How Do I Add a Fact (Sibling) in Ancestry Family Tree
I've been testing the merge of two Ancestry trees with RootsMagic 7. I wanted to be certain it wouldn't cease upwards in a mess of missing or duplicate entries.
Why would I want to merge family trees on Beginnings? I've been working for months on a split private tree where I wasn't 100% confident of the relationships. Finally, I've establish enough practiced evidence to support each entry.
And so, now I'yard ready to bring a lot of new people into my main family tree – with Beginnings sources, my photos, and many uploaded documents.
Can Yous Merge Two Family Trees On Ancestry.com?
Ancestry.com does not merge family trees. The "Save to Tree" tool volition copy a single entry. Alternatively, RootsMagic and Family Tree Maker have a merge characteristic.
RootsMagic and Family Tree Maker are both third-political party desktop software that can synchronize changes to your Beginnings family trees. They allow you download copse from Ancestry and run automated merge features on the local copies. So you upload or synchronize the merged local tree.
This commodity looks in-depth at using RootsMagic to exercise this.
Only offset, I'll give a quick rundown of what you lot need to exercise if you tin only work on the Ancestry website. You lot take two choices: recreate each entry manually, or employ the Save tool to re-create an entry from one tree to the other. I'll give a few tips to speed up this work.
Using Beginnings To Copy People From One Tree To Another
You can re-enter each target person into your 2d tree with a scrap of re-create-and-paste. The best mode to go about it is to open your trees in separate browser windows – even better if you have ii monitors.
Alternatively, the "Salve to Tree" tool will save you a bit of fourth dimension for each person.
The "Save to Tree" tool is available from the drop-down Tools bill of fare on a Tree Profile folio. It automates the bones edit screen and will populate names, dates, and places for one individual.
Unfortunately, the tool doesn't re-create Ancestry sources or your uploaded media. You'll have to recreate these as well.
This may not exist equally tedious equally information technology seems, peculiarly if most of your sources are from Ancestry collections. You'll probably see hints popping upwards every bit you enter a few individuals, and hopefully these will match what's in the other tree. Just don't go into auto-pilot mode of accepting hints – you'll terminate up with a mess!
Wouldn't it be bully if the hints were from your second tree? The problem for me is that I set my speculative trees to be unsearchable also as private. Yep, I can toggle the setting to add together my tree to Ancestry'due south index – but then there'south a long wait for the alter to result. "A calendar month or more", according to the Beginnings settings folio.
The other large drawback is your uploaded photos and other documents. That'south a lot of clicking to upload them again. Hopefully, yous take all the original files saved in an easy-to-find fashion. And do you lot annotate your uploaded media with descriptions, dates, and other information? This becomes a little painful.
Testing The Merge Before Messing With Your Main Tree
This commodity is near using RootsMagic. I employ the paid version, only the merge feature is bachelor in RootsMagic Essentials – the costless version.
Merging data is not a trivial process – and it may exist difficult to prepare if things go wrong. I wanted to examination RootsMagic's merge before I set up information technology loose on my treasured family unit copse!
I become through what I tested in the next department. My detail focus was on how RootsMagic dealt with Ancestry sources and uploaded media. Because I have a lot of these in my trees.
You should try a test run yourself based on how you lot tend to prepare up your trees. For example, practise you take step relationships, one-half-siblings, or adoption represented in your tree? I didn't examination that.
So, what did I exam?
What Was Included In the Test Merge?
I wanted to test a merge with a diverseness of sources, citations, and uploaded media. I besides threw in a Annotation, a Comment, and a Profile Photo.
I person profile has an uploaded headstone image associated with the Expiry fact. The uploaded image besides has a description and a cemetery name.
And so I figured: that's too like shooting fish in a barrel. So I loaded up the complexity in another contour.
The birth fact has two sources: a text-but birth tape from an Ancestry collection, and an Beginnings baptismal tape with an image.
I explicitly added an alternative birth fact and uploaded a PDF document as source media.
I besides added a user story – these become copied to a tree profile with a citation for the Ancestry user who uploaded the details.
Finally, I added a custom source. This is something I've never washed earlier but I was curious. Your custom source could exist your family unit bible or a book in the local studies department of your library. I created an entry for the world-renowned "Margaret Book Of Cognition" – but slightly less celebrated than the Book Of Kells. This became a source for the Alternative Nativity fact.
How Successful Was The RootsMagic Merge Of My Ancestry Trees?
When I uploaded the new merged tree to the Ancestry website, I compared the original and merged profiles side-by-side. Below is a summary of the results rated by successful outcome.
