Heredis is a genealogy program that is very popular around the world. I don’t hear much about it in the U.S. but also know that it is one of the most popular genealogy programs in the world. It is available in several different languages which probably explains much of its popularity.

Heredis is also one of the easier-to-use genealogy programs available today. I have it installed on my computer and am very impressed with it.

Now the Heredis producers (in France) have announced a major update of the program. Here is the announcement:

MONTPELLIER, FRANCE – SEPTEMBER 22, 2020 – Besides a colorful and exciting new design to try to brighten the special times we are going through, Heredis 2021 offers great new features AND boasts a multitude of long requested improvements.

DYNAMIC ANCESTORS WHEEL
The genealogist can from now on visualize a 360° representation of his family tree!! This wheel shape chart can be colored by generation, gender, quarter, by marked or “complete” persons, thus highlighting the most relevant data in his genealogy file. This representation allows the genealogist to quickly visualize if any ancestor is missing in any branch without leaving the navigation tab.

The wheel chart can include up to 12 generations. It can be exported to PDF and then be printed: this is a great-looking ancestors wheel chart to share with his relatives.

DEAD ENDS
A father or mother can’t seem to be found? It is not uncommon to come across abandoned children or children born with unknown fathers when doing genealogical research. In most cases, chances of finding out who the parents were are quite slim. The genealogist can now categorizes such “dead ends” in a quick and easy manner by checking the Untraceable Father and Untraceable Mother boxes. At any moment, he may thus declare these persons as Complete so he can move on and focus on more fruitful researches without wasting additional time in the genealogical endeavors. Thanks to this new label, the genealogist will see right away whether any ancestor needs to be searched for or not. Navigate the family tree while keeping an eye on such information, which is worth taking into consideration as the genealogist moves forward in his researches. In the end, the research follow-up becomes more reliable when measuring the progress of searches. This information can be found in the sheets or even in your GEDCOM file.

Does the genealogist know full well that he won’t find any additional information on a given person in his genealogy? He may now indicate that this person is “complete” thanks to the “Declare as complete” label in the Personal Data tab. A huge time saver!

IMPORT INDEXES
From now on, the genealogist can retrieve indexes created by fellow genealogists or in other Heredis genealogy files. Retrieve his or her entire work on the places, including media, place descriptions, etc. Available for Surnames, Given Names, Occupations, Places and Sources!

IMPROVEMENTS
Heredis 2021 is also the result of a long work process between our hands-on users and our development team operating in the background to continuously improve the software. And, even more remarkably, this work was in part processed during the lockdown period when each of our developers was working remotely, yet still keeping in touch with users. Here are some of this new version’s improvements, which you will find both familiar and different at the same time:

• Smart Search: take advantage of the option to process an entire selection of events, facts, or do searches within the note of a media; you may also perform searches on Ahnentafel numbers, implexes, or between one generation and another, • Custom reports: -additional fields: “creation date” and “change date” of a person; -a new option in the Places report: grouping a place name and its variants,
• Merging assistant: alerts during merges have been added to encourage users to merge parents first and thus avoid mistakes…,
• Swap parents easily: do so if one of your ancestor’s father or mother were inverted by mistake. The correction will be applied to all siblings,
• Hide empty boxes in the ancestors’ tree chart from now on and get a better view of all available or missing data (Family tab > Ancestors),
• Add a filter to Search Tracking to display treetops only: a real time saver that will let you see what is left to do and what to start with! Improvements galore to make a real difference in the genealogist everyday use of Heredis.

AVAILABILITY
Heredis 2021 for Windows and for Mac have been made available to all genealogists since September 22, 2020 on heredis.com and on the App Store.