6 Powerful Features of Family Tree Maker

I bought my first computer—an actual IBM PC—in 1985 and upgraded from DOS to Windows 3.0 in 1990. I remember how juvenile early software programs looked. My first version of Family Tree Maker had that 1990s look when I got it in 2002.

Today, Family Tree Maker has an excellent, robust user interface. (See "Comparing Family Tree Programs Is an Eye Opener".) Here's a look at 6 FTM features I've found to be a big help in building your family tree. If you're using another program, does it have all these features?

Most family tree software programs have more features than you may realize. These 6 features of Family Tree Maker are genealogy game-changers.

1. Color Coding

I first used FTM's color-coding feature to distinguish the 4 main branches of my family tree. I went to each of my 4 grandparents and in one click, gave each one and all their direct ancestors a color. I made Grandpa Adamo and his ancestors green and Grandma Mary and her ancestors blue. I made Grandpa Pietro and his ancestors yellow and Grandma Lucy and her ancestors pink. My grandparents Pietro and Lucy were 3rd cousins. Their shared ancestors have both yellow and pink bars beneath their names.

These colors come in handy when I'm working on an individual whose relationship to me is unclear. When I view the person in FTM and see green, blue, yellow, or pink ancestors, I know exactly which ancestors we share.

For more ways to use color coding, see "Using Color to Understand Your Family's Last Names".

2. Filters

There are a few other groups for which I was using color coding. Then I realized there was a better way.

Family Tree Maker lets you create custom filters so you can display only a select group of people in your index. When your family tree gets pretty big, this can be a big help. What I didn't know at first is that you can assign a color code to everyone in a particular filter. You don't have to add the color to a person or family unit one at a time.

Here's why that's so helpful. I have 246 people in my family tree who have no direct relationship to me. Some share my Grandma Mary's last name, and they come from the same little town as her parents. But a lack of vital records means I can't figure out how we're related. At first I was color coding unrelated people in red. But if I discovered their connection, it was a bit tedious to remove the red color from the correct people. Now if new research turns them into relatives, I remove them from the Unrelated filter and the red color is gone.

In fact, I recently solved a mystery that turned 14 unrelated people into relatives. You never know when you'll find the answer to those unanswered questions. Now my Unrelated filter contains only 232 people.

I've also created filters for:

• Everyone in my family tree with an Ahnentafel fact (more on Custom Facts in a moment). This restricts FTM's index to only my direct ancestors.
• All the Italians I know emigrated to Brazil. This helps me connect to the many people in Brazil with my last name. This filter uses a blue color code.
• All the DNA matches I've been able to place in my family tree. This filter uses a purple color code.
• Actor Tony Danza's direct ancestors. (See "Apply Your Genealogy Superpower to Other Families".)
• My Uncle Kenny's direct ancestors. He's my mother's sister's husband with roots in the same town as my father. I'm hoping to spot an ancestor overlap some day. This filter uses an orange color code.

To add a color to everyone in a filter, find Smart Filters in the lower left corner of FTM's Tree tab. Choose Manage Filters from the menu beside Smart Filters. Select the right filter and click a color. Done!

3. Custom Facts

When I learned about Ahnentafel numbers, I needed a way to add the right number to each ancestor in my family tree. FTM doesn't have an Ahnentafel fact, so I created it. (Discover the value of Ahnentafel numbers in "3 Things to Do with Ahnentafel Numbers".)

Over the years I've needed other custom facts, too. My husband's family is Japanese and from California. The U.S. government forced then into internment camps during World War II. There are documents for these people on Ancestry.com, so I needed a way to record dates and places. I created a custom fact called Internment. There's also at least one guy in my family tree with documents about his jail time. I created another Custom Fact called Imprisonment.

To find out how to add a custom fact in Family Tree Maker, see "How to Add or Delete Custom Facts in Your Family Tree".

4. Undocumented Facts Report

For months now, I've been creating source citations for the majority of people in my family tree. I knew this would be a huge task, so I started with the people who have no source citations at all.

Using Family Tree Analyzer, I generated a spreadsheet of people without source citations. I sorted the spreadsheet to put people with a blood relation to me at the top. They're my first priority. To find out how to create this spreadsheet, see "2 Keys to Tackling a Big Family Tree Project".

Working through everyone in this big spreadsheet is step one. Then I'll use a Family Tree Maker feature to see what I've missed. FTM has a report within the Source Reports category called Undocumented Facts. This will help me find people who have at least one source citation, but are missing others.

When the time comes, I'll export that report to Excel so I can again work on my closer relations first. I know there will be a lot of facts in that report that I'm not going to source:

• I don't include a source for a person's sex. Unnecessary.
• I can't cite a source for more recent events, like the birth of my niece's children, or even for my cousins' marriages.

