(+) Selecting an Appropriate Database Program for Genealogy

I received an e-mail this week that bothered me. In fact, I often receive e-mails asking similar questions. The questions usually are more or less like this example:

My organization has been entering data for a long time in a general-purpose database program, not a genealogy program. We use Microsoft Access (or FileMaker Pro or SQL or some other general-purpose database program) or Excel spreadsheets. We have thousands of entries in our database. We now want to put this information on the Web (or on CD-ROM or in a book), and we want to use the report generation capabilities of the Brand X genealogy program. Can we convert our Access (or other) database to GEDCOM and import it into the genealogy program?

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