3 Questions to Make You a More Efficient Genealogist

A lifetime ago I worked for a company that printed complex direct mail pieces. You know. Junk mail. My job was to help train new printing press operators. With the help of two experienced pressmen, I created training videos and manuals.

What does this have to do with genealogy? I had to learn the printing process myself before I could document it for the training materials. You can do this with the family tree-building process to work smarter and get more done in less time.

There are 3 questions that can help improve your family tree-building efficiency.

Ever since I retired, genealogy has been my full-time job. (That's why I retired.) How fabulous it is to have a job you can't wait to start every day! And I'm crazy-efficient and productive because of the steps I've taken. Here's what makes me so prolific:

1. Professional workspace. My desk, in one corner of my house, has a computer connected to three monitors arranged side by side. On a normal day, I'll have:
   • Family Tree Maker open on monitor one
   • a spreadsheet, desktop search program, and text file on monitor two
   • a web browser and any images on monitor three.
2. Consistent file naming. I do everything digitally, so I don't have shelves full of color-coded binders. I can't even imagine working that way. Years ago, I adopted a file-naming process that makes every file easy to find.
3. Top-notch tools. Some of my computer software is subscription-based, but you can find free alternatives. I use:
   • Adobe Photoshop for images
   • Microsoft Excel for tons of data handling
   • Notepad++ (free) for text files
   • Everything (free from voidtools.com) to locate any file on my computer
   • Family Tree Maker to store my genealogy work, and I synchronize it with my Ancestry tree every day.

With more professional tools, you can be a more professional genealogist.

Set yourself up for success with the right tools and an efficient workspace. Then it's time to examine your family tree-building processes. Imagine you have a day to spend working on your family tree. What will you set out to do? Ask yourself these three questions:

1. What are my goals for the day?

You might want to find all the census records your tree is missing. You might decide to add people and facts to your cousin-in-law's branch because they asked you to. Or you may create a Book of Life to share with family on the 4th of July.

I have a few ongoing projects I can dive into each morning. I know exactly which programs and files to have open when I'm ready to start. I created a computer macro to launch them all with one command: Ctrl + 1.

Whatever you plan to do, think about what needs to be at your fingertips and get it there.

2. What steps will I take in the process?

You can break down most goals into steps. Say you need to use the vacuum cleaner. You have to:

• get out the vacuum cleaner
• put the proper attachment on it
• plug it into a convenient outlet
• begin vacuuming.

When you're done, you need to put everything back the way it was.

Now think about the genealogy process you want to do. Let's use my long-term project to add the missing source citations to my family tree as an example. Once I use my macro to open:

• my tree in Family Tree Maker
• the spreadsheet of everyone with no source citations (generated by Family Tree Analyzer)
• Everything
• the Windows calculator (for calculating year of birth)
• my web browser to the site I need (in my case, the Antenati portal for Italian vital records)
• the Notepad++ file with my source citation templates

…I'm ready to begin creating source citations. The steps in this process are:

• Choose a person from the spreadsheet. I like to stick to people from one town for greater efficiency. Lately I've been working through everyone with a particular last name.
• Find the person in Family Tree Maker to see which citations they need. They'll need some combination of birth, marriage, and death records.
• Click on their father and see if they have siblings who also need source citations.
• All the vital records for my ancestral hometowns are on my computer for easy searching. What I need to do is find the document on the Antenati portal so I can create the citation. I use Everything to locate all the siblings at once. Say their last name is Basilone and their father is Giovanni. I type "Basilone di Giovanni in Everything and they all show up. The file names include the document number I need to locate online.
• On the Antenati portal, I open each collection I need in a separate browser tab. If I need birth records for 1858, 1862, 1865, and 1868, I open those sets of records in different tabs.
• In each tab, I locate the document number I need and grab the details for my citation. I need to edit my citation template to show the right year, document number, image number, and URL.
• When the citation is complete, I add it to my Family Tree Maker file.
• Each time I complete all the citations for a person, I delete their name from the spreadsheet. This way I know the exact number of people left to complete.

I do this until I'm worn out for the day. Then I go through my end-of-day file backup routine.

Whichever task you're planning to work on, think through the steps or take note of them as you do your work.

Knowing the steps and their order helps the whole process become second-nature. Look for efficiencies along the way.

I like to locate the right document in each open browser tab. Then I create the citations one after another. It feels as if the process goes faster this way. I also like to click to highlight all the siblings in the Everything results screen. Then I can deselect each person when their citation is complete. This way I never forget to complete a person. That helps in a family of 12 children!

