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

Pinpoint Important Places in Your Family Tree

When I used the Maps menu in Family Tree Analyzer (FTA), I discovered something I needed to fix. Even though I can find many addresses from my tree on Google Maps or Bing Maps, they weren't recognized by FTA.

I opened my tree in Family Tree Maker, which uses Bing Maps for locations. I noticed it could be very imprecise, or just plain wrong, about some locations. I wanted to improve these results so I could do more with FTA's Maps menu. The solution was to add Latitude and Longitude coordinates. And it's easy to do.

If small-town locations in your family tree are hard to find IRL, these two numbers will bring you right to the front door.

Here's how to add these precise coordinates to your computer-based family tree software:

• Find the exact location on a map website. I like Google Maps for this because of its streetside view. I want to see that I've got the right place, and even find the front door.
• Right-click at a precise location to see the map coordinates. (You must exit Street View first.)
• Enter the Latitude and Longitude numbers in your family tree.

I use Family Tree Maker, but RootsMagic also has fields on the Places menu to enter map coordinates. I'm sure other desktop genealogy programs do, too.

Family Tree Maker tells me I have 5,323 places in my family tree, so I'm not going to do this for every location. My goal is to use Family Tree Analyzer to see how many people got baptized or married in a particular church. So for starters, I'm pinpointing the locations of different churches in my family tree.

Watch Your Results Get Better

Here's an example of the benefits of this project. Before I added map coordinates to one church in Benevento, Italy, Family Tree Maker had their pin a few miles south of the city. I have no idea why. Now, with the coordinates in place, FTM knows precisely where to find this church. And so do I, should the day come when I want to visit it. As I look at the map, I see that I've been within a few yards of this church, but I didn't know it!

How many people in your family tree were at this address? Family Tree Analyzer can tell you, but you may need to feed it a couple of numbers.

With a few churches pinpointed in my family tree, I'll export a new GEDCOM file to open with Family Tree Analyzer. I'd like to see how many births and baptisms I've associated with the church in Colle Sannita, Italy.

In Family Tree Analyzer, once you open your GEDCOM file, click the Maps menu and choose Show Places. Say No to the pop-up message about Geocode locations. Now choose a particular location.

I clicked through the list of places and drilled down to the church. Italy, Campania, Benevento, Colle Sannita, Chiesa di San Giorgio Martire. There's my answer. I've attached this location to 14,724 baptism or marriage facts. And because of the map coordinates, the location is very precise.

Recently I've been reviewing some of my early research work on the town of Baselice. I was brand new to Italian vital records when I recorded many of these facts. I remember I didn't want to assume each baby got baptized in the town church. Now I know better. And I can see that the church is in fact mentioned on the birth or baptism records. I'd like to correct those baptism facts and increase the number of uses of the church in Baselice.

Make Your Map Pins Portable

I'm excited to use these map coordinates the next time I visit my ancestral hometowns. Family Tree Analyzer can export all the places from your family tree to "Google My Maps." I gave this a try, and it saves a file to your computer in a text-based format. When I go to My Maps in Google, I see that I can import the file.

Sure enough, all 5,323 locations from my family tree are now on this one map! I've never been to my 2nd great grandmother's hometown of Santa Paolina, Avellino. But when I get there, I can use Google Maps to pull up the precise location of the town church and step inside!

Family Tree Analyzer can put every single location from your family tree on one map—complete with names and dates.

To get to Google My Maps, start at google.com/maps and click Saved in the left menu. Then click Maps and Open My Maps. I've created maps before, but uploading thousands of locations at once is fantastic! I can click any location to see who's associated with that place. There's also an option to open this map collection in Google Earth. This seems like the best way to see your places in living color, rather than basic map view.

Now I needed to turn my iPhone into my family tree navigator. I installed Google Earth and put Family Tree Analyzer's exported places file on my phone. In Google Earth, I chose Projects, then Open, then Import KML file. (That's the format of the FTA locations file.)

Now no matter where I am, I can open Google Earth and zoom out see which family tree locations are nearby. Then I can tap any map pin to see what happened there. Don't you want to have this on your phone?

And speaking of map projects:

• Which Global Map is Best for Genealogists?
• Your Ancestor's Location is Critically Important
• Prepare to Walk Along Your Ancestors' Streets

Run This Genealogy Report To Help Clean Up Your Dates

Update: Family Tree Analyzer is now available for Mac.