- "Yeah" means that the entry in the merged tree was identical to the original
- "No" means that it didn't merge at all
- "Yes (*)" means that there was a partial merge with an consequence
| Action | Successful? |
| Annotation | Yes |
| Annotate | No |
| User Story | No |
| Profile Moving-picture show | Yeah (*) |
| All facts created | Yes (*) |
| Headstone photo uploaded to fact | Yes |
| Headstone description added | Aye |
| Headstone citation added | Yes |
| Headstone cemetery name added | No |
| PDF uploaded to fact | Yeah |
| Custom Source added to fact | Yes |
| Ancestry text-only record source | Yes (*) |
| Ancestry prototype record source | Yeah (*) |
You may be looking at the No and problematic Aye rows and thinking – surely this is a deal-breaker. But they tin can all be fixed after the merge. The question is whether the effort to set up the issues outweighs making manual changes to your tree i person at a time.
Let'southward have a more detailed look at the problems.
Ancestry Elements That Failed To Merge
Notes are fine, merely comments are not merged. This is considering RootsMagic does not download comments from Beginnings. This is mentioned in the RootsMagic FAQ.
The user story is also missing. I don't care much about stories and comments, so this isn't a bargain-billow for me.
The uploaded headstone photo was nearly a perfect match to the original tree. Only I entered a description and the proper name of the cemetery every bit extra details – and only the description transferred. The cemetery proper noun was missing.
Personally, I rarely annotate uploaded media like this. Make up your ain listen equally to whether this presents a trouble.
Elements That Merged With Issues I Can Live With
All the facts were copied or merged with the right names, dates, and locations.
Problem – Alternative Facts
Unfortunately, not every fact was identical to the original . The trouble was with alternative facts.
I explicitly added an Alternative Nativity Fact to a tree profile. Beginnings lets you lot toggle a flag to gear up one fact as preferred and the other fact equally culling.
Either the RootsMagic merge or the upload resulted in swapping the flag betwixt the two birth facts. I don't know why.
My concern is that I have quite a lot of alternative Birth facts in my primary tree. This is how I bargain with alien census records, where ages are notoriously dissimilar from 1 census to the adjacent.
Once again, this may not be an issue for yous.
Profile Pictures
I wasn't surprised by the Profile Motion picture beingness a niggling odd – I wrote virtually this in an commodity on using RootsMagic to back upwards your tree.
When you assign a profile picture within Beginnings, the photo doesn't simply turn up as an avatar. The paradigm file goes into the Media Gallery too.
RootsMagic gets this half right. The avatar is fine in the merged tree, but you won't find the image in the gallery.
This didn't bother me the kickoff time I saw the trouble, and it doesn't bother me now. Merely that'due south because I rarely utilise profile pictures in my family tree.
I know that many Beginnings users put smashing effort into loading up their copse with avatars. So I must emphasize: you practise get the profile photos actualization as y'all'd await.
Ancestry Record Sources Are Not Merged Correctly By Roots Magic
At beginning, I thought that the Ancestry record sources looked fine. Then I realized I was seeing far also many on one of my merged tree profiles.
Take a await for yourself! The original tree entry is on the left. And this person wasn't in the 2d tree already: this wasn't merging 2 individuals, it was copying a contour every bit a new entry.
What's going on here? It took me a while to figure it out. In that location are two separate problems.
Duplication of Source Records
One Ancestry source has been duplicated and the other has been quadrupled. Beginnings lets you add the same source tape to multiple facts. And so, the baptismal tape on the left is a source for a nascence fact, an alternative nascence fact, a baptismal fact, and a residence fact.
RootsMagic isn't so keen on efficiency. Basically, it has made a copy of the source record for every attached fact. If this was all that happened here, we could say that the merge produced the same outcome i.eastward. the information is all there.
But the duplication is non a practiced user experience in my stance. Because the tree contour only shows the name of the drove of records, I can't tell if the records are the same – without opening each of them.
At this bespeak, I owe an apology to several Ancestry tree owners for shaking my head at their trees. I've seen this duplication in trees over the years, and I causeless it was mistakes on the part of the Ancestry user. Nope, this is a RootsMagic matter. This is how the software organizes facts and sources.
Breaking The Link To Ancestry Source Images
The next issue I spotted was that the merged image sources had lost their thumbnail image. I'm talking about a record that should wait be shown like this in the tree profile (the paradigm is a page of a baptismal register):
But instead, it looks like this:
The epitome hasn't actually disappeared, although that may seem to be the case when you view the merged record. With an Ancestry epitome tape, you expect to see a medium-sized image with a link to the collection . That's gone also.
The merge has shifted the image into the Media department associated with the tape. The image itself has been renamed with a meaningless RootsMagic cord and is in the tree Media Gallery. Here is the media tab of an example merged record:
And so, the record is linked to an prototype in your gallery. Information technology is no longer linked to the Ancestry collection . Why?