3. Which part of the process slows me down?

Efficiency is the key to getting more done in less time. Where can you be more efficient in your process?

• Tackling all the siblings in a family at once makes me more efficient. I'm moving around less in my family tree.
• Opening the record collections in separate tabs makes me more efficient. I get the process started in several places instead of one at a time.
• Having a source citation template in an open text file makes me more efficient. I keep separate templates for births, death, marriages, and marriage banns. Plus one more for what's called matrimoni processetti. This minimizes the amount of typing I have to do.

Whatever genealogy site you use, open the best search results in different tabs. Your original search results list will remain there, waiting for you to return.

Picture me, if you will, sitting before my three monitors in the corner of my great room for hours a day. My goal with the source citations project is to complete 100 people a day, removing them from my list. If there are lots of siblings, I can complete 130 people a day.

Pay attention to the steps you take to reach your goal, and see where you can worker smarter. Being more productive will keep you from feeling frustrated in your quest, too.

Your 8 Favorite Genealogy Blog Articles

I launched this blog in January 2017. I've kept to a once-a-week schedule, making this my 667th article. This page features an automatic tally of the 8 most popular articles.

I'd like you to help me with an experiment. The following is a list of the 8 most popular articles, in order from most to least. Please click to read the ones that interest you the most—ones you haven't read already or read recently. Then we'll see if we change the rankings.

Does the popular vote reflect your choices? These are the 8 most popular genealogy articles.

Can't find one you haven't read already? Then use the search box or explore this blog to find something that interests you today. It seems to me the most popular articles feature at least one of the following:

• a project to do
• a free give-away, like a spreadsheet
• a new resource to try.

This experiment will help guide me as I create new material for you to enjoy.

1. How to Use the Online Italian Genealogy Archives

I spend so much time with Italian vital records that I dream about them. I started out knowing nothing and have become an expert. This article will help you get comfortable and proficient with Italian vital records. They are essential if you have any Italian ancestors in your family tree.

2. 3 Things to Do with Ahnentafel Numbers

Each of your direct ancestors has an assigned number whether you know it or not. You are number 1, your father is number 2, your mother is number 3. And those numbers continue in a specific pattern as far back as you can go.

This article features a free spreadsheet for you to fill in with the names of your ancestors. Find out how the numbering system works and how to use it to your advantage.

3. How to Create a 'Book of Life' for Your Relatives

If you've seen PBS's genealogy show, "Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.", you know the Book of Life. It's a graphic summary of the genealogy documents and pictures that tell your story.

See how easy and fun it is to create a Book of Life for yourself or someone else in your family. It's an instant treasure. Imagine creating one you can add to with each new discovery.

4. Run This Genealogy Report To Help Clean Up Your Dates

When your family tree reaches a certain size, it's hard to know which of the many people in it need more attention. This project uses the free Family Tree Analyzer program to spot everyone who's missing a key date.

How many people in your family tree need you to go back and search for their death date? How many people have an estimated date that you can resolve with a bit of research? This technique makes it easy.

5. Free Italian Military Records for WWI and WWII

This article has surged due to a high number of Google searches. I find these Italian military records to be fascinating and overflowing with details. I've made a point of collecting every one I can find for the men born in my handful of ancestral hometowns.

In 2018 I visited the archives in the city of Benevento to see my grandfather's military record in person. What a find! It answered my many questions about his time as a prisoner of war, and gave me so many more facts.

6. Why You Should Be Using the Free 'Family Tree Analyzer'

This introduction to Family Tree Analyzer explores several of its features. At the bottom of the article are links to 4 more articles that go into more detail about different ways to use FTA. This program never stops giving.

7. Free Resource Lets You Plot Family Tree Locations

You can create a custom map for anything you can think of that's related to your family tree. I used Google My Maps to show my grandfather's path through different states once he arrived in the USA. I've mapped all my own home addresses (there are at least 15). I've recreated one or two of my European vacations so I can relive the memories.

Find out how to use Google My Maps. Then check out the related map articles at the bottom of the article.

8. How to Visualize Your Ancestor-Finding Progress

This article revisits the "grandparent chart" I created for Ahnentafel numbers. You'll see how filling in the names of your ancestors gives you a quick visual of your family tree progress.

Notice how I added a row near the top of the spreadsheet to keep track of how many ancestors I'm missing from different generations. That can show you where to concentrate your efforts.