I'll have to filter out and delete from the spreadsheet people whose facts I'm not going to cite. Meanwhile, I'll keep chipping away at the spreadsheet of "sourceless" people. I need to reduce the undocumented facts as much as I can before running that FTM report. Otherwise, with 81,492 people in my family tree, generating the report will take forever. In fact, I know it will. I'll have to generate the report in batches. I can choose one strategic person and run the report only on their extended family, not the entire tree. Mo' people, mo' problems.

5. Relationship Calculator

When someone writes to me because they found their ancestors in my family tree, I go right to this tool. FTM's Relationship Calculator gives me a clear understanding of a complex relationship.

When I heard from a man last week, I looked at his grandparents in my family tree. I used the Relationship Calculator to see who our common ancestors were. Then I turned to my relationship calculator spreadsheet (not part of FTM—I should have called it something else!) to see my relationship to the man who wrote to me. The spreadsheet says he's my 4th cousin once removed. And FTM's Relationship Calculator makes it clear who our shared ancestors are.

When you use the FTM tool, don't stop at the word description of your relationship. Click the View Relationship Chart button for a clear visual of the relationship. For an example of the Relationship Calculator tool in action, see "How to See Your Cousin Connections More Clearly". To download your own copy of the relationship calculator spreadsheet, see "Which Side the Cousin Falls On is Key".

6. Find and Replace

Anytime you use the find and replace feature of any software, you have to be careful. You may wind up changing part of a word, or even part of a name. Say I want to change an Italian man's occupation from "ferraro" to "ferraro (blackmith)". I must remember to make that change case sensitive. Otherwise anyone in my tree with the last name Ferraro will become ferraro (blackmith)!

The Find and Replace option is in the Edit menu of Family Tree Maker. I did use it to include English translations for the Italian occupations in my family tree. At least one of these changes went wrong. See "How to Handle Foreign Words in Your Family Tree" for other uses of Find and Replace.

You can restrict a Find and Replace operation by selecting or not selecting:

• Match case (change ferraro, not Ferraro)
• Find whole words only (don't change a word if it's part of another word)
• Use wildcards (*?); this could be trouble, so use with care.

You can also tell FTM only to make a change if it finds the text in:

• Facts
• Media
• Notes
• Tasks
• Sources

There's a final option of Places, but it's unavailable to me.

There have been a couple of times when I realized I was using the wrong spelling of a last name. For instance, I found the name Aucone in several old vital records, but I thought it said Ancone. I searched for the name in the Italian White Pages and the Cognomix website. Now I know Aucone is the correct spelling.

Before I do a find and replace, I have to think. Could another name in my family tree contain the same letters as Ancone? To be safe, I can select the Match case option to change all instances of Ancone to Aucone.

---

Sometimes you don't realize you need a software feature until you read about ways to use it. I hope this article encourages you to dig deeper and explore your family tree software.

Visualization Tool Highlights a Family Tree Surprise

During RootsTech 2021 I typed and saved this note: Go to learnforeverlearn.com/ancestors to visualize endogamy. I know I tried it in 2021. Yet this time, it had a dramatic revelation for me.

All you do is go to the website linked above and upload a GEDCOM file exported from your family tree. You'll see the results in seconds. If your tree has pedigree collapse—ancestors with more than one direct ancestral relationship to you—you'll see pairs of lines that don't go straight up. They'll be horizontal or diagonal. (See The DNA Problem We Aren't Talking About.)

Wait a minute. I have TWO sets of double ancestors? This free tool doesn't lie.

The website will show each direct ancestor in your family tree as a pink or blue dot. (Pink for maternal, blue for paternal.) Hover over any dot to see:

• The ancestor's name and lifespan
• Their birthplace
• How much DNA they contributed to you (by percentage)
• Their relationship(s) to you—the root person of the family tree.

When I hover over the pink dot at the apex of one of my horizontal lines, I see Cristina Iapozzuto. Under relationship it says she's my 4th great grandmother "twice." And I knew this. Cristina Iapozzuto married Francesco Iamarino. Two of their sons were Giuseppantonio and Pasquale. Giuseppantonio's great grandson is my paternal grandfather, Pietro Iamarino. Pasquale's great granddaughter is my paternal grandmother, Lucy Iamarino. I learned in 2007 that Pietro and Lucy were 3rd cousins. I'll forever wonder why no one in my family knew this—especially when they had the same last name.

Since Cristina Iapozzuto and Francesco Iamarino are my 4th great grandparents twice, they each have two different Ahnentafel numbers. Ahnentafel is a numbering system that gives a unique number to each of your direct ancestors. (See A Roadmap for Your Genealogy Research.) If they're double ancestors, they get 2 different Ahnentafel numbers. So Cristina gets Ahnentafel #65 and #81. I list my double ancestors twice in my Ahnentafel spreadsheet, once for each number. I use a special color of orange to highlight them.

An Unexpected Double Relationship

But the second example of endogamy in my family tree had escaped me until now. Salvatore Piacquadio (born 1716) and Donata diRuccia (born 1718) are my 6th great grandparents AND my 7th great grandparents. Their son Giorgio is my 6th great grandfather, an ancestor of my grandmother Lucy Iamarino. Their son Pietro is my 5th great grandfather, also an ancestor of my grandmother Lucy Iamarino.

