Chronoplex Software has updated its free genealogy tool My Family Tree to version 4.0 with various small improvements.

The program’s relationship calculator – which displays the connection between any two individuals in the tree – now supports marriage (in law) and step relationships.

There’s improved automatic detection of legacy GEDCOM character encodings. Select a file and you’ll be told what its CHAR tag states and which encoding My Family Tree thinks it is, while as before you can choose a custom encoding if you prefer.

GEDCOM support means your existing tree can be imported in seconds. Hopefully.

The program now also includes support for the GEDCOM submission and submitter records. If they’re available (and they’re often not) these might identify the individual or organisation which provided records within a file, along with other file metadata.

Elsewhere, My Family Tree 4.0 is now faster to start, and features improved navigation workflow.

On balance this seems a fairly minor update to us, although the additional relationship support is welcome.

We’re unsure about the GEDCOM changes, too. Previously My Family Tree has always imported everything we threw at it, but this time it failed once with an “unknown load error”. A file-specific issue, or the program? We’re not sure.

Still, if you can avoid any import problems then My Family Tree 4.0 is an excellent genealogy tool for Windows XP+, packed with essential features. If you’re looking for something more than an online tree maker then it’s a must-see.