Frequently asked questions

GEDCOM (.ged) is the standard file format for exchanging family tree data. Every major program and website can export one: Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilySearch-connected programs, Family Tree Maker, Gramps, RootsMagic and Legacy. See our guide on exporting a GEDCOM file.

Hourglass charts (ancestors above and descendants below one person), pedigree charts, descendant charts and all-relatives charts that include the siblings of every ancestor with their descendants. You control how many generations up and down are drawn, whether spouses are shown, and how deep the collateral lines go.

No. The layout engine treats overlapping as a hard constraint: boxes never overlap, spouses always stand next to each other, children hang under their parents in birth order, and the chart is kept as compact as the connecting lines allow. Where the data forces two lines to cross, the crossing is drawn as a small hop so that the lines stay readable.

A person is drawn once, standing between their partners: the earlier marriage on the left, the later one on the right, with the children of each marriage under their own marriage line. Only a third or later partner is drawn with a small dashed reference box.

A title page, an introduction, one chapter per generation with a chart of the families covered, an entry for every family with the facts written as sentences, sources as footnotes, room for your own stories and photographs, and an index of names generated automatically. The book is exported as a print-ready PDF.

PDF in standard paper sizes for printing, SVG for very large posters and for editing in vector programs, and PNG for screens, e-mail and social media.

Your GEDCOM file is processed to produce your charts and books and is not shared with anyone. You can delete your files and your account at any time. Details are in our privacy policy.

You decide per chart and per book whether living relatives appear with full dates, with the birth year only, with the name only, or not at all. One file can produce a private wall chart and a public poster.

Yes. Files encoded in UTF-8 keep every accented letter, and the charts and books print them correctly. If your export uses an older encoding, we detect the most common ones and convert them.

Trees with several thousand people lay out in seconds. A very large all-relatives chart becomes a wide poster; for such trees you may prefer several charts, one per branch, which the service can generate from the same file.

We are finishing the book generator and the online editor. Leave your e-mail address on the home page and you will be told the moment the service opens. Planned pricing is on the pricing page; subscribers to the launch list receive the launch offer.