The program will display vital statistics in a typical family group plus note and source links.  It will also display full name, pedigree, and descendant lists.  Navigation is simple.  Just click on any name in any view and it will display the family group for that name.

The program does NOT allow editing or even copying of any text, however, you can print/preview the family view.  The program is self contained and only 80K so it is easily transportable on floppy disk and VERY fast.  You can easily make it your default ".GED" file viewer as follows:

• Hold down the Shift key while Right-clicking any GEDCOM file.
• A menu will appear with an "Open With . . ." item.
• Clicking on "Open With . . ." will display a dialog box with program names.
• Make sure that "Always use this program to open this type of file" is check marked.
• If "GedView" is in the list, click on it's name, otherwise click on the "Other . . ." button and search for and click on the "GedView.exe" file.
• Click on "OK".

Note that some versions of Family Tree Maker will reset the above to point to FTM.exe and sometimes without displaying the ".ged" contents.  There is nothing that can be done to prevent that.

Having done that, clicking on any ".GED" file will automatically open the program and display the file contents.  CAUTION - the program does NOT accept ".Ged" file names or path names containing spaces, but will accept all other forms of long and short names.  If the GEDCOM file is not in valid format, the program will display "Empty" in the family group or display an "Illegal Operation" dialog box and close.  Since the program does not write to the file, it can cause no harm to your GEDCOM files, which are NOT the source of, but rather a product of your data.