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FamilySearch Insider Tips

and Tricks

BYU Conference on

Family History and Genealogy

July 29, 2014

Ben Baker

bakerb@familysearch.org

My Background

• 4½ years as Software Engineer at FamilySearch

• Currently work on Family Tree, but tries to use all of our

products

• Not an expert at everything, but feel an engineer’s

perspective can help others

• Way too much to present everything in an hour, so want

to know what items are of most interest

• Review syllabus and presentation later for items not

covered

Essential TipsEveryone Should Understand These

Purpose of FamilySearch

The purpose of the Family History

Department is to help Church

members fulfill their divinely

appointed responsibility to discover

their families and submit their names

for temple ordinances

Key Indicator Reports

Ask your• Family history consultant(s)• High priest group leader• Bishop• Stake presidentabout this report for your stake/ward.

Share Your Knowledge

As shown from the purpose statement and key

indicator report, increasing participation among

all members is paramount.

Share what you know with:• Your family, from immediate family to distant cousins

• Your friends, from ward members to those not of our faith

Why Youth Are Needed

Elder Neal L. Anderson challenged the youth at RootsTech 2014 “to set a personal goal to help prepare as many names for the temple as

baptisms you perform in the temple.” https://www.lds.org/topics/family-history/temple-challenge

Why?

Because temples shouldn’t have to provide names

when your own family needs your help and

Experiencing “both halves” of the blessing builds faith

NO MORE TEMPLE WELFARE!

Critical Paradigm To Understand – Part 1

Where you can help the most

1. Find your relatives in indexed records and link them to persons in Family Tree

2. Upload photos, stories and documents of your relatives and link them to persons in Family Tree

3. Help index historical records

4. Clean up data in Family Tree

5. Reserve temple ordinances for your family

Family Tree

Digitized Images

Indexed Records

Historical Records (Microfilm and

original documents)

Living Memory

Photos, Stories, Documents, Audio

Completed LDS Temple

Ordinances

Critical Paradigm To Understand – Part 2

The best way

to find people who need LDS temple work is

to find people who are NOT in the tree yet

The best way

to find people not in the tree yet is

to find them in a historical record with

someone who is already in the tree

Embrace Change

Embrace change, don’t be afraid of it

Click on new things to see what they do

I don’t think you can mess up anything in a single

click, but be sure to read warnings.

Keep up to Date

Read the FamilySearch blog at https://familysearch.org/blog/en/ for updates on new features and other happenings.

Subscribe to the blog via RSS

Google “how to subscribe to an rss feed” for helps – I use Outlook and feedly

Use the categories and search for information you’re most interested in

Family Tree Specific Tips and Tricks

Family Tree is “Our Tree”

• Freely available to anyone worldwide

• Reduces duplication of effort

• Increases collaboration to arrive at the best information

• Information added outlives contributors

• Link person profiles to additional information

• More on this topic in tomorrows presentation “Finding ‘My Tree’ Within FamilySearch Family Tree’s ‘Our Tree’”

We can all go further faster by working together

Record Hints are Awesome!

• Searches indexed records for you

• Will find records based on all information, including maiden and married names

• Often overcomes errors in records

• Only presents high confidence matches

• 4x increase in sources attached since rollout

Congratulations!

You have just found someone in a record that is not in the tree

Record Hints in the Descendancy View

Search Records Link

Starting point

Search section for how to refine

Starting Point for Further Refined Searches

Example Search Refinement

Use Other “Tree” Views

Descendancy View

Fan Chart View

Portrait Pedigree View

Use Underused and Powerful

Features of the Watch List

• Navigation to distant relatives

• Filtering by various criteria

• Sorting by various criteria

• View latest changes over the past 30 days

• Filter and sort latest changes

Navigation

Filtering on Names

Filtering on Places

Filtering on Dates

Filtering on Deleted Persons

Sorting – Part 1

Sorting – Part 2

Changes to People I’m Watching

Changes to a Specific Person

Changes by a Specific User

Changes of a Specific Type

Printed Charts from a Person Page

Printing Charts from a Tree View

Fillable Pedigree Charts and

Family Group Sheets

• Same as official LDS paper forms

• Can save and modify later

• Easy to share with others

Insider Techie Tips

• If you are LDS and want to print without LDS temple ordinances, change show_ords to false in the URL

Ex. https://familysearch.org/tree-data/pedigree/K2V7-PV5/spouse/K2V7-P92/pdf?show_ords=false&locale=en

• If you’d like to print without Family Tree person IDs, add &showPIDs=false to the URL

Ex. https://familysearch.org/tree-data/pedigree/K2V7-PV5/spouse/K2V7-P92/pdf?show_ords=false&locale=en&showPIDs=false

Difference Between Family and

Family With Sources Options

7-Generation Fan Chart

Portrait

Pedigree

Printing Pages Without Defined Forms

3 Ways to Initiate Browser Print

• Right Click and Select Print…

• Select Print from main or File menu

• Ctrl + P

Synchronize With a Desktop Manager

GEDCOM Upload is Not Evil

Process to Submit Tree

1. Upload GEDCOM to FamilySearch

2. Compare each person with those in Family Tree

3. Add persons not already in Family Tree

Editing Relationships

Visualize Relationships

Parent Child Relationship

Father Mother

Child

Mother

Child

WifeHusband

Parent Child Relationshipwith Single Parent

Couple Relationship

F M

C

F M

C

F M

C

F M

C

F M

C

F M

C

F M

C

F M

C

F M

C

Tips

• Visualize or even draw out the relationships when trying to decide how to fix something

• Pay attention to person IDs

• Remember how to edit and delete relationships

M

C

WH WH

WH

…

…

Managing Your Settings

Make Your E-mail Public

Use the History List Dropdowns

• Use Tree and Person Lists to Jump to Tree View or Person Page View

• Use the Go To: textbox to jump directly to a person ID

• Click on your own name to go back to you

• Click on your starting person ID to jump to that person

• Click on a person in the list to jump to that person

• Select Add Unconnected Person to add a new person to the tree that isn’t connected to anyone else with relationships.

Viewing Changes of a Particular Type

Sort Sources With Arrows or

Drag and Drop

Memories

Search

Temple

Sort By Vitals

Sort By Ordinance Type

Sort Into Family Groups

Sort By Date Reserved/Modified

Sort By Two Columns

Filter By Name

Print Your Reservation List

3 Ways to Initiate

• Right Click and Select Print…

• Select Print from main or File menu

• Ctrl + P

Share or Unreserve Work You Can’t Do

Indexing

Develop Your Skills

Provide Feedback

Family History Resources on

Lds.org and Mormon.org

Other Useful Tips

Attendee Suggested Tips