I've written before about my indispensable Document Tracker (see Haven't I Seen You Before?). It's a spreadsheet that shows at a glance which facts or documents I've collected and which I'm missing.

I've also written about Family Tree Analyzer (see Why You Should Be Using the Free "Family Tree Analyzer"). It's a program that does what I was struggling to write a program to do. And it does it so much better than I could have imagined. (Get the latest version.)

Now I'd like to show you how Family Tree Analyzer can quickly produce a document tracker for you.

Step 1: Export a GEDCOM

Export a standard GEDCOM file from whichever family tree software you're using. You may need to click File / Export in your family tree software. You can also download a GEDCOM from Ancestry.com if that's where you work on your tree.

Step 2: Open GEDCOM in Family Tree Analyzer

Launch Family Tree Analyzer and open your new GEDCOM file. Click the Individuals tab to view a grid of every single individual in your tree. My tree has 19,341 people at the moment, and that's not a problem. There is no delay at all in displaying the information.

The Individuals view in Family Tree Analyzer

Step 3: Export a Spreadsheet

Now click Export in the menu across the top and click the first option, Individuals to Excel. The program will ask you to name your file and pick a location for it.

Exporting your Individuals report

The file will be in CSV format. That stands for Comma Separated Values. You can open a CSV file with any spreadsheet software at all—not only Excel.

Step 4: Work with Your New Report

Now you have a spreadsheet of everyone in your tree and several basic facts about them. You can hide or delete the columns you don't want, and add some that you find more helpful.

Try some creative formatting: Find every cell with the word UNKNOWN and highlight it in yellow. Now you can spot these items quickly.

With all your people in one file, your imagination is the only limit.

I can review all the yellow-highlighted UNKNOWNs and work on filling in approximate birth, marriage and death dates. Entering an approximate birth date, such as Abt. 1900, makes it easier to distinguish people with similar names in your tree.

You can enter an approximate birth year for someone based on what else you know about them. For example, subtract 25 from the eldest child's birth year to approximate the parents' birth years. Or, if you have the mother's birth year as 1900 but not her husband's birth year, you can fill in Abt. 1900 for him.

Be sure to use the standard abbreviations of Abt. for about, Bef. for before, Aft. for after, and Bet. for between, if you're giving a range of years. (Note: Family Tree Analyzer prefers that you don't use a period—Abt instead of Abt.—but Family Tree Maker puts it in automatically. You can change this in Tools / Options on the Names/Dates/Places tab. Look for "Fact labels".)

How many ways will you use this Family Tree Analyzer report to fortify your family tree?

Find out what else you can do with this free software:

• Use This Tool to Discover Family Tree Insights
• Why You Should Be Using the Free "Family Tree Analyzer"
• How to Find Errors in Your Family Tree
• How to Handle the Unrelated People in Your Family Tree

One Report, Endless Possibilities for Improving Your Family Tree

Update: Family Tree Analyzer is now available for Mac.

Family Tree Analyzer

It's always fun to create an up-to-date GEDCOM from my family tree and get the latest insights from Family Tree Analyzer.

I've written about this free PC-based program several times now (see links at the bottom of this article). Today let's look at how you can use its Main Lists tab to produce an all-in-one report.

First, your family tree software should have an export option. You can use the export option to create a GEDCOM. If you keep your family tree online only, and not in desktop software, you've given up some control of your family tree. Ancestry.com lets you export a GEDCOM from your online tree, but other sites, like FamilySearch.org, do not.

Second, there are other ways to do what I'm about to describe besides using Family Tree Analyzer. But to me, this program is the best way to do it. (Do a Google search for "convert GEDCOM to spreadsheet".)

Now let me show you what you can do with an all-in-one report from Family Tree Analyzer.

After loading your GEDCOM in Family Tree Analyzer, click Main Lists.

Launch Family Tree Analyzer and open your most recent GEDCOM file. The software will analyze your GEDCOM for several facts.

When it's finished, click the Main Lists tab. With the Individuals tab clicked, you'll see a table containing every person and fact in your tree!

Click the Export menu at the top of the program window to generate a "csv" file. This is a file you can open with any spreadsheet software, like Excel.

Excel gives you tools to sift, sort and manipulