Go direct to a specific ancestor rather than tabbing through all the generations to find them

LegacyUser

Julie Sheridan said: Is there any way that we can have a sort of 'search for' box somewhere on the Me and My Ancestors tab so that, instead of having to start at the beginning of the pedigree chart (ie with my own name) and keep tabbing until I find the person I want, I can just type their name in and it will automatically go to their name on my family tree (or at least the first one with that name that it comes to, if there are more than one generation of people with the same name)?

LegacyUser

Cathy Anderegg said: If you are still on new.familysearch.org, on the Home page, right under Me and My Ancestors is a menu tab labeled Search for Ancestors, or at the top is Search. Click on either one of these links, lets you can search for an ancestor by name or by personal identifier number. Thus avoiding going through the pedigree.
If you are on FamilySearch Family Tree, at the top see the word Search. Clicking on that link lets you do the same thing: search for ancestor by name of number.

LegacyUser

Kelly Sexton said: When I want to "find" an ancestor, I type in the name and have to go through the list to find the direct relative I am looking for. Unless I am missing something, there is nothing that does what Julie Sheridan and I are looking for. Even just an alphabetical list of people in my direct line would help!

LegacyUser

Justin Masters said: If you're trying to find someone you recently worked on, there's the "Recents" link near the top of every page, which lets you go to the last 50 or so of the people you worked on, or to add an unrelated person.

If you want to do a search, there's the search link near the top of every page, and you can hover over it, and select Family Tree, and then either do a search that way, or select Find by ID and use the the FSID # to find them.

If you're looking for people in your reserved temple list, you can select Temple at the top of every page, then All Reserved, and then start to type a name and it will find it for you.

LegacyUser

Kelly Sexton said: Thank you for the feedback! When I search under Family Tree, MY person might be 3rd or 4th down the list. If I am searching under that tab, I only want people from my tree. I tried to keep a list of the FSID #, but not for cousins, aunts and uncles. I am sure I have missed many direct line numbers, too, lol.

LegacyUser

Justin Masters said: Another option is to just write down a few sporadically from your tree, and then jump directly to them, then navigate around to who you want. I find the Recents works well, and I often use a normal search with just enough info to make them somewhat unique and then go right to them that way. (ie, born in a certain town on a particular year.)

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: This may not be useful for everyone, but I use it all the time as it is excellent for me and works great. I use Ancestral Quest as I work in FS. If I want to go to someone that I've worked on before and have a link set up, I just open the Name List in AQ (which can be sorted alphabetically, by date, by location, etc.) I select the name I want and then "View Person in FamilySearch" which then instantly brings that person's page up on the FS website.

LegacyUser

Kelly Sexton said: I actually thought about this last night. But, I am newly disabled and cannot buy anything until disability comes through. *sigh* Until then, I just have to do better at keeping my handwritten list, lol. Thank you for the great suggestion, though!

LegacyUser

Justin Masters said: Both AQ and Roots magic have this kind of option, and I believe both offer a free version to download.

LegacyUser

Kelly Sexton said: Thank you! It never dawned on me that there would be decent free apps, having been down that road before, lol. I will definitely check into them!!

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Yes, there are three fully certified family tree management programs: Ancestral Quest, Legacy, and Roots Magic. All three have their fans. And all three have free versions that meet the fully certified criteria. You can find them in the "Solutions Gallery" (link at the bottom of this and most FamilySearch pages).

LegacyUser

Ron Tanner said: Every person in Family Tree can be bookmarked in your browser. Create a bookmark folder and then bookmark the person and put it into your folder. Bookmarks can also be sorted so you could find it alphabetically.

LegacyUser

Kelly Sexton said: Thank you, Tom! I have downloaded Ancestry Quest and will play with it some before adding too much to it. Of course, I already want the paid version.

LegacyUser

Kelly Sexton said: Wow! Hadn't even thought about this! Great suggestion!

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: There are several ways to "skin a cat" so to speak. If you put a watch on anyone, you can then go to your watch list (which is also sortable in a couple of different ways) and just click on the name you want there. It will open their person profile page directly. Since anyone that I have done significant validation and research on is on my watch list, this is another convenient way of getting to PIDs quickly.