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Thank you for participating in this experiment. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email with topics you'd like me to cover in future articles. (My address is in the footer of this blog until I get slammed with spam.)

Find Your Passion and Genealogy is Pure Joy

Everyone with an interest in their family tree was a beginner once. And it seemed overwhelming. Then we find our way. We make mistakes. We go back and fill in what we missed. After a while, our family trees have leaves on almost every branch.

Is this when some people get tired of genealogy? Do they imagine there's nothing left to do?

If that's how you're starting to feel, you haven't found your passion yet.

A single spark can ignite your passion for your family tree.

Finding That Passion

I became so passionate about genealogy that I resented having to work for a living. So my husband and I did the math, and I was able to retire a few years early.

Now I can devote my time to the two tasks that spark my passion.

1. Citing my sources. In 2017 vital records for my ancestral hometowns came online. I downloaded them all to my computer. I decided to piece together tons of families from these towns without citing my sources for now.

Big mistake! Who's going to believe my family tree without sources? So I've been creating all the missing source citations. I've made a lot of progress and should finish later this year.

At the start, more than 9,000 blood relatives in my family tree had no source citations. Today it's down to 814 blood relatives. I push to complete at least 100 people a day. I've gone as high as 180 people in a day.

When I finish the 814 remaining relatives, I'll have 52,000 non-blood relatives to tackle. But they're not as big of a priority. I'll keep working on this project, but it may not get all my attention every day.

This passion is making my family tree valuable to anyone with relatives from my towns. It will be my legacy.

2. Italian vital records. Once I retired, I took things up a notch. Instead of searching the document images for one relative at a time, I began renaming the images. Now they're all searchable on my computer. I name each birth and death record for the individual and their father. For example, take the 1814 birth record of Antonio Bianco, the son of Francesco Bianco. I renamed the image "8 Antonio Bianco di Francesco". (8 is the document number. The di means of in Italian and makes a great shorthand.) The image's folder location tells me the type of record, year, and town. It's in the "1814 births" folder for the town of Baselice.

For marriage records, I name the groom and bride and use the document number. For example, "15 Giovanni Iamarino & Libera Scrocca".

With the images renamed, I can search for a particular name or for all the children of Francesco Bianco. This is a tremendous help when you're piecing together a whole family.

When I finish renaming an entire town's records, I create a spreadsheet and publish it on my website. Anyone with ancestors from my towns can search these files for their people. They can see where to find their documents online. This is a valuable service, so I'm passionate about working on the next town. (See "How to Create and Share Your Ancestral Town Database".)

Now It's Your Turn

What about you? What can you do to keep up your interest and improve the quality of your tree?

Seek out the parts of the family-tree building process that excite you. When you find one, pour your time into it. I'll bet it keeps you eager to come back for more. Here's a checklist to get you started.

• What’s your favorite part of the process?
  • Reviewing your online hints. See "3 Ways to Tell If That Hint is No Good".
  • Checking out every decent search result. If I discover that one of my Italian nationals came to the United States, I do search for them in U.S. records. Then I do the same for their children.
  • Working on one document type at a time. When I decided to improve my downloaded document images, I went through one type at a time. I fixed them in Photoshop. I found it exciting to crop the big black backgrounds out of draft registration cards. Now my images look better and take up less space. (See "How to Improve Your Digital Genealogy Documents".)
  • Examining your DNA matches' trees. Sometimes it's a DNA match's tree that tells me who married whom, and who left Italy. These are valuable leads.
  • Poring over new record collections. What a joy it was when the New York City Municipal Archives put lots of vital records online. Now I can find vital records for relatives at my desk. (See "When Is a Genealogy Harvest Too Big?")
• What needs improvement?
  • Is your style consistent? Add quality to your family tree by using a consistent style for names, places, and dates. (See "Make Consistency King in Your Family Tree".)
  • How complete are your source citations? The free Family Tree Analyzer can show you exactly who is missing their citations. It's easy to generate a list. See "These Steps Make Your Family Tree Much More Valuable".
  • Do your images need help? Why put a color-faded photo in your family tree when you can correct the color? Why have a huge black border around that ship manifest? You can use photo-editing software to improve all your images.
  • Are you happy with your document filing method? If you can't find the document you need right away, you may need a more logical system. See "3 Simple Rules for Managing Your Digital Genealogy Documents" and "3 Rules for Naming Digital Genealogy Documents".
• What can you chip away at each time you open your tree?
  