My huge family tree has tons of multiple relationships. That's thanks to countless marriages within small towns. (See The Method to My Genealogy Madness.) Because it's so big, I'd overlooked the uniqueness of this particular family unit.

Family Tree Maker knew they were my double ancestors. But it took another tool to make me see it.

The signs were there in my Family Tree Maker file, but I'd missed them. The easiest sign to spot required only one thing: I needed to lay eyes on this family. If I had, I'd have seen that 2 of Salvatore and Donata's children had the yellow arrow that says they're my direct ancestor. But I didn't see it. That's why this online endogamy tool is such a gift. A free gift.

If your family tree has a good number of generations, I urge you to try this online endogamy tool. The tool has many functions. You can read about them at http://familytreeviz.blogspot.com/2015/09/features-of-family-tree-visualization.html.

7 Days to a Better Family Tree

Each week I offer advice on how to fortify your family tree. But because my pet genealogy project is so massive and enjoyable, I rarely make the time to follow my own advice.

Today I'm offering a method that'll help us make noticeable progress on our family tree goals. The idea is simple. The next 7 days you decide to work on your family tree, pick one of these goals and work on only that one thing. No distractions allowed.

With any of these items, keep track of where you left off so you can return to complete the job.

Here are some of the tasks I've been ignoring for a while. What would you add to, or substitute in this list?

Day 1: Create charts to show you who's missing.

When I wanted to search for the eldest ancestors on any given line of my family tree, I created a fan chart. This showed me exactly which set of ancestors to focus on. See "Search the Treetops to Focus Your Genealogy Research."

Or make your Ahnentafel chart to see how many direct ancestors you've found, and who's missing. See "How to Visualize Your Ancestor-Finding Progress."

Spend a day trying to find those missing direct ancestors in your family tree.

And of course there's the priceless (and free) Family Tree Analyzer. See "How to Plug the Holes in Your Family Tree" and learn how to use FTA to focus on who and what your family tree is missing.

Day 2: Go after missing censuses.

When they released the 1950 U.S. census in April, I got busy. I searched for and downloaded documents for my closest relatives. Then I moved on to higher priority projects.

We can gather missing censuses more thoroughly if we stick to a plan. My plan hinges on my document tracker. It's a spreadsheet where I mark down every document image I've saved to my family tree. (Download a copy for yourself at the bottom of "Why Use a Genealogy Document Tracker?")

When your document tracker is ready, you can see which census years are missing. Scan your tracker to see which families you have in the 1940 census that you need to find in the 1950 census.

Still having trouble locating some families? See "Try This Tool to Find a Missing Census" and adjust for 1950.

Day 3: Digitize and organize your family photos.

I was doing a nice job of enhancing, labeling, and storing my digitized family photos. (See "It's Time to Tame Your Family Photos.") Then it got away from me.

We should all have digitized versions of our physical photographs. Scanners are not expensive, but you can do a decent job with your cellphone, too. But please take the photo out of its frame or sleeve so there's no reflection or glare. And take the photo straight-on, not at a distorted angle.

Read the steps I take with digitized photos in "How to Improve Old Photos and Genealogy Documents." Once your digitized files are in shape, "It's Time to Organize All Your Family Photos." Pick a storage strategy for both physical and digitized photos. Make sure they're safe, and that you can find the ones you want easily.

Day 4: Add well-crafted source citations.

My family tree is a beast. I have 44,000 people, most of whom are Italians from the 1700s and 1800s. Because I'm adding up to 300 Italians a day, I'm skipping their source citations. "Sacrilege!" you say. Not really. I know I can easily find my source for any facts on these people. I'll add them if someone is interested in a branch.

But that should not be true for anyone from the 1900s or later. In my tree, those are the Americans with a good amount of documentation. In "Taming a Tangle of Source Citations," I detailed my process for making high-quality source citations.

The best way to tackle this goal is one document type at a time. For example, I can view the media gallery in Family Tree Maker and choose to see only the census forms. Then I can see which ones need improvement and do the work.

Find the documents and facts in your family tree that need a proper source citation.

Day 5: Search for missing vital records.

One of my favorite new resources is a treasure for my Bronx-based family. The New York City Municipal Archives finally made their vital records available online. And it's free. My family settled in the Bronx in 1898 and stayed there. There's so much for me to harvest from the Archives' website.

I began downloading these records by searching my tree for the notes I'd made. When I know the document number for someone's vital record, I add it to the details of that fact. (Ancestry.com indexes often include the document number.)

Finding the document number, place, and year can lead you to the vital records you need.

To be thorough, I could start with my 2nd great grandfather, Antonio Saviano. He's my first immigrant ancestor. If I go through his descendants one-by-one, I'll see exactly who needs a document from the Archives' site.

