Searching and Navigating with my tree

LegacyUser

Hannah Ruth DeForest said: I have had reason to search just my tree for a particular person many times. I'd really like to be able to search by last name or even full name and have it bring up results from only my tree. If I can't remember a name or I find someone similar in a record that I think might be a match but can't remember just which line they are in I want to be able to look them up. We could really use a way to find and navigate to someone without doing it manually up a line or having the results from the whole family search database show up in the search. I know you all are working hard and this functionality seems a lot more simple than it probably is! But, please make it a priority! Thank you!

LegacyUser

Carol Jo Menges said: These are among the reasons why I like to sync in and out of FamilySearch to my RootsMagic database. The collaborative tree of FamilySearch is a truly great thing, but I often need to be able to see at a glance the relationships, especially while looking through my RootsMagic Index of names. It's very helpful to me to work both databases, and to add to and fix either one whenever necessary. Syncing into one or the other, back and forth, is a miracle in itself, especially for the purpose of this work we're charged to do.

FamilySearch isn't meant to be set up to see "only [your] tree". Once you add people to it, the names become a part of the whole of the human race. There is no "your tree" there. Your people are a part of everyone else's trees, and the whole becomes one tree--albeit with a bazillion fixes and additions to be made. That's what is sometimes so disturbing to contributors, to find that out, and that you won't be the one most in charge of whoever you've entered, except for living people. Not even a nanosecond beyond your typing them in. It's just not set up to work that way. We *all* really are connected to each other. The more we do this work, the more I am reconvinced of this. It is no academic exercise to me anymore. The proof of it is in front of us continually.

So I suggest you keep a separate yours-only tree in a personal database, one that has simple access into and out of FamilySearch, Ancestry, My Heritage, and another I can't remember off the top of my head.

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Remember that "Your Tree" is actually the single shared FamilySearch FamilyTree with over 1.3 billion names in it. Walking through that whole tree "of yours" looking for a name could be a problem :-)

How about the ability to simply have a note of some type that has a list of records that you are interested in that you could click on an go there directly? We used to have that--it was called a "watch list" and was used for just such things.

That has been changed now and is now been given a rather confusing name. From the top left of a FS web page, select the "Family Tree" menu and go the the "Following" menu item. That will bring up a list of all recent changes to items on your "Following" list (i.e., when you select "Following" it doesn't really take you to your "Following list", instead it takes you to a "recent changes to your following list" type list)

At this point go and select the "Following" button. *THAT* will take you to your actual "Following" list where you can pick a name. Unfortunately, this list is incredibly clunky as you can only scroll down a short ways before having to hit "More" to bring up other entries. Heaven forbid that you need to find anyone with a name starting with "S" or some other letter in the last part of the alphabet!

Also, if we had a decent To-Do list with active links, you could add the names you are currently working on there. That ability was requested over 2 years ago as item #2 of an 11 item list. Although FS is aware of the requests, nothing has yet materialized:
https://getsatisfaction.com/familysea...

One last way to deal with this, which is how I handle it, is to get one of the certified PC programs (I use Ancestral Quest). Any record in FS that I have worked on and want to track is linked to the equivalent record in my AQ database. AQ has a feature where I can view a list of everyone in my database. I can filter that list, I can sort it on any criteria I want (e.g., sort them by name and location of cemetery), and then by selecting one of the records in the list, with a single click I can tell it to go to that very same record in FS and it will open the FS record in my browser! And this all with a free tool (Ancestral Quest Basic).

So since many folks aren't set up to do things that way, It would be really nice if FS *FIXED* the "Following" list so that it was more useful, and/or upgraded the To-Do List feature to be more useful as well

LegacyUser

Merlin R Kitchen said: I also use Ancestral Quest. You can download a free copy from ancquest.com.
You can add a deceased parent or a deceased grandparent. Then with a fairly simple procedure link your deceased person to the record of that person in FamilySearch Family Tree (FSFT).
Then with another fairly simple procedure, tell your program to download from FSFT x number of generations of ancestors (which can be "your tree.") It is also possible to start with any ancestor and download x number of generations of that person's decendants.
When you want to look for any person which has any particular piece of information,such as "find all the people in my database that were married in the county of Adair, Missouri: In my estimation, the advanced search capability of Ancestral Quest is phenominal.
I believe that Roots Magic has these same capabilities.