Source-full Saturday

Building your Family Tree

Family Tree Webinar

Last night the Utah Genealogical Association - Virtual Chapter offered a free Webinar which featured Ron Tanner, a Product Manager for the Family History Department of the Church. Tanner discussed the newest features of FamilySearch Tree and the coming features that look very exciting to me as a contributor to the Tree.

These features include the following:

• History List - under People tab, shows the last few persons you viewed and lets you add someone who is "not connected to your tree".
• Ability to select the preferred person to display on your tree such as a second wife instead of the first wife.
• Search Records for person you have opened in profile view . It puts in all of their information into the search fields and pulls up all documents available in Family Search. Very nice feature! Then allows you to add them to your source list and attaches them to your person in your tree.
• Sorting your sources - there is now a up/down arrow on the right side of each source which allows you to move a source to a new position in the list.
• Stories and Photos - I love this feature!  You must tag your photos after you add them and they will go onto your assigned person in the tree. You will also see photos that others may have entered for you person. Stories can be written and attached to multiple people in your tree. These stories can be copied by others and edited in their word processor as they write their own stories, but as I understood things, they can not be edited in your tree.

New Features to be coming soon in FamilySearch Tree are:

• Printing out a Fan Chart for the person you are viewing and allowing you to move another person in that chart to the #1 position and printing a new chart.
• Adding Sources and Notes from New Familysearch to the Familysearch Tree. The new Family Tree will hold up to 15 pages of text in Notes. Always add a source, otherwise it is just hearsay.
• Scanning and adding documents as images and attaching them to a  source citation, which you have to write, and then attaching them to a person in the tree.
• Deleting a person - you will have to give a reason before deleting a person. If this privilege is abused then you can report the problem and the person responsible for deleting someone in the tree will get a call from the FamilySearch and if it continues they could possibly have their account deleted.
• Re-directing all users to FamilySearch Tree by the end of the year. We all must learn how to use the Tree.

One thing to remember when you are working in the Tree: When you are adding a new person, if you click on "FIND" you are only searching your tree. You should click on "SEARCH" as that will search all trees, and you never know if someone else may have already added your person. Avoiding duplication is a key thing. Always look for duplicates.

I just love the new tree. Many people who are use to using New FamilySearch may find it complicated, but like any new upgrade to a computer program, you will find that once you learn how to use it you will see that it is much better and in this case more collaborative. Be sure and check your profile and allow users to see your email address so they can contact you, but not your other personal info. Come to the library and let the Consultants show you how to use the Tree for an exciting experience.