Or I could scan the birth column of my document tracker. The Archives' site says they have:

• Bronx birth certificates ending in 1909
• Bronx death certificates through 1948
• Bronx marriage certificates ending in 1937.

The years vary for the different boroughs of NYC.

If I filter my document tracker to show people who fall into those years, I can find their certificates one at a time. For your family tree, there will be other resources to search. It's a matter of finding the people, and performing that search.

Day 6: Categorize your DNA matches.

DNA websites offer tools to help you label your DNA matches and add notes. On AncestryDNA, I created 6 categories I can add to any match:

• Both sides, because some matches are related to both my parents
• Father's side, for people connected only to Dad and me
• Mother's side, for people connected only to Mom and me
• Figured out, for matches I've identified
• Needs work, for matches I should be able to figure out, but somehow cannot
• Extremely low match, for people I wanted to preserve when Ancestry was cutting out matches below 9cMs or so.

Adding these categories and notes, helps me understand who I'm looking at. At any time, I can view particular categories. I like to regularly view only my unviewed matches to see who's new. I know exactly who one of them is, so I'll add him to Mother's side with a note. He's my 3C1R.

Day 7: Check your notes for unfollowed leads.

I'm sure everyone who works on their family tree keeps notes somewhere. A paper notebook, OneNote, a text file, or a pile of papers. Save day 7 to re-read your saved notes. Do some notes no longer apply? Throw them away. Can you complete other tasks because new document collections are available? Go do that!

What gem of a lead did you leave for yourself, and forget about? See "How Many Genealogy Gems Are You Sitting On?"

Now all that remains is to follow through and do this! Yes, I'm saying that to myself as much as to you.

Using Color to Understand Your Family's Last Names

I have zero regrets about my time-consuming family tree research. The countless hours spent downloading and renaming every available vital record? Worth it. All the spreadsheets for tracking my projects? Worth it. I see the benefits of my work every day.

Why Use Color-Coding?

My latest project (and it's a whopper!) makes me realize how much I love the color-coding feature of Family Tree Maker. It's been around for at least 2 years, and I borrowed the idea to use on 2 of my favorite genealogy spreadsheets:

• the grandparent/Ahnentafel chart
• the surname chart

In Family Tree Maker (FTM), I wanted a visual way to distinguish my 4 main branches—1 for each grandparent. Choosing each grandparent one at a time, I:

• clicked the Color Coding button
• assigned a color to the grandparent and their direct ancestors:
  • yellow for my paternal grandfather
  • pink for my paternal grandmother
  • green for my maternal grandfather
  • blue for my maternal grandmother

See if your family tree software has a color-coding/tagging function and start reaping the benefits.

Now I can see right away if someone in my family tree is my direct ancestor. And I can see which of my grandparents descends from them. Better still, since Dad's parents were 3rd cousins, I have a bunch of double ancestors. They're recognizable because they have both yellow and pink colors.

Other Uses for Color-Coding

It makes sense to use the same colors in my other charts because then I know exactly who's who.

In my grandparent/Ahnentafel chart, I filled in all the numbers and colors ahead of time. (You can download one for free.) Having the numbers in place made it very simple to put a newly found ancestor's name where it belongs. And the colors keep my branches straight. That's very important when I have so many repeated last names in my tree.

When it comes to my double ancestors, I enter them in two places in the Ahnentafel chart, and I give them a blended color. They are orange, a combination of yellow and pink.

You can expand the color-coding concept to your other family tree tools.

In my surname chart, I added a tally to show how many times each of the 115 last names appears among my direct ancestors. The winner is the name Zeolla belonging to 17 of my direct ancestors.

Then I added color blocks to show which branch(es) contains each name. Some names belong to only one branch. That's the case for all but one name on my maternal grandmother's line. Except for one, all her ancestors' last names are unique to her branch of my family tree. Three of my ancestral surnames, including Zeolla, belong on 3 of my branches. Several other names belong on my 2 paternal branches.

Reaping the Benefits

I mentioned above that my latest project is a whopper. It's the big one. The one I've been working up to for years. And it could take me years to complete. But I'm absolutely loving it!

Two weeks ago I wrote about my plan for this project (see "Laying the Foundation for a Solid Family Tree"). Ever since then I've been adding about 100 relatives to my tree each day. It has been amazing. I'm reviewing every vital record from Grandpa's hometown and finding missing details, like:

• exact dates for births, deaths, and marriages
• parentage that proves 2 same-named people are the same person
• early deaths that connect to a family from the town's 1742 census.

It's wildly rewarding. In 2 weeks I've completed all the records for 1809–1816. That doesn't sound like much, but it's the vital records for 2,730 people. Even though I'm only up to line 2,504 in a 38,351-line spreadsheet, I'm chomping at the bit to move on to another town.

As I go through the records, adding and updating people, I may find that a person's previously unknown parents are already in my tree. When I add the child and see their ancestors' color-coding, I'm thrilled! I've taken someone who was a dead end and turned them into my true cousin.

