Users who want to use their own personal data and do not have a Gedcom file exported from another genealogy program will need to create a new family file. This is explained in detail here, as the process can be difficult for an inexperienced user.

Before starting with data entry, gather all of the sources from which you want to take your data.

Open FamilyTreeFactory and select Create New Family File... from the File menu. This opens the Personal Data dialog to the first tab, Personal Data, as well as the sub-tab Attributes and Events:

Start by entering data for the first person:

Enter the current surname for a living person or the last surname for a deceased person, the given name(s) and a nickname, if any. If the current or last surname is different from the maiden name, enter the maiden name as well. The surname should also include any inherited nobility title, but should not contain any academic or other titles. Academic or other titles can be entered in the Title field below. You can specify the preferred given name among multiple given names with angle brackets: >Preferred given name<.

Mark the gender of the person as male or female. This is very important, as persons with an unknown gender cannot be assigned children and, if the strict gender check is active, they cannot be assigned a partnership or partner. However, there are some cases in which gender may remain unknown, such as with children that died early without documentation of gender.

To the extent that information is available and accurate, enter data for birth, baptism, death and burial. If the person was killed in action, select the corresponding checkbox. This will cause a special symbol to be used for killed in action when the graphic is output. You can also indicate the meaning of the place of death for persons killed in action. Persons may have died in a place or near a place, as is often the case. The entry fields for places contain a dropdown list with all places that have already been entered. Open the list by clicking on the small button in the entry field.

In the Occupation entry field, enter free text. Multiple lines of text with line breaks and empty spaces can be entered.

The ID code field can be useful if you would like to add unique numbers for clear identification of persons to a large collection of personal data. These ID codes can also be linked to other documents, such as family chronicles.

Place of residence, Swiss civil rights municipalities and contact data can be entered into the corresponding fields.

Here is an example of how the dialog can appear (entered personal data are highlighted in yellow):

After these entries have been made, save the data from the dialog into your database. For this, click the Save Record button. This button is not available until data have been entered or changed. The change status is shown in the title bar of the dialog.

To enter the next person, a relative, switch to the Partners and Children sub-tab:

FamilyTreeFactory uses unique partner and child numbers, which need to be set on the corresponding sub-tab before creating a record for a relative. This is done with the Partner x and Child x sub-tabs as well as the For the partner, this is the partnership no. [x] spinedit control. Subsequent changes can be made using the Change Order of Partners/Children... button. The orders of partnerships and children are not based on the order of entry, but rather on the corresponding partner or child number.

For example, enter a wife: This will be the first marriage for both spouses, so leave the Partner 1 tab and the spinedit control For the partner, this is the partnership no. [1] unchanged. Use the married name of the wife for the current/last surname. In the past, this was generally the husband's surname. This can be easily selected from the dropdown list opened by clicking on the small button in the entry field. This dropdown list contains all saved surnames. The wife's maiden name can also be selected from the list, but this is not possible in this example, as only one surname is present in the list. Enter it now, along with the given name(s). For the partnership status, select the radio button married.

You can now create the wife's record, but you should first enter any available marriage data. Select the marriage data option Single or Civil and religious, based on the available data. Enter the data in the top row or in both rows. The locations here can also be selected from dropdown lists.

The dialog now looks something like this (entered marriage data in yellow, partnership/partner data in green):

You will now see an asterisk * (for partnership data changed) on the Partner 1 tab and the window title bar now contains the word changed. In addition, the Save Record button will be available now. The reason for this is as follows - entering marriage or divorce data does not just affect the newly-created wife, but also the existing husband (the title bar shows "Record 1 - Otto Samplefam - changed"). You now need to save changes for the husband by clicking Save Record. Then, click Create New Partner Record to the right of the partner's name entry fields. This will create record number 2, which now appears with the Attributes and Events tab displayed. The title bar now reads "Record 2 - Charlotte Samplefam":

You can enter additional data such as date of birth here. The gender has automatically been specified due to the existing partnership with a male person. However, if the moderate gender check is active, this can be changed to create a same-gender partnership.

Next, enter a son for the existing married couple. Switch to the Partners and Children sub-tab. For this example, assume that you have discovered a child who was born before the documented children of the married couple, and who died very early. Enter the son now as child number 2 by clicking on the Child 2 tab. Enter the name of the son by selecting a surname from the dropdown selection list. Set the gender for the son by marking the male radio button. The dialog now looks something like this:

You will now see a degree sign ° (for child data changed) on the Child 2 tab. Because this child belongs to the partnership 1, you will see a degree sign ° on the Partner 1 tab, too. On the partner tabs two signs can be output: The asterisk * for partnership data changed and the degree sign ° for child data changed.

Click on the Create New Child Record button to the right of the child's gender field to create the new record. The sub-tab Attributes and Events for the new record is now displayed, where you can make additional entries. Proceed in the same manner as with the wife.

Note that the current dialog shown above for Record 2 - Charlotte Samplefam shows the name of the husband, John >William< Eduard Samplefam, as being unavailable. After creating a partnership, the names of the partner can not longer be changed in this area. To change the name of a partner, you will need to open the partner's own Personal Data tab. You can easily navigate to this tab by clicking the button Edit Partner Record 1 to the right. The text displayed on this button changes meaning and function based on the existence of a partner.

You can now add Fathers and Mothers in the upper part of the Father and Mother sub-tab. In general, you would now proceed to enter the entire family by creating a record for each new relative from the page of a related person.

Finally, save the entered data to a file. Close the Personal Data dialog and select File, Save Family File As.... Select an appropriate save location (preferably in the directory 'My Documents\FamilyTreeFactory' or 'Documents\FamilyTreeFactory' under Windows Vista and Windows 7) and give the file a descriptive name. When saving a new file, a notification will usually appear to inform you that no information has been entered in the Imprint. Answer this with No if you wish to enter data in the imprint now. You can then enter data for Author, Title and Description.

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