Highs and Lows of switching to FamilyTreeMaker 2012

I've just updated to FamilyTreeMaker software version 2012, and so far, I'm regretting it. I was doing fine with my 2005 version, except that with a new, 64 bit computer I was unable to generate pdf reports. The Indexes and Charts volume of the Efron Family History (http://www.efronfamilyhistory.com/) is a pdf generated from my FamilyTreeMaker data, so I certainly needed to update the software.

The issues I'm running into with this updated software are primarily related to the "privatization" function of the software. "Privatization" is where all personal informatin about a person is removed if that person is still living. When I updated the Indexes and Charts volume, I found that many living people were NOT privatized, and some deceased people WERE privatized. The software is not too smart because it does not look at other people in fhte family to determine whether to privatize or not -- it only looks to the death date to see if the person has died. If there is no birth date, the person is not privatize. But if there is no birth date and no death date, it does NOT privatize.

Currently I have just shy of 4000 people in my databas that need to be editted, one-by-one, for me to add "unknown" to their birth field. In addtion, any person in my database born before 1900 is also considered deceased, so they need an "unknown" in their death date field. This will be a long process. Which is too bad because I had other plans for my spare time.

I'm also not pleased that in FTM 2012 privatization removes the given name of a person if they are not shown as deceased. This is unfortunate: I want my privatization to remove data (such as brith and deaht dates and pleases) but not the person's given name! ...

The first problem I ran into was that decased people in my database were being privatized because they did not have a death date listed, EVEN IF THEY WERE BORN MORE THAN 120 YEARS EARLIER!

I had been editing chapter by chapter based on information I've gathered from emails over the years (to the extent I had not already added such information). So, this little diversion will take at least a few weeks.