Three weeks ago I wrote about "How to Find the True Cousins in Your Family Tree." My true cousin count was 6,095. Since then I've added many more. Each day I'm turning relationships like "1st cousin 3x removed of husband of aunt" into actual blood relatives. It's so gratifying.

The only other color-coding I'm using in Family Tree Maker is purple for DNA matches. What other types of relationships would you color code?

Keep These Genealogy Resources Always Within Reach

Our genealogy research evolves over time. And we change our methods as we expand our family tree. I've gotten to a point where there are certain resources I must have handy as I work on my tree.

Here are 7 of my most-needed resources. Because of my heritage, some of my tools are Italian-specific. But I'm sure there are similar resources for your heritage.

1. Google Translate

After years of Italian research, I understand all the important genealogy words. Months, numbers, relationship words, and more. But sometimes a record mentions a mother-in-law (suocera), brother-in-law (cognato), or some other word I don't know or can't remember.

When that happens, I rely on Google Translate. It's critical when I'm faced with a free-form document explaining how a soldier died in the war. Or how someone died in a tavern while passing through another town.

I keep Google Translate on the always visible bookmarks toolbar of my web browser.

2. Google Maps and Bing Maps

I need both map websites on my bookmarks toolbar. When I'm reading an old vital record, and it includes a street name, I want to see the place! Google Street View is wonderful for seeing the house or the neighborhood. But Bing Maps does a better job of showing every last street name in my ancestral Italian towns.

Keep both types of maps handy. Each one has its benefits, and you'll get more value by using both.

If I'm looking up a street in Italy, I locate it on Bing Maps, then find the same, unmarked location on Google Maps. Now I can use Google Street View for a better perspective.

For U.S. addresses, Bing Maps includes the county name up at the top. Google Maps makes me read a Wikipedia entry to find the county name. I like how Bing does it.

3. Ancestry and Antenati Websites

Lately I've been searching for missing documents for whoever I'm viewing in my family tree. If I discover that someone born in Italy went to America, I need their immigration record. I go straight to Ancestry.com to find the document.

Let's say I find out that one of my distant cousins in Italy married a woman from another town. I go to the Antenati website and look for his wife's missing birth record.

Both websites are critical to my progress.

4. "Colle Sannita nel 1742"

I'm so lucky to have this book! It's a detailed listing of every family in my Grandpa's hometown in the year 1742. When I'm lucky enough to identify people who were alive in 1742, I can often find them in the book.

When I do, I learn the whole family's names and ages. I learn where they lived, what they did for a living, and what property they owned. The book details more than 500 families. If the publisher ever does the same for my other towns, I'll buy those books in a heartbeat.

A United States equivalent of this book might be land records and wills.

5. Street Name Changes for Grandpa's Hometown

The book about Colle Sannita tells how the ancient street names changed over time. Have you noticed how many European countries have streets named for FDR and JFK? Those weren't the original names.

Keep important notes handy by using the Plans tab of Family Tree Maker.

In Italy, they renamed many streets for Italian heroes (Vittorio Emmanuele, Umberto I, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Count Camillo di Cavour) or for important dates in their history (IV Novembre). I update the old addresses so I know where to visit in Grandpa's town.

I use the Plan tab of Family Tree Maker to keep my list of old street names and modern equivalents handy. When I spot an old street name in a vital record, I click over to my list to see the new name. Using the current street name allows Family Tree Maker to plot it on the map.

6. Translations of Italian Occupation Words

Old Italian vital records may show someone's occupation as something that doesn't translate. That's why I keep a spreadsheet of all the Italian job words I've found, and their English translations. I started by copying an old website that was making the rounds. Then I added more words I found that weren't on that website.

When I need the list, I right-click Excel in my Windows toolbar and choose my Italian occupations file. If you're using foreign-language documents, make a spreadsheet of words that trip you up.

Make sure all your family tree-related files are easy to find when you need them.

7. Grandparent/Ahnentafel Chart

Are you using my grandparent spreadsheet with Ahnentafel numbers in each cell? If so, keep it handy. Any time you discover a new direct ancestor, put them in that chart immediately. Your chart is a great way to really see which direct ancestors' names you're missing.

Each of the tools above is either physically on my desk (the book), or bookmarked on my computer for quick access. Make sure everything you need to forge ahead with your research is as handy as possible.

What are your must-have tools and resources when you're working on your family tree?

4 Problems You Can Fix with Family Tree Analyzer

Want to find mistakes you didn't know you made in your family tree? Launch the free software called Family Tree Analyzer. Export a GEDCOM file from your family tree software or the website where you keep your tree. Then open the GEDCOM in Family Tree Analyzer.

When your file is open and processed, you'll see a screen full of facts about your family tree. For instance, my tree has 326 sources, 31,775 people, and 11,494 families. Wow! Next comes a breakdown of everyone's relationship to me, the home person in the family tree:

• Direct Ancestors: 411. Uh oh. Last week I counted 403 direct ancestors. Did I miss eight, or are those my double ancestors? (My paternal grandparents were 3rd cousins with shared ancestors.)
• Descendants: 2. Hi, kids.
• Blood Relations: 4,802. That's a lot of blood.
• Married to Blood or Direct Relation: 1,877. These are the immediate in-laws.
• Related by Marriage: 19,283. Yup, my ancestral hometowns were full of intermarriage.
• Linked through Marriages: 5,225. I go off on a lot of tangents.
• Unknown relation: 175. I carry some unrelated people because I know there's a connection somewhere. But 175 seems high.

I had another reason for launching Family Tree Analyzer today. But right now I have two potential problems to investigate:

• The number of direct ancestors.
• The number of unknown relations.

To find out more about these issues, click the Main Lists tab to open the very useful Individuals table.

Problem 1: The Number of Direct Ancestors

As you scroll to the right in the Individuals table, you'll find a column labelled Relation to Root. Start with "2nd great grandfather." This takes a lot of scrolling in a big family tree. You'll find your 1st great grandparents under "great grandfather" and "great grandmother."

Even custom facts you create can be used and checked with Family Tree Analyzer.

In my case, I need to see if any of my great grandparents are missing their custom fact I called Ahnentafel. I use this custom fact in Family Tree Maker to view only my direct ancestors in the index. That's how I counted 403 of them.

To see if the extra people are my double ancestors, I'll look for missing Ahnentafel numbers. I realize this is specific to my tree because of the Ahnentafel field. You may want to scan the list for misidentified people.

And, in fact, I didn't miss any of my direct ancestors. The difference in the number of direct ancestors must be because of my double ancestors.

Problem 2: The Unknown Relations

Going back to the Individuals table, scroll to the right and click the top of the Relation column to sort the table. Scroll down to the bottom to find all the Unknowns. Then scroll to the left to see their names.

In my case, I recognize a ton of the Unknowns. (see "How to Handle the Unrelated People in Your Family Tree.") They're related to a cousin Silvio whose exact relationship I can't determine. It's a dead end because of a lack of records from Silvio's hometown. So, here he sits in my tree, with a ton of direct relations, unrelated to me.

Next in the list I see a family group that I found in a 1742 census of my grandfather's hometown. But I never found their connection to me. I did a quick search of the tens of thousands of vital records on my computer for one member of this family. I found his death record! Now I can merge the two men named Gregorio Alderisio in my tree. His death record proves the connection by including the name of his wife and both parents, and his age at death.

That one death record converted 11 unrelated people in my family tree to distant cousins.

I found another family group that's unrelated to me, and I can't remember why I put them in my tree. I'll have to investigate further and decide if I should remove them. With Family Tree Analyzer, it's easy to find them when I'm ready to solve the problem.

Problem 3: Comments + Time = Discrepancies

The reason I wanted to see this report today is to find discrepancies in descriptions within my family tree. I'm thinking of how I type in different occupations for people.

Here's an unexpected way to find and fix inconsistencies in your family tree.

I'll sort the Individuals table by the Occupation column. My tree has tons of Italian job titles followed by an English translation in parentheses. Sometimes I see a multi-word job title that has an error. I want to find those in the list. Then I can see which people it's attached to, and go fix it in my family tree.

I found a few entries that must be what I call "Search and Replace victims." A long time ago, I decided to add an English translation to the Italian job titles. To do this, I used the search and replace function of Family Tree Maker. You have to be very careful with search and replace. You may wind up changing something you didn't want to change. And, of course, I'm scanning for typos in the English job titles.

Now I can go to these people in my tree and fix their occupation entries.

Problem 4: Unused Sources

Before we leave Family Tree Analyzer, there's one other thing to check. We've been looking at the Main Lists / Individuals table. Click Sources, two tabs to the right of Individuals. Now click to sort by the last column, FactCount. Do you have any sources in your family tree that are showing a zero fact count? I have five, so I want to investigate.

After taking a look at these sources in my family tree, I deleted four, but one actually had three uses. I don't know why it was in the list.

There's no end to the fixable problems you can discover using Family Tree Analyzer. Make it part of your routine to export a GEDCOM, say, once a quarter, and examine your tree with Family Tree Analyzer. It's a valuable safety net for your family history research.

And speaking of Family Tree Analyzer:

• How to Plug the Holes in Your Family Tree
• It's Time to Make Your Family Tree Clear and Consistent
• Run This Genealogy Report to Help Clean Up Your Dates

Free 5-Generation Fill-in-the-Blanks Form

This PDF file lets you neatly type in the names of your direct ancestors.

I saw a nice-looking family tree chart online yesterday. I thought an electronic fill-in-the-blanks chart would be a much better thing to have. I don't like charts that you have to write by hand, even though they can be pretty. I would make mistakes, and after a lifetime at a keyboard, I can't write very nicely.

