family index

LegacyUser

Elizabeth Ann Lindsey said: I would like a way to make an index of all the people in my family tree like it does in the path program. It would make looking up and verifying people so much faster.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Welcome to the community-powered feedback forum for FamilySearch. FamilySearch personnel read every discussion thread and may or may not respond as their time permits. We all share an active interest in using the resources of this site and as users, we have various levels of knowledge and experience and do our best to help each other with concerns, issues, and/or questions.

FamilySearch FamilyTree is a single tree for all of mankind. It is not a group of associated and interconnected trees. This is not unique -- at least two other sites have this kind of tree, although I have not used them.

Because of the nature of the tree, separating out your ancestral lines is something that is quite computer-intensive and therefore is not done at this time. Maybe in the future, a feature like this will become available.

In the meantime, there is a solution.

There are three fully certified family tree management programs (Ancestral Quest, Legacy, and Roots Magic). All three have free versions that have a reduced set of features, but for most people, the free version works for them.

Each has the ability to download your ancestral lines and their descendants. The paid versions are a little more flexible in this area as to what they can do, but I'm told the free versions also can do this.

They are listed in the Solutions Gallery (Link at the bottom of this and most FamilySearch.org pages). I happen to use Ancestral Quest because it is the successor to the old PAF program (written by the same author). On the Ancestral Quest site is a comparison chart between the free and paid versions. Also, the PAF version can be added to the chart to see the progression from the old PAF program through the free version to the paid version as far as features are concerned.

Because all three of the programs have free versions, you can try them out to see which one you like the best and go from there. All three have capabilities beyond that which FamilySearch offers and you can keep the local file and the linked persons in FamilySearch FamilyTree synchronized.