familysearch tree

Introduction to FamilySearch family tree

What you will see when you sign into FamilySearch Tree

On the far left is the FamilySearch.org Logo

Clicking on this link will take you to the main page from anywhere it is visible.

Top right are three tabs:

Message 

The in-house message system for communicating with others working in the tree.

Volunteer

Shows opportunities for service such as indexing.

Get Help

Links to resources available to increase knowledge of the program and how it works. There are contact numbers to talk live with knowledgable people and also a chat line to get online help. The getting started tab in this drop down has information for those who are new and need initial help with the tree. There are excellent videos here and also in the learning center.

The other tabs on header are:

 Family Tree    Search    Memories    Indexing    Temple 

Each of these has a drop box with choices and will be explained in detail.

Also on the main screen on the right hand panel are:

 Recommended Tasks 

which are research suggestions on your family.

Recent people  

List of recently viewed people. Clicking on these links will take you back to that person. This is very helpful in quickly locating where you were last working.

and a to-do list for research notes and objectives.

Links to partner sites:

ANCESTRY       MYHERITAGE       FINDMYPAST
When doing research on family lines these sites have different approaches and records but some records are available on multiple sites.

This is an explanation of the tabs mentioned above on the main page:

Family Tree
There are five categories in the drop down box:

• Tree - Clicking here will take you to the pedigree page. You can view your tree in Landscape, Portrait with 5 generations, a Fan Chart with 6 generations will show where there are missing lines and Descendancy views. These different views can be very helpful in completing your family records. The Landscape view is a pedigree chart showing 4 generations with birth, death and marriage info and tagged pictures which have been added. There are options for what shows here. The view can be dragged and changed in size. The next two generations can be viewed by clicking on the arrows. Each couple is listed together, with an arrow to drop down children list. Clicking on any person listed will take you to their detail page.
• Person - Takes you to a persons details page. This is the area where dates, places, relationships and where most activity on families is conducted. 
• Find - This will give a page where you can search for anyone in the entire tree by name or PID, the unique number given to everyone in the tree. Before adding a "new" person to the tree, this should be checked to see if they are already there.
• Lists - Individuals on your watch list.
• Family booklet - Way of getting started with your family tree by adding family members in an easy to understand format.

Search

There are six categories in the drop down box:

• Records - This will give you access to the original records that have been gathered for many years. These have included civil and church records from all over the world that were microfilmed and now are filmed by digital cameras by world wide crews. They were then indexed by volunteers to make them searchable online. This is an ongoing effort and new records are added every day.
• Family tree - This is the same search as Find.
• Genealogies - Access to genealogies that have been submitted for years by individuals.
• Catalog - Takes you to the site for the catalog for the Family History Library in Salt lake City.
• Books - Printed materials that have been digitized and available online.
• Research wiki - A wiki that contains helps and sources that can be used in research.

Memories
There are four categories in the drop down box:

• Overview - Explanation of memories and how to add them. Memories are Photos and Documents.
• Gallery - All the memories you have added to the tree.
• People - Pictures that have been tagged to individuals in the tree. Tagging identifies the picture and ties it to specific individuals in the tree.
• Find - Search for specific memories in your tree.

Indexing
There are four categories in the drop down box:

• Overview - Explanation of the indexing program.
• Web indexing - Portal to begin or continue indexing records.
• Find a project - Projects that are currently available to index.
• Help - Answers to questions that come up while indexing.

Person Page

This is the work area on the tree. Information on living people is only available to the person who added it. In order for info on living people to appear it needs to be added such as parents and grandparents, if they are living. Spouse info will also need to be added if you want the complete pedigree to show. It will only need to be added once. All the information on a person and family are accessed from here. The headings that appear here are as follows:


Details - This page is where a person's life is displayed as follows:

1. Life Sketch - Brief overview of person's life events, such as given in an obituary.

2.Vitals - Birth, death and burial dates and places are recorded here.
3.Other Information - Other useful information is contained here. Residence information from sources is placed here by the program and can also be added manually. There are numerous other items that can be chosen from a dialog box and added as needed such as alternate names.
4.Family Members - This area shows three generations: The person whose page this is, is bolded and parents with siblings on the right side and spouses and children on the left side.

 Time Line - Shows related facts on a vertical line


Sources - The source information that has been gathered for this person.
 When a source is added it is placed here by the program automatically. It is easy to add sources. Even when there are multiple persons on a record, such as a census record. It is possible to add the source to all of them from the same screen. When there are multiple spouses it is a little more complicated. You need to change the main person or the spouse to get the record attached to all the people listed, such as stepchildren.

Collaborate - Two categories are listed here: 

1. Discussions - Place for conversations on collaborating on this person's records.
2. Notes - Place for notes on person

Memories - This is a link to Memories.

Also on this page on the right panel are these Boxes:

1. Research Help - Suggestions and possible problems with the data are shown here. The hints that are given are from records that are possible sources for this person. Clicking on the link will take you to a page where the source can be viewed and linked if it applies. Only three will be displayed but the complete list can be shown by clicking on Show Details.
2. Record Search - Link to extracted records that can searched online from FamilySearch and the three other partner sites. These are available at no cost to LDS members. It is possible to go directly to each site from this page and back again without losing where you were, because the other sites will open in a new browser window. Some info will be the same but the formats and search engines will bring up different records, which makes it valuable to use them all. The vital info on the person you are working on will be automatically used in the search.
3. Print - Various options to print the vital information on a person or family.
4. Latest Changes - This is a change log that shows all the transactions and who made them from the time the data was transferred from NFS. These may be very short or many page long, and can be useful to see the history of the records.
5. Tools - Living persons have a different choice here. For deceased persons possible duplicates shows how many the program has identified and makes it possible to combine two records that are the same person with two different PID numbers. This searches for duplicates in the records but only finds those that are very closely matched. The best method to insure that there are no duplicates is to use the Find function as explained above. This is quite broad and will show many more potential matches. You can  look through the list and see if there are any that could be potential duplicates. If so, you can copy the PID number for the other record and use the merge by PID number option on the possible duplicates page. Clicking on PID # will give a box to copy PID # so it can be pasted in another spot such as merging by ID #. There is also a link for merging by PID # on the tools area without going to possible duplicate first.