  I'm lucky to be able to treat this hobby like it's the full-time job I always wanted. But you may not have much time to spend on genealogy. Which tasks can you pick up at a moment's notice and make good progress on? Some suggestions:
  
  
  • Make a list of your closest DNA matches. Work on identifying the closest match you don't already know. (See "Digging Into a DNA Match's Family Tree".)
  • Run any report from Family Tree Analyzer and whittle down the list. For instance, run a Data Errors report and check the results against your family tree. How many can you fix in one sitting? (See "How to Find Errors in Your Family Tree".)
  • Start a folder for one ancestor and gather more and more documents to use in their "Book of Life". Keep a text or Word file in that folder, too, with ongoing notes to use in their book. See "How to Create a 'Book of Life' for Your Relatives".
  • Keep a detailed note about where you left off for the day. Return to the same task next time without having to jog your memory.

Someone once said choose a job you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life. Well, if you find your passion for genealogy, you'll be glad to work on your family tree every chance you get. You'll feel driven to make it the best it can be.

Go find your spark and light that fire!

4-Tool Combo Solves a DNA Problem

I've been playing around with the chromosome browser on MyHeritage. In my DNA match list on MyHeritage, I have a woman, her father, and his mother. (They're all my AncestryDNA matches, too.) I know their roots are in the Italian hometown of my dad's family.

Their relationship to each another should look interesting on the chromosome browser. I compared them to myself and my dad and my 6th chromosome is where the action is! My dad and the woman and her father and her grandmother all intersect on two parts of my 6th chromosome.

Then I looked at my dad's DNA test. I added the 3 family members (but not myself) on his chromosome browser. I found that the 4 of them intersect on my dad's 6th and 11th chromosomes. That's a solid connection.

So here's the big question. Why does the grandmother show up in my Family Tree Maker file as "wife of 4th cousin 1x removed"? There was a ton of intermarriage in our shared ancestral hometown. So the grandmother and I have 27 different relationships in FTM, but none of them are by blood.

I've let this go unresolved for too long. It's time to bring in genealogy tools in addition to the chromosome browser.

I knew they were related to each other. A chromosome browser tied them to Dad and me.

Tool #1: Family Tree Analyzer

A reader of this blog once told me that Family Tree Maker has a known flaw when it comes to relationships. There will be cases where it is wrong—particularly with more distant relationships. The reader suggested I defer to Family Tree Analyzer for the correct relationship.

So I opened my latest GEDCOM file in Family Tree Analyzer. I found the grandmother in the Individuals table. When I scrolled over to see the Relation to Root column, it said she's my 6th cousin once removed. Aha! So there is a true cousin connection.

Tool #2: Ancestry.com

I build my tree using Family Tree Maker and synchronize it with my tree on Ancestry.com. What a surprise to see that my Ancestry tree already knew she is my 6th cousin once removed. She's labeled as such on her profile page.

On that page I can click our relationship to see a list of generational steps from her to me.

Tool #3: Family Tree Maker

Back in Family Tree Maker, I followed those generational steps. I went from her to her father, grandfather, great grandmother, and up that paternal line until I saw it.

Way up the line, her 5th great grandparents had a yellow color code. (I use color-coding in FTM to identify my 4 grandparents' lines.) That tells me they are direct ancestors of my paternal grandfather. When I clicked their names, I saw that they are my 6th great grandparents. (Family Tree Analyzer agrees.)

Tool #4: Relationship Calculator

I wanted confirmation and to see my relationship to her son and granddaughter. (They each have more than one connection to me.) I opened my relationship calculator spreadsheet. First I went to the column for my 6th great grandparents. Then I went down that column to the row where my DNA match is this ancestor's 5th great grandchild. The column and row intersect at 6th cousin once removed.

The next 2 rows show my relationship to her son (7th cousin) and granddaughter (7th cousin once removed). Finally! I've known about these DNA matches for years without understanding our relationship.

Multiple tools pointed to one relationship. Then my color-coded family tree brought it all together.

I did look at the Shared cM Project tool on DNA Painter to try to figure out my relationship to the grandmother. But there were too many possibilities. I also looked at the diagram of possible relationships diagram on MyHeritage. Our true relationship is too distant to show up there. Even when I compared her to my father's DNA test, it leaned toward a 3rd cousin relationship. (Thanks, endogamy.) The true relationship of 6th cousins was too far away to show.