So I made a PDF file that lets you type to fill in the blanks with names. I've given each field a number from 1 to 31. Those are the Ahnentafel numbers for any person and their direct ancestors through to their 2nd great grandparents.

• Number 1 is you (or any individual you'd like to make a chart for)
• 2 and 3 are your parents
• 4 thru 7 are your grandparents
• 8 thru 15 are your great grandparents
• 16 thru 31 are your 2nd great grandparents

Download the Direct Ancestor Chart PDF file for yourself. Simply click in any field, type, and press the tab key to go to the next logical person. When you're finished, save the PDF file with a different file name.

No more sloppy handwriting or cramped fingers. Fill in this ancestor chart on your computer.

I found it was best to keep my grandparent chart open. Then I could see everyone's Ahnentafel number and enter their full names. If you don't have that chart, you can get it from my Dropbox account.

I filled this chart out for myself, and I simply love seeing all those names in one place.

But you can fill it out for anyone. Say you found a 3rd cousin online. Maybe they turned up as a DNA match. You could fill out a chart for this cousin with everything you've learned about their part of the family. That's a nice ice-breaker!

You can do one for your spouse, for your mom, or for a relative you're planning to visit soon. The chart is a standard 8½ x 11 inches in landscape mode. I added color for interest, but my printouts will be grayscale.

I made my own chart, but I could make one for any of my relatives.

Here's a list of other electronic genealogy forms and charts I've published before:

• 1900 U.S. Census Worksheet
• 1910 U.S. Census Worksheet
• 1920 U.S. Census Worksheet
• 1930 U.S. Census Worksheet
• 1940 U.S. Census Worksheet
• Family Genealogy Worksheet
• Family Genealogy Worksheet for large families
• Grandparent Chart (with Ahnentafel numbers filled in)
• Relationship Calculator
• Document Tracker Inventory Sheet
• Vital Records Transcription Chart

What else can I make? What would you like to see?

Combine these Genealogy Projects for a Richer Family Tree

Work smarter by combining your genealogy projects wherever you can.

Have I overloaded you with family tree cleanup projects? I know I can't keep up. Let's take a look at some of these projects with 2 goals in mind:

• Choose which projects you really want to get done, and
• See how you can combine 2 or more tasks and work smarter.

1. Create a Direct Ancestor List with Ahnentafel Numbers

See "Overwhelming Clean-up Task? Start With Direct Ancestors." Add a custom fact field to hold each direct ancestor's Ahnentafel number. If you can, give each of your 4 branches an identifier. In Family Tree Maker you can color-code a person and all their ancestors. I've given a different color to each of my 4 grandparents and their direct ancestors.

Now I can instantly spot the more than 290 direct ancestors in my tree. This was a one-day project. The color-coding took a minute. Finding and adding each ancestor's Ahnentafel number took an hour or two.

Check your Grandparent Chart for the Ahnentafel number. Don't have one? That's another project you can do in a day.

Whenever you have an overwhelming project to do, take care of your direct ancestors first. That's a lot less to bite off and a great start.

2. Create Your Elder Scroll

Here's a natural project combination point. See "Make Your Own 'Elder Scrolls'." That custom Ahnentafel field from project #1 makes it easy (in some software) to create a custom report. List your direct ancestors (starting with you) in Ahnentafel order. Include each person's name and birth date. Print it out and tape the sheets together, end-to-end. That's your Elder Scroll.

If you've done project #1, you can do project #2 quickly. This is a fun project with a result you can hold in your hands.

3. Get Your "Shoebox" Items into Your Tree

See "How Many Genealogy Gems Are You Sitting On?" Sometimes I see a photo of a relative on Facebook or in a cousin's online family tree. I save the image and keep it in my "gen docs" folder and in the "photos" sub-folder. Apparently I've been doing this with all kinds of family tree documents for years.

When working on a project to add photos to my tree, I realized I had to find the man's whole family.

This weekend I gave my virtual shoebox some attention. I started with census sheet images for people who I thought should be my relatives. Years later, I've built my family tree out so much that voila! Those people are in my tree now! I'm winnowing down my gen docs folder, but it's big.

4. Process All Facts and Documents for a Person at Once

Here's another project combination point. See "Make Smarter Progress on Your Family Tree." I was working on photos in my virtual shoebox, trying to place them in my family tree. When I got to one family portrait, I realized I hadn't documented the family of the father in the portrait.

So while I was there adding his photo, I went after his birth record and added his parents. His father fit into another family unit that was in my tree already. His mother needed more work.

I found her 1850 birth record. Then I found her parents' marriage records. I added each new vital record to my tree with source citations for each fact.

5. Write Your Ancestors' Life Stories

See "Which of Your Ancestors Has the Best Life Story?" When you're working on nearly any of the other projects, you can combine it with this one. Let's say you realize you have a ton of documents and facts for one of your ancestors. There aren't many holes left to fill.

This would be a great time to pull together the timeline of that ancestor's life story. You family tree software can help you by displaying that timeline. How would you tell this person's story? What family anecdotes can you add to bring this ancestor to life?

