Relearning "Family Tree Maker"

This post was prompted by "What You Learned", the September theme for the Genealogy Blog Party, as hosted by Elizabeth Swanay O'Neal on Heart of the Family.

I have been using the Family Tree Maker genealogy database program going all the way back to version 2.0 (!), which was still made for DOS at that time.  I have updated it at various points, often when a friend bought an upgrade and gave me her old disks.

I was running what I believe was version 16 on my old, reliable, 15-year-old Dell Inspiron laptop.  It still had Windows 95 installed and caused me no problems.  Until the hard drive suddenly crashed, taking everything with it.

That happened three years ago.  I first tried a local solution and actually paid money for an assessment by Geek Squad (never doing that again).  I was told me they could probably recover my files, no guarantees, but guaranteed no recovery of programs.

Well, gee, thanks!  The programs, Family Tree Maker in particular, were what I actually wanted to recover most.  I no longer had my disks (lent them to a daughter-in-law, who lost them), so I couldn't reinstall if I got a new computer.

I eventually found a (real) data recovery company that was able to retrieve everything but one .dll file from the laptop.  But I didn't have a computer to put the files on.

I then did get a new laptop, but it was running Windows 10.  My old version of FTM wasn't going to work on it.  Oops.

I just hate data migration problems.

Fast forward to this year.  I was gifted a spiffy, brand-new version of Family Tree Maker (2019), PC and Mac combined.  Okay, that'll work on both my PC and my Mac (yeah, I'm bilingual).

I installed the program and of course discovered that during the intervening several years, almost everything about the FTM interface has been changed.

Did I mention I also hate mandatory computer program upgrades?

I liked my old interface.  It did just what I needed it to.  It was clean and basic.  I knew where everything was.

Well, it hasn't been quite like starting from scratch.  I have been able to suss it out for the most part.  But some of the changes are just driving me batty.

As an example, here is the display for a married couple:

I admit, it has been a few years since I have been able to use my previous version of FTM, but I vaguely recall that I was able to see the parents' surnames before.  Even Reunion, which I'm not crazy about, shows that.  But all I get in this display is given names.  I have to click up to the older generation to see the surnames.

I am grateful that I was given a copy of FTM and now have it available, rather than being stuck using Reunion.  But I wish I didn't have to relearn how to use it.

Maybe I'm just getting to be a crotchety old woman who doesn't like change.