As I mentioned, I'd already placed these 3 DNA matches in my family tree. I can take their lines back to my 8th great grandfather, born in 1671. But it always bothered me that the real picture of our relationship was hiding. Family Tree Maker does know that my 8th great grandfather is my DNA match's 7th great grandfather. But I would never have seen the true relationship without the help of other genealogy tools.

The truth is out there, as they say.

5 Reasons to Add Sources to Your Family Tree

My family tree has grown past 83,000 people. Last year I began a full-time campaign to add all the missing source citations to my family tree. I've forgotten the original numbers, but I have 5,142 cousins and 52,358 other people in need of sources. I work my way through an average of 100 people a day.

Why would anyone work this hard on source citations? I'm glad you asked (LOL). Here are 5 good reasons to make source citations a high priority in your family tree research.

Show everyone the value of your family tree by bringing the receipts.

1. Sources Make Your Family Tree Believable

Imagine you find a family tree online that contains your grandmother's first cousin. The tree has lots of details and ancestors you don't have. Then you look closer and find that tree has no source citations at all. How can you believe any of it?

Now imagine everyone in that family tree has source citations. They have links you can follow to see the original documents for yourself. Wouldn't that be fantastic?

If you're doing quality work on your family tree, don't you want others to find it believable? Maybe their tree has errors and yours is right. Your source citations are what makes your work reliable.

2. Sources Help Put Others on the Right Track

It's common for people to accept hints or borrow names and dates from other trees—leading to big mistakes. Then others find their tree and perpetuate the same mistakes.

Let your well-sourced family tree be the beacon that shows them the way. The next person who see hints from incorrect trees, and your sourced tree, can recognize the truth. Only you brought the receipts!

3. Sources Give Distant Cousins an Incredible Gift

I love when people contact me because they found their ancestors in my family tree. Often they're unaware that the Italian vital records are online. They're wondering how on earth I found all these names and dates.

That's when I point them to my source citations so they can see the vital record images for themselves. And I give them the link to my Antenati instructions, if they're interested.

I've busted down brick walls for lots of people with roots in my ancestral hometowns.

4. Sources Help You Fix Errors in Your Family Tree

Hunting down records online to get the source citations gives you a chance to review your facts. I've found errors that might have stayed there forever if not for this second look. I've discovered:

• Typos that resulted in a wrong address.
• People I need to merge into one.
• Duplicate people, one with the wrong birth year and one with the right one.
• Missing baptism dates.
• Missing middle names because only their first name is in the birth record column. Their middle names are in the body of the record, and I overlooked them.

I'm always surprised to find these errors, but so happy to fix them.

5. Sources Create a Glorious Legacy

For all the reasons above, a well-sourced family tree is far more valuable than an unsourced tree. If many of your sources are "Ancestry Family Tree" or something else generic, that's not good enough. You can do better. You need to get to the original sources. (See Trade Up to Better Family History Sources.)

The mission of this blog is to help you create a one-of-a-kind legacy—your family tree. Consistency, source citations, and a lack of errors are key to making your family tree your legacy.

I fell down on the job with my Italian vital record source citations. I was all excited to connect everyone from my ancestral hometowns. And I did that on a grand scale. But it's no good to other people without those source citations. That's why I'm driven to whittle down my list of sourceless people every day.

How You Can Get Started

You can generate a list of people in your family tree missing source citations in a few steps.

Use Family Tree Analyzer to show who has no source citations in your family tree.

• Export a GEDCOM file from your family tree, wherever you keep it.
• Open that GEDCOM with Family Tree Analyzer. (Also see How to Find Errors in Your Family Tree.)
• Go to the Main List tab.
• Click the Export menu and choose Individuals to Excel. This will prompt you to save a CSV file to your computer. You can open a CSV file with any brand of spreadsheet software.
• For ease of use, I find it's best to delete every column except:
  • Forenames
  • Surname
  • BirthDate
  • RelationToRoot, and
  • SourcesCount (the last column)
• Use your spreadsheet software to sort the SourcesCount column from A to Z so the zeroes are at the top.

I want to focus on blood relatives first, and people with no sources at all. So I sorted my spreadsheet by these columns, in this order:

• SourcesCount
• RelationToRoot
• Surname
• Forenames

I deleted all the rows with one or more existing sources, leaving only the massive amount of zeroes. When they're all gone, I'll chase down other individual facts with no sources.