Switching Ancestry Sources To "Other Sources"
Take a look below at the side-by-side comparison of the original record versus the merged record. The big cherry-red arrow is the inkling. The merged record doesn't have the "Beginnings Record" tab.
The tape has also shifted positions in the Profile Page. It'due south under the list of "Beginnings Sources" in the original tree. Simply it's been demoted downward to the "Other Sources" in the new tree. Hither's another await at a side-by-side.
This explains the problem. RootsMagic is treating the Beginnings record equally an external source. That has significantly reduced the value of having a tree on the Ancestry website!
Fixing The Simpler RootsMagic Issues In Your Merged Ancestry Tree
It'south of import to retain the original trees in Beginnings for problem-solving. Don't delete them! Switch their privacy settings to Private and Unsearchable, if you want them out of the fashion of others.
If you accept missing user stories in your merged tree, you will need to go through the motions of attaching them over again.
Missing comments are more than problematic if they were added by other Ancestry users. I dubiousness you'll exist reaching out to people to repeat their comments. A simple ready is to add together the comment yourself, and include a bit of text that gives the original username.
You may have some fields to re-enter on your uploaded media. It looks like the title and description fields are merged, only Ancestry'due south "actress" fields are left backside.
Fixing Ancestry Source Record Issues In Your New Merged Tree On Ancestry
RootsMagic makes a real mess of the Ancestry source records. I don't run into a simple way to relink the records.
The gear up may exist to delete the records that are now in the "Other Sources" section – search for them again, and save them to your tree.
But RootsMagic has quadrupled some of the records in my test! And when the Ancestry website is having a tedious day, opening and deleting a plethora of broken records is not my idea of fun.
If y'all intend to upload your merged tree to a new tree on Beginnings, I suggest that y'all exclude source records entirely. The selection is available on the upload screen. It'south checked by default, then untick it if you want to follow this approach.
Y'all all the same accept to re-add your sources, but at least you don't have to delete a mount of bad versions.
Will This Problems Exist Fixed?
I saw mentions of this bug in the RootsMagic forums in January 2019. My hope is that the characteristic will be stock-still in the next version of RootsMagic.
I went looking to find out when RootsMagic 8 volition be available – information technology will hopefully driblet in 2021.
A Safer Way Of Merging Changes Into Your Ancestry Tree
I said in the introduction that I wanted to merge a small research tree into my principal public Ancestry family unit tree. The research tree has about 30 people along with Ancestry records and other uploaded media.
In a perfect world, I would merge the 2 offline and upload a new improved tree. Then I'd delete my "onetime" primary tree and supplant it with the merged version. There's no way I'1000 gonna exercise that later on seeing the results of my exam.
Instead, I took a more piecemeal arroyo.
Kickoff of all, I cleared out the unlinked Ancestry media records from the local copy of my research tree. The side by side section has the instructions on doing so.
How To Remove Beginnings Source Media From Your RootsMagic Tree
Beginnings lets you export your tree as a GEDCOM file – only this doesn't bring down source media or images. So, it'south a bully advantage that RootsMagic does re-create downwards the images. My gripe for this merge is that it leaves the link to the source collection backside.
RootsMagic names these epitome files with long cryptic numbers. I've written elsewhere about how to rename the RootsMagic media files and requite yourself your ain archive of images.
But for our purposes now, we want some local copse that don't accept Ancestry source records. This way, we won't accept to delete the broken records in Ancestry after we've uploaded the merged version.
Have a look at an excerpt from the Media Gallery of my local research tree. The first five files are Ancestry image records.
So there are a couple of files that I uploaded myself – I don't want to delete those! They tin can go upward as-is. I use my own naming convention so it's piece of cake for me to distinguish them from the Beginnings files.
But to exist completely certain, you tin click on each file and examine the correct pane. The example tells me that this is from the Catholic Parish Registers – an Ancestry collection. Whatever paradigm or PDF that I upload myself will look very unlike.
Now that you know how to identify your own uploads from Ancestry record images, you lot can follow these steps.
- Open the RootsMagic Media Gallery (under the View card).
- Switch from the thumbnail to the listing view – you want to meet the file names of the media.
- Work down the list of Ancestry image records and click the big blood-red Ten
I find this a heck of a lot faster than deleting the records from a tree on the Beginnings website.
Now that yous have a modified version of your source tree, you tin merge it into your target tree. I oasis't really shown y'all how to do that yet! Then, hither is a step-by-step guide.
Step-Past-Step Guide To Using RootsMagic To Merge Beginnings Copse
Follow these steps to merge two Beginnings trees. I suggest you gear up yourself up to endeavor the merge multiple times before you lot ship the changes up to Ancestry. So, have copies or backups of your local trees.