It can help to break the task into chunks. Capture their timeline of events in a Word document. Later add a couple of photos. Then add in some family stories.

6. Fully Document Your Ancestor's Entire Community

I don't know which other countries make this so easy. But if you have Italian family, you may be able to download your ancestral hometown's records. I did. See "3 Steps to My Ultimate, Priceless Family Tree."

I'm approaching this collection in a few ways, making progress on each of them:

• Rename each file to include the name of the subject. Then the whole collection becomes searchable on my computer.
• Add each document's main facts to a spreadsheet. This helps with searches and will be shareable with other descendants of the towns.
• Go through that spreadsheet line-by-line to see who can fit into my tree. Then get them in there.

My renamed files make it so easy to locate a record and build out a family. In project #4 above, I realized I didn't have any documentation on the ancestors of the man in the family portrait. So I searched my computer for his name, found his birth record, and kept going up and up his family tree.

This project benefits everything else I do.

7. Choose a Ripe DNA Match and Pursue the Connection

By "ripe" I mean a DNA match with a decent family tree. See "Can't Connect to Your DNA Match? Keep Trying."

I like to revisit my unsolved, ripe DNA matches once in a while. There's a chance that my other projects wound up adding a connection to a DNA match.

I'm trying to keep all my projects moving.

Decide which projects matter to you. Start doing any one of them with the others always in mind. Don't be afraid to go off on a tangent if it means you'll make progress on another project.

Keep track of where you left off on any one project, take care of that tangent, and come back to where you left off. Keep making valuable progress on your family tree—your legacy.

And happy birthday to George Harrison! He isn't gone. Shut up.

Overwhelming Clean-up Task? Start With Direct Ancestors

This source citation clean-up task is so rewarding, it won't bog you down.

You may remember I recently had a disaster with my family tree software. While synchronizing my Family Tree Maker file with my Ancestry.com tree, the file got corrupted. The only cure was to download my Ancestry tree as a new FTM file.

That blew up my "simple sources" system. Ancestry stores the source information differently than Family Tree Maker. It fed my sources back in a most un-simple way. That forced me to rethink my sourcing process. I had to step up and commit to improving my method.

And I'm glad I did. The bulk of my tree consists of 17th and 18th century Italians. I'm very lucky to have access to high-quality images of many of their vital records. Cleaning up how I cite these sources means I can do the following.

Copy the Source Wherever it Applies

Say I'm working on my 6th great grandfather, Giuseppe Iamarino. His son's 1815 marriage documents included Giuseppe's 1792 death record. I can create a source citation for Giuseppe's death that:

• provides a link to his death record
• says where to find the original (in his town's 1815 marriage records)
• includes the image itself in the citation

Plus, his death record is my only source for the names of his parents, my 7th great grandparents. So I can copy the source for Giuseppe's death date and use it as the source for each of his parents' names.

It's all a simple copy-and-paste job.

That's a big improvement over what I was doing. My "simple source" system meant a lot of sharing. For example, everyone with a fact from the 1930 U.S. Federal Census shared the same source. In my family tree, you had to view the notes on a document image to see exactly where it came from.

Last night I found a new document for my grandfather, Pietro Iamarino. It's his World War II draft registration card that was not online before. So I made a new source citation for this card and used it for:

• Grandpa's 15 Feb 1942 home address
• Grandpa's work address in 1942 (I knew he was working for a costume jewelry company, but now I know where!)
• Grandma's shared 15 Feb 1942 home address (Her name is on the card.)

Now anyone viewing my family tree online can see the:

• title
• citation detail
• document image, and
• the exact link to the document online.

It works for any document you found online.

An Efficient Shortcut

Here's a new tip I want to share with you today. I've got more than 23,000 people in my tree. Fixing all the citations is a monumental task. So I want to take care of my direct ancestors first. All 293 of them.

Here's how I'll get that done efficiently. While making my Elder Scroll, I created a filter in Family Tree Maker. The filter lets me display only my direct ancestors in the index of people. (See how I used Ahnentafel numbers to show only my direct ancestors.)

It's easy to work my way down that alphabetical list, caring for each person's source citations one at a time. I don't have to worry about missing someone.

If I can get through all my direct ancestors in a few sessions, it'll all be worthwhile.

And it's really satisfying. There are lots of cases where I only know someone died "Bef. 10 Aug 1812" because his grandson's 1812 birth record says that his father's father is dead. That connection (fact to source) was getting lost. But now I can go to the grandson, create his birth source citation, and make it the source for his grandfather's death.

Now, I'm not recommending you have a family tree software catastrophe. But I am encouraging you to think about how to make your sources better. Think about the day when your grandchild inherits all your research. Or about the DNA match who's looking at your tree to figure out your connection. How believable will your facts be?

The more traceable your facts are, the more professional your family tree is. And that's been my mission for 3 years. I want you to fortify your family tree—and have fun while you're doing it.