Most of my source citations are Italian vital records from the Antenati website. There's plenty I can do to increase my productivity:

• Work on one town at a time. I use a template for each type of citation (birth, marriage, death). Then I change the numbers and links as needed.
• Work on one full set of siblings at a time. I have all my towns' vital records on my computer, renamed for easy searching. (The file names include document numbers and the person's father's first name.) I can search for all the children of one man, see their record numbers, and find the documents on Antenati. The less I have to move around within my Family Tree Maker file, the faster I can go.

Even if this sounds like too much work to you, take a look at your SourceCount in Family Tree Analyzer. Celebrate your accomplishments or steel yourself for the important work ahead.

Commit to This One Genealogy Project

No time for a genealogy marathon? Commit to one family tree project and tackle it in sprints.

As I hope you noticed, I haven't publish a new genealogy article for the last two weeks. I had to travel to help my parents move, and after that was Christmas. But the visit gave seven of us COVID-19, so there was no Christmas.

Did I put the brakes on my family tree progress during that time? Well, helping my parents move was beyond exhausting, so I had no time for genealogy. But COVID has only slowed me down a bit. As sick as I am, I've spent at least a half-day every day adding people and source citations to my family tree. It helps keep my mind off my symptoms.

My overwhelming project in 2024 has been to create thousands of source citations I'd left out. I used Family Tree Analyzer to create a spreadsheet of everyone in my family tree who had no citations at all. My tree has 83,000 people, and I still have 62,000 people with no citations. That's embarrassing.

But I know why I skipped them in the past. I have easy access to the vital records for my Italian nationals. I knew I could go back at any time and create the source citations. But yikes! I went too far.

Because this project seems as if it'll take a few years, I need to liven things up sometimes. Instead of working my way down the list, I jump on opportunities.

When a man contacted me on Ancestry about his ancestors in my family tree, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I added missing source citations to his people and crossed them off my citation to-do list.

I haven't found a cousin connection for the two of us, but his people are from my 2nd great grandmother's hometown. Long ago I downloaded all the available vital records for the town to my computer. (These mass-downloads are no longer easy to do. Websites block any attempts.) Then I renamed each of the more than 12,000 documents to make them easy to search on my computer.

I built out all my closest families from the town, and I completed their source citations. But I have a lot more families to build. With a bit of luck, I may find my connection to the man who contacted me.

Channel Your Energy into One Important Project

I know you aren't all as lucky as I am—able to spend several hours a day knee-deep in genealogy. But if you focus on one project that's important to you, you can make progress in smaller amounts of time.

If you had to choose one genealogy project that's important to you, what would it be? Here are some ideas to get you thinking:

• creating source citations
• finding more vital records
• gathering military documents
• downloading missing census records
• searching for newspaper articles
• finding a very important missing branch
• organizing your documents
• scanning your family photos
• creating a Book of Life

Imagine you've chosen that one project, and you're committed to spending a little bit of time on it every day you can. After a short time you can make measurable progress! In my half-days last week, I added more than 100 new people with source citations, and made new family connections.

What's your top-priority genealogy project for 2025? Now, is it time for another dose of medicine yet?

3 Family Tree Tasks Need Your Attention

3 simple, worthwhile family tree tasks set you up for a new year of genealogy discoveries.

It can be hard to find time for genealogy with the holiday season looming. But I'm sure you can find a moment here and there. And when you do, these 3 tasks are the perfect thing to accomplish before the year is through. Knock them off, and you'll be all set for bigger and better family tree achievements in the coming year.

1. See What's Missing

Review yourself and your direct ancestors (up through your second great grandparents) to see what's missing. Since these are some of the first people you entered into your family tree, it may be a long time since you've given them any attention.

• Have you found every available census record for them?
• Are there birth, marriage, or death records available that you couldn't find before? What about obituaries?
• Have you gathered the draft registration cards or military records for your men?
• If anyone from this group was an immigrant, have you found their ship manifest and naturalization papers?

A funny thing happened to me recently. I wanted to use the new LiveMemory™ feature from MyHeritage, but I had to do it through the phone app. (I had bad results, by the way. I still need to find a perfectly-lit, crisp photo to try. When I tried it on people I know very well, I hated the results.)

While I was using the app, I saw an unexpected hint for my Grandma Lucy's 1954 obituary. I couldn't access this particular Ohio newspaper with my free subscription, but I found it on Google News. There, for the first time, I saw Grandma Lucy's obituary, and I found her mother's obituary! I couldn't get her father's obit because that publication date was missing.

This proves how important it is to re-investigate your closest relatives.

