, and for years has allowed users to generate a Page of Testimony for victims of the Holocaust, which are then filed with Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Yad Vashem has digitized these, and Ancestral Quest can now search 3 million Pages of Testimony with the hope that this will help Jewish users in researching their family members who perished.

Additional Languages. Ancestral Quest can now be used in Spanish, German, French, Swedish, Norwegian and Chinese, with other languages under development. Spanish, German and French are complete translations, while the other languages provide AQ's most commonly used screens and reports in the language, with the remainder of the program still in English. Most of these language modules are free, while others can be purchased for a small fee. “We're thrilled to offer Ancestral Quest in additional languages, and grateful for the efforts of the volunteers who have done the translating. Users in the countries of origin of these languages, as well as Spanish and French speaking people in the Americas will finally be able to use either the full version of Ancestral Quest or our new Ancestral Quest Basics, in their native language,” according to Gaylon Findlay.

Ancestral Quest Basics, as well as the full version of Ancestral Quest, can be downloaded from http://www.ancquest.com/. The language modules that allow users to work with AQ in other languages can also be downloaded from this site. Users of Ancestral Quest 12.0 and 12.1 can download the new update for free by using the “Check for Latest AQ Release” option in AQ's “Internet” menu.

You can learn more about Incline Software and Ancestral Quest by visiting the website listed above, or by calling Incline Software at 1-800-825-8864.