4 Reasons to Digitize All Your Genealogy Work

The Ellis Island website was my first stop when I became interested in genealogy. After I found my grandfathers' ship manifests, I looked for people with my closest ancestors' last names. I recorded everything I found in a notebook.

Then a friend turned me on to Family Tree Maker and Ancestry.com. From that point on, I stopped filling notebooks and filled my Family Tree Maker file instead. Each discovery, document, and photograph needs to be in your family tree. Unless you're keeping a 100% paper family tree, that means you need to digitize everything.

Are you looking for a compelling reason to digitize all your genealogy holdings? Here are 4 of them, with a cute acronym—PEAS.

Go fully digital to protect your family tree and reap the benefits.

1. Protection

I have so few paper genealogy documents they fit in one file folder. They include hard copies of some of my ancestors' U.S. vital records. I keep them in a metal safe.

By keeping all your genealogy work in digital format, you can better protect it from harm or loss. I build my tree in Family Tree Maker, attaching important documents to the tree. Each day when I'm finished working on my tree, I:

• export a GEDCOM file
• create a smaller backup with no media files attached
• create a large backup file with all media files attached
• copy these files, the Family Tree Maker file, and its automatic backup file to the cloud.

All these files become part of my weekly backup plan so they're kept on two external hard drives as well as the cloud.

I store my tons of document images on OneDrive. These include vital records, censuses, ship manifests, naturalization documents, and much more. Whenever I add a new document image, I capture it in my weekly backup routine.

My genealogy work can survive any catastrophe that might happen to my computer.

2. Efficiency

I've seen people debate the best type of binders to use for their genealogy research. Binders? My family tree has 83,000 people and will continue to grow. Saving my work as paper printouts in binders is crazy. I'd need a second house to hold them all, and a ton of money for the materials.

I did fill one accordion folder with large printouts of my closest ancestors' papers long ago. I thought I'd bring it to family gatherings. That only happened once. I run a 98% paper-free office. No clutter allowed.

Efficiency means it's easy to take all my work with me.

3. Access

When I visit my mother, she always has some random question about the family. "Where did Uncle Silvio live when he went to high school?" That's not something I know off the top of my head. But I have my iPhone, and I can find his 1940 census page on OneDrive. She's always asking me when someone's birthday is, or how old they'd be if they were alive. I can pull up my tree on Ancestry.com to answer those questions.

At home, I work on my family tree using a tower computer, not a laptop. I keep a laptop to take with me when I travel. It's fantastic to be able to access every bit of my work from that computer using OneDrive. On one trip, I renamed downloaded vital records to make them searchable. Since the files are on OneDrive, the changes I made synchronized to my tower computer when I got home.

4. Searchability

As I mentioned above, I rename downloaded files to make them searchable on my computer. I have huge collections of Italian vital record images from my ancestral hometowns. Because I've renamed them, I can find what I need in a second. I use a Windows-based program called Everything to show me every result.

Name your genealogy files in a way that improves your search results.

Let's say I've added the 1814 marriage of Pietro Mazzone and Vita Nicola Tosto to my family tree. Now I want to find and add all their children. Because of the naming style I use, I can search for all their children at once.

In the Everything program, I type "Mazzone di Pietro to find:

• his 6 children's births
• 3 of their deaths
• 7 of their marriages

Each result is clickable, opening the document image.

This is possible because I renamed the files with the person's name and their father's name. (I use the Italian word di, meaning of, before the father's name as a shorthand.)

With consistent file naming, you can search for and find whatever you need.

Let's Get Digital

Now here's your challenge. Come up with a concrete timetable that works for you, and:

• Scan or digitally photograph all your paper documents and photographs. Then name and store the files using a logical system that makes sense to you.
• Rename and organize all your downloaded genealogy document images. Depending on your preference, you can store the files by file type of document or by family name.
• Use HandwritingOCR to capture text from handwritten or printed pages. Save them as text files. You can save the text of newspaper articles in an individual's notes section in your family tree. If you have handwritten notes, capture their text to make it more usable.
• Follow a weekly plan to keep digital backups in more than one location. If you don't work on your family tree each week, you can follow a monthly backup plan. Use external hard drives and cloud storage to help ensure the safety of your data.
• Export a GEDCOM file from your family tree each time you work on it. Keep this file safe and make it part of your regular backup plan.

Now's the time. Reduce your reliance on paper and safeguard your assets. Make your genealogy research thoroughly modern.

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.

3 Reasons to Build Your Family Tree Offline

You can find my massive family tree on Ancestry.com and on the free website Geneanet.org. But I don't build my tree online. Family Tree Maker is the only desktop genealogy program I've ever used, and I'm a devoted fan.