2. Fix Errors Hiding in Plain Sight

Export a GEDCOM file from your family tree and open it in Family Tree Analyzer. This free program points out errors you can fix, including a mother who's too old to have that baby, someone who died before they got married, and "siblings" who were born too close together.

With your GEDCOM open in FTA, click the Errors/Fixes tab. Along the top of the window you'll see 32 types of errors, each with a checkbox. You can click the Select All button and then below that, click the little button with the downward arrow at the top of the Error Type column. Choose Sort A to Z. You may find that some of these errors should be excluded.

• Couples with same surnames. My people come from small towns where everybody shares a small number of surnames. This happens a lot. Removing this type of error brings my error total from 988 down to 584. (My family tree has 82,072 people!)
• Possible Duplicate Fact. My family tree has mostly Italian marriages where there are two recorded sets of marriage banns. That's not an error even if it looks like one. But I'm not going to uncheck this type of error because I see a few duplicate marriage facts. These must have happened when I realized I could merge people, and I overlooked the extra marriage fact. In other places I have duplicate residence facts. When I look at them in my family tree, one fact has a source citation, and the duplicate does not. These may be leftovers from a bad Ancestry sync I had a couple of years ago. I'm going to check these all out. If I did uncheck Possible Duplicate Fact, my error total would drop from 584 down to 59!

See what you can do to whittle down your error list. I know you'll be glad you did.

3. Check Locations

Use Family Tree Analyzer again to spot obvious typos in place names. Once you've opened your GEDCOM file in FTA, click the Main Lists tab to view the Individuals tab. Two columns in this list have place names: Birth Location and Death Location. One at a time, click the little button with a downward arrow beside the column name and choose Sort A to Z. Now all the place names are in alphabetical order. You may have lots of blanks at the top, as I do.

I must note that the Birth Location list will seem as if it's not entirely in alphabetical order. It turns out the locations are grouped by country, then state/province, then town, then street. So my United States locations are near the bottom of the list. My mother's Bronx New York, birth location is way, way down the list. Once you realize that, this task becomes easier.

Scan the list one screenful at a time and see what sticks out to you. If my list had 10 "Elmira, Chemung County, New York, United States" listings in a row, and then one "Elmyra, Chemung County, New York, United States", the mistaken "Elmyra" would stick out as being a typo. Make any necessary corrections to your family tree (wherever you build it), and then do the same with the Death Location list. First click that same little button with the downward arrow and choose Clear Sort, then sort the Death Location column A to Z.

Finally, switch from the Individuals tab to the Families tab. Scroll over to the Marriage Detail column which shows marriage dates and locations. Sort that column A to Z. This is a little less efficient, but still worth a look. The column is sorted by date, but the dates are treated like text. Because of that, my first non-blank rows are:

• 1 APR 1813 at Santa Paolina, Avellino, Campania Italy
• 1 APR 1824 at Chiesa del Santissimo Salvatore, Largo Chiesa Madre, 2, Pescolamazza, Benevento, Campania, Italy
• 1 APR 1824 at Chiesa di San Giorgio Martire, Via Gradoni San Giorgio, Colle Sannita, Benevento, Campania, Italy

This sorting method means that fewer of the same addresses will be grouped together. But it's the first time I'm seeing all my tree's marriage locations in one place, and that's still a good chance to proofread.

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When you've done what you can on these 3 tasks, be sure to synchronize or republish your updated and scrubbed family tree. Come January, you're on to bigger and better genealogy research!

See what other magic you can do with Family Tree Analyzer:

• Pluck the Stragglers Out of Your Family Tree
• Finding and Fixing an Awkward Typo in Your Family Tree
• Free Tool Finds Details You'll Want to Fix

Quick Note: I've never done this before, but there will be no new articles for the next two weeks. Hundreds of my past articles are always here for you.

Free Tool Finds Details You'll Want to Fix

Consistency is so important to me. That was true when I wrote code for web pages, and it's true now that my family tree is my full-time work.

Recently I discovered an inconsistency in my family tree. For months now, I've been working my way through a long, long list of people in my tree with no source citations. Saturday was my most productive day ever. I completed the source citations for 110 people!

Quality control for your family tree includes being consistent in how you record facts.

During the citation process, I noticed the inconsistency. Years ago when adding baptisms to my family tree, I recorded only the date and town. After visiting these places, I started adding the name and address of the church, too. (I found a handy website that lets you look up the names and addresses of churches in any town in Italy.)

