1. Formatting: All individuals are referred to in the past tense, which can be upsetting to those among the quick and not-dead.
2. Descendants of additional spouses of female ancestors do not appear in Ahnentafel reports. If my father is married twice and has a son with each wife, the son from the other wife (my half brother) will appear in the report. However, if my mother is married twice and has a son with each husband, the son from the other wife (also a half brother) will not appear in the report. But, if the father's name is unknown, the sons of each of my mother's husband's will appear. [McE]

6.0
 

3. When children of additional spouses of males appear in an Ahnentafel report, the spouse seems to come out of nowhere. Example:
John Doe married Sue Smith.
Children of John Doe & Mary Jones.
Joe Doe
Children of John Doe & Sue Smith.
Jim Doe The reader should wonder who the heck Mary Jones is. Further down the report, where John Doe appears in the children list of his parents, the marriage information of all of John Doe's spouses can be found. If John Doe's parents weren't known, he wouldn't appear in the children's list anywhere. There would be no explanation for Mary Jones appearance. [McE]

4. Children of all individuals are reported – except the primary individual.

5. The names of principals in the report are set in boldface. However, the comma following is also set this way. This looks peculiar when the comma is separated from the name by source citation superscripts, which are not highlighted.
6. Children of additional ancestral spouses are not shown and usually this is correct. However, children of a second marriage between the same two ancestors are not shown, even though they are full siblings of children of the first marriage, who are shown.

1. Formatting: FTM abbreviates the names used in the subordinate headings "More About", "Children of", "Marriage notes". Not only is this unnecessary, it can lead to confusion when the abbreviation chosen by FTM is incorrect. And it should be "More about", without the capitalization on "about". [McE]
2. Formatting: In situations where the same individuals have married each other more than once (the Burton-Taylor syndrome), a proper construct is accomplished by attaching the spouse a second (or third?) time. This accurately reflects the reality, and permits separate marriage dates, offspring, and marriage notes for each occurrence. The problem is that FTM will print the spouse's Notes and Facts once for each marriage occasion. A single printing is sufficient.
3. Children will appear only under "Preferred Parents". I have a step-son. If I want to include him in my Genealogy, I need to select my wife & me as the preferred parents. However, if I print a GenRpt for my wife's side of the family, the step-son will appear as "Child of Tammy & Wayne" rather than under his natural father. Print a Gen Report for the natural father & no child will show. [McE]
4. Formatting: If a spouse is unknown and represented by "\\", FTM will substitute "<unnamed>" in reports, but inconsistently. In all GenRpts, the text says: "... Married <unnamed>", but if there were children: "Children of xxx and   are:".  This is true in all three kinds of GenRpt.

5. Formatting: One option on the descendant reports, "Assume primary individual is the immigrant ancestor", causes the list of antecedents to be labeled with superscript letters rather than numbered generations. The letters run, as one would expect, "A, B, C,...". The problem comes when "Z" is reached. the next individuals in the list are labeled "[" and "}", and the typeface of the following text remains in the superscript size! 

problem comes

6. Formatting: If there is a citation for a marriage, but no date or place entered, the citation number for the marriage will appear to be attributed to the spouse's name. If the spouse name has a citation of its own, the two footnote numbers are catenated without an intervening space. The program seems to just print a superscript with the next footnote number in sequence. This will be appended to whatever was just previously placed on the output — on the assumption that it was a marriage date or place.  [Jackson.ftw]
7. Left and right {braces, or curly brackets} in names do not print in GenRpts or in the Index. They print just fine in other reports and in GenRpts anywhere but in names.

catenated
 
 
 
 

James {1} Sands:

 

8. Abbreviation: The names of a spouse's parents are sometimes abbreviated. Suffixes and middle names may be dropped. Modification of the names as entered by the user should be avoided as much as possible, and used only as a last resort where space requires it. Indeed, abbreviation may transform a name into the valid name of an entirely different individual.
9. Parents of spouses do not appear if the descendant & spouse are not carried forward to the next generation. Say Joe Smith marries twice. He has children with his 1st wife, which carries him forward as the head of his immediate family in the next generation. There the parents of both spouses will appear (even though he had no children with the 2nd.) Now let's say Joe's brother married but had no children. The brother is not carried forward to the next generation. Why don't the parents of the spouse appear here? [McE]
10. One can enter Marriage Facts and Marriage Notes. Marriage Notes can be included in GenRpts, but Marriage Facts cannot.

11. To improve readability of reports, one can alter, in Preferences, certain words, or change abbreviations such as "Abt." to "About", as used in dates.  Curiously, one cannot change "Bef." to "Before", nor "Aft." to "After".

Version 5 note

New date ranges feature can use "Bet." or "Btn." Would be nice to be able to use "between". (One can opt to not use "Bet." or "Btn." by using "-", "to" , "and", or "&" between the range dates.) [McE]

12. Cause of death: When entered, it is reported with the heading "Cause of Death:" The word "death" should not be capitalized - for professional-looking results. 
13. Options: An option for the two descendant based reports is, under Generation Numbering, "Automatically find the oldest ancestor." This is either an inaccurate description or the report is in error as it is the oldest ancestor in the male line who is found.  Either the dialog wording should be changed or the report fixed.
14. [V6] When exiting and reentering FTM, the GenRpt button always shows the Register Report (NEHGS). In past versions this redisplayed the last previously selected GenRpt, which behavior should continue.

Automatically find

15. Marriage Facts and Notes: can be entered for marriages which have only one partner listed (so-called "spouseless relationships"). However, these facts and notes will not be included in any GenRpt until a spouse name is entered.
16. "More about" Notes: Columnar data can be entered using tabs, but these are ignored in producing the reports. The tabs are retained and the online display presents the data as entered, but refuses to print it that way, taunting the user.

1. Formatting: Using tabs to indent paragraphs in More About Notes works as expected, except in Register reports. In Register reports, with people who are not carried forward into the next generation, appearing only in the offspring list under their parents, tabs in More About Notes have no effect.
2. Birth & death info of spouses does not appear in GenRpts. The NEHGS sells a booklet called, ‘Guidelines for Genealogical Writing’, Style Guide for The New England Historical and Genealogical Register with Suggestions for Genealogical Books by Margaret F. Costello and Jane Fletcher Fiske. On page 4 it details what marriage information to include: "State first the place and date of marriage, then the name of the spouse in capital letters, followed by the place and date of birth and death of the spouse, and the names of his or her parents if known." [McE]

See also

6.0

1. Duplicate descendants not handled properly in NGS format GenRpts. Duplicate descendants are assigned two numbers. Then in the following generation, they appear where their lower number would be in the report, but have the higher number before their name. Duplicated individuals being in different generations exacerbates the problem. [McE]
2. Missing individuals: [V6] If there are two cousins who married, person 45 and person 88, say, and they had two children, listed at person 45, then at person 88 it properly says that children are listed above under (45).  The problem is that person 45 died at age 34, person 88 remarried, and the 8 children from his second marriage are not listed anywhere in the report.  They and their descendants are missing.