Building a tree on Ancestry can be fun, and I've done it for other people. It has some nice features, but when you're creating your legacy, you want to do your best work.

Here are 3 reasons it's better to build your family tree offline and then share your work online.

Be proud to be a family tree control freak.

1. Full Control

Call me a control freak, but I want things done right. Using desktop software, I can see a list of all my existing:

• Sources. You can look for duplicates, sources with no citations, and source titles that need an edit. Collections on Ancestry.com will have a title change if they contain more years than they did before.
• Places. It's easy to see which ones aren't recognized by the software, and make global edits as needed.
• Media. In one place, make sure each media item has a category, spot the ones you should crop, and see who's attached to what.
• People. You can see a full list of all your people sorted by last name, first name, birth date, death date, or marriage date. Check the bottom of the list while it's sorted by birth date to see who you entered without a birth date.

I can add a color-code to one person and it will repeat that color for all their ancestors and descendants, if I choose. I've used color to make certain people recognizable instantly:

• My 4 grandparents each have a unique color, and it's displayed for all their direct ancestors. This makes it clear which branch I'm viewing. It also shows where my paternal grandparents' lines cross (they were third cousins).
• I have quite a few unrelated people in my tree. I added them to a Family Tree Maker filter so each one displays a red color-code. It's always a victory when a new discovery removes someone from the unrelated filter.
• My maternal aunt's husband's line shares DNA with my father. Interesting! So I added my uncle's direct ancestors to a filter and gave them an orange color-code. I'm always on the lookout for anyone displaying orange and another color.
• I placed all my DNA matches into a filter and they display a purple color-code. If new information makes a DNA match a cousin, I want to know right away.

Family Tree Maker gives a more complete view of everything in your family tree.

This Family Tree Maker feature can uncover surprises.

2. Fewer Mishaps

I can't count how many times I've seen online family trees displaying duplicate people. You may be looking into one person of interest to see what you can learn about her. You notice this tree has a second husband for her while you only have one. Then you click to see the second husband and find he's an accidental duplicate of the first husband. This happens too easily when you're building online. It's a big risk if you aren't very careful how you accept hints.

Let's say you're entering a new person into your Family Tree Maker file. He's the husband of a woman in your tree. You enter his name, then his birth date. But wait a second. Family Tree Maker sends you an alert. You already have a man with that exact birth date and the same or very similar name. It asks if you want to merge them.

This safeguard prevents errors before they happen.

3. Consistency

Having a consistent style in your work leads to a better product. Think of it as quality control for your family tree. The date format in my family tree is always the same. It's 18 Mar 2025—a two-digit day, three-letter month, four-digit year. My tree's description fields use the same wording to explain certain things. For instance:

• Let's say a couple in your family tree has two babies with the exact same name. It's a safe assumption that baby #1 died before baby #2 was born. But there's no death record available for proof. My routine is to use a stock phrase beneath baby #1's approximate death date. Her sister of the same name was born on this date.
• Sometimes I know a couple married on a certain date because it's written on their birth records. The marriage record itself isn't available. My routine for documenting the marriage date is to use one of these stock phrases:
  • From her birth record.
  • From his birth record.
  • From both their birth records.

Then I can use the birth record's source citation for the marriage date.

Family Tree Maker's predictive typing capability makes it easy to stay consistent. I begin typing the stock phrase, such as from her bi, from his bi, or from bo. Then I choose the correct phrase from the list of matching phrases found in my tree.

This also applies to addresses, and it's a huge help when entering a long address. Yes, Ancestry.com also shows you the similar addresses already in your tree. But it doesn't let you see all your addresses at once. There's no easy way to make corrections and overwrite incorrect versions.

My family tree has tens of thousands of baptism and marriage facts. They all include the name and full address of the church. I'd hate to have to type out "Chiesa di San Leonardo Abate, Via Roma, 6, Baselice, Benevento, Campania, Italy" over and over again. But I don't have to. All I have to type is chiesa di san l and the full address appears.

If you're serious about creating a valuable family tree, build it on your computer. Then you can export a GEDCOM file and share it online wherever you please. As an Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker customer, I can synchronize my offline work with my online tree. I do this daily because I add so much to my tree each day. Then I upload my GEDCOM file to Geneanet.org, replacing my previous file with the latest and greatest.

Unsure about which family tree building software to use? Do a comparison using free trials or free software. I found that "Comparing Family Tree Programs Is an Eye Opener".

To learn more about why I love Family Tree Maker, see:

• Exploring a New Feature You Didn't Know You Need
• 6 Powerful Features of Family Tree Maker
• How to Add or Delete Custom Facts in Your Family Tree
• How to Handle Foreign Words in Your Family Tree