Whenever I notice one of my early baptism facts—one without a church name and address—I fill it in and cite my source. But I'm sure I've missed plenty. I wish there were an easy way to find every baptism fact that's missing a church name.

Once again, it's Family Tree Analyzer to the rescue! Using this free tool, I can:

• Open my latest GEDCOM file
• Click the Facts tab
• Select all 7 Relationship Types
• Select only the Baptism fact
• Click the button marked Show only the selected Facts for Individuals

This opens a new window that looks like a spreadsheet. It contains only those people with a Baptism fact. (In my case, that 23,077 people.) I can click the top of the Location column to sort the results in alphabetical order.

One of the churches I discovered late in my research is in Santa Paolina. This list shows 700 baptism entries for Santa Paolina that are missing the church name. I'm afraid to count how many church names are missing for the first town I documented long ago: Baselice. There are tons of them! I can also check which Marriage facts don't use a church name.

It's a big job, but I'm glad to have a way to locate and fix them all. I want that consistency for my family tree.

How else can we use Family Tree Analyzer's Facts report? Here are 3 ideas.

One report in a free family tree program is perfect for finding and fixing your less-than-perfect early genealogy work.

1. Pin Down a Specific Oversight

Lots of times a birth record tells you the father and mother's occupation, and I like to add that fact to my family tree. But I worry that I've forgotten to add the baby's birth citation to the parents' occupations.

Using the Facts report in Family Tree Analyzer, I view Occupation facts only. Then I can sort them by the Num Sources column. The number of occupations with 0 sources is staggering!

I can also sort the Occupations by the Comment column. This shows me a ton of farmers and laborers among my Italian relatives. Can you spot any occupation trends among your ancestors? Every dentist in my tree is one of my husband's relatives from Hawaii. I'm surprised to find only 5 miners in my tree, but I have a decent number of railroad workers.

I get a kick out of the more specialized occupations I've found in the U.S. censuses:

• hop picker at the Wigrich Hop Ranch
• bacon packer in a packing house
• chemist at a steel mill
• bottle washer for a soft beverage company
• garters maker
• chick sexer (I have two!)

What are the most unusual occupations you've recorded in your family tree?

2. Get Rid of Early Variations

Over time I developed consistent wording to use on Emigration and Immigration facts. In the description field of an Emigration fact, I type, "Left for [city name] on the [ship name]." In the description field of the Immigration fact, I type, "Arrived [with family members] to join [family member] at [address]."

But I wasn't using that format from day one of building my family tree. Family Tree Analyzer can show me all Emigration and Immigration facts. It's easy to spot the inconsistencies this way. I found only one Emigration fact that had no description at all—the rest follow the right format.

As for Immigration facts, when I sort them by the Comment column, I find:

• 2 entries with a typo (Arrive instead of Arrived)
• a lot of entries following my original format ("Arrived aboard the [ship name]")
• a small number of entries that cite a ship manifest but have no description at all

These are all items I can fix. The number is small because I completed all my immigration source citations long ago.

3. Remove Unwanted Facts

I used to find it interesting that draft cards and ship manifests stated a person's height and weight. When I view all the Height facts in my tree, I find only 7. And one is an obvious error (my cousin Bella was not 11 inches tall at birth). I've removed these unreliable, and often varying, sources of height from my family tree. Only 2 people in my tree had a Weight fact, and one was weight at birth. I've deleted them both.

There's a fact type called Medical Condition that I used random in the past, but only 13 times. Some of the 13 are details about the cause of death, and one mentions my great uncle's artificial eye. But most of the others make no sense in this category. I can fix these easily.

I also recorded 8 phone numbers in the Phone Number category. Two are for dead men, two are Italian phone numbers for cousins I've never met, and the rest are for people I'll never call. I'm sure that years ago I was so excited to find these pieces of information online that I recorded them. Now I'm going to delete them. Okay, I'm saving one phone number, but not in my family tree. I'm putting it in my iCloud contact list.

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If you've been working on your family tree for a while, I'm sure you've formed opinions on how you want to save details. And I'm sure your style has evolved over time. Spend a day using the Facts report in Family Tree Analyzer to bring your old work up to speed. Your consistency makes your family tree—your legacy—more professional.

For more help with family tree consistency:

• How to Batch Process Your Genealogy Documents
• Consistency Makes Your Family Tree More Professional
• The Basics of a Well-Crafted Family Tree
• Make Consistency King in Your Family Tree

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.

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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.