Employ RootsMagic to download your tree(s) from the Ancestry website
RootsMagic'southward TreeShare utility lets y'all download Ancestry trees to your local machine.
Here are detailed instructions to download your Ancestry tree with RootsMagic software.
If you intend to upload your merged tree into a new tree on Ancestry, y'all tin can disconnect both trees from Beginnings at this point. Expand the Tools menu and detect "File Options" virtually the bottom of the listing. The Disconnect push button is on the Beginnings tab.
My preferred approach will exist a niggling unlike. I will eventually sync the merged tree up to my main tree in Beginnings.
Make a copy of the tree
You may need several attempts to go the results you lot want. I certainly did!
To avoid having to run more downloads from Ancestry, take a copy of one of the downloaded trees. Use the copy to accept the merged data – if it all goes wrong yous tin can delete this copy and brand a new one.
Position your 2 tree windows
The merge function in RootsMagic is a drag-and-drop thing.
Open the ii tree databases inside RootsMagic into side-by-side windows. The "Tile Vertically" control under the Windows bill of fare will help hither.
Plan your connection point
You accept iii choices when pulling in a new department to your target tree.
You can driblet the section into an empty place in the tree. An easy place is the bottom left corner of the full-blooded view. Simply this new section will be unconnected to the residual of your tree. You'll need to take some further steps to claw it up to the right position.
If you don't have overlapping entries (the same person in both trees), then y'all might target an empty parent position. In the picture below, I'd be dragging in the paternal line for Jason.
I had i overlapping person in my detailed test. In hindsight, information technology may accept been easier to remove one of the pair and cull the prior method of targeting an empty position. When I later ran the "real" merge, I removed overlapping persons from my target tree.
Merely this is how I went about my exam project. I dragged one person to the other and examined my choices in the drag-and-drop screen.
Start the elevate-and-drop from one tree to the other
The drag-and-driblet screen appears when you elevate a person from one tree to a position in the other. You can work 1-past-one with each private, carefully placing the entry into its appropriate slot. At the other cease of the caution spectrum, you tin can specify you want to grab the entire database.
The Elevate and Drop screen gives you lot a lot of options. The best selection may depend on the structure that y'all're moving across. If it'due south entirely an ancestral line, and so go for the "Ancestors" selection.
This webinar from RootsMagic helped, only it yet took a chip of trial-and-mistake on my part to figure out the right option for what I wanted to reach.
I had one scenario where I wanted to grab ancestors, descendants, and spouses. After a few different options left people behind, I chose the terminal detail: Let me select people from a list. This gives you a list of every person in the source database and lets yous tick who you desire to bring over. It's a reasonable choice with a small tree.
When you click "OK" on the screen, the merge process starts.
Verify your local merged tree in RootsMagic
RootsMagic volition give y'all a count of how many people were copied.
If this number doesn't lucifer your expectations, you probably chose the incorrect selection on the Elevate and Drop screen. But don't despair: this is why we're working on a copy of the target database. But delete the mess you've fabricated (i.due east. delete the target database) and have a new re-create.
But the copied number is but the start of verification. You should bank check for other problems.
One common problem is introducing duplicate entries in your tree. Now would be a expert time to run the indistinguishable check!
When yous're satisfied with your RootsMagic tree, it's time to send the changes up to the Ancestry website. You now have two choices: upload to a new tree or sync your changes into your existing continued tree.
Option 1: Upload to a new tree
This is the simpler arroyo. Your tree must exist disconnected from Ancestry. When you click the TreeShare button, y'all can launch the upload process. This creates a new tree on Ancestry.
Selection 2: Sync to an existing tree
When I wanted to merge into my main Ancestry tree, I fabricated a copy of my local version. It took me several attempts to piece of work out the best path. I found that deleting overlapping entries made life easier, merely y'all may find a different approach works best for you lot.
Once I was satisfied with my tests, I ran the merge against my synchronized tree. I made certain that the source tree had no Ancestry record sources (see an earlier department).
So I launched TreeShare and set the option to show only changed people. And then I worked through the thirty new people, adding them one-past-one to the online tree.
This adds the persons along with media that you uploaded to the tree.
As I too had many Beginnings tape sources in the source tree on Ancestry, I had a follow-upwardly chore to search for these records again and salve them to my main tree.
You may wonder if this procedure is any better than using Ancestry's "Save To Tree" characteristic? I found it to be more efficient. The chief advantage is that it profoundly reduces your interaction with the Ancestry website – which tin can exist slow at various times.
Source: https://www.dataminingdna.com/how-to-merge-ancestry-trees-with-rootsmagic-and-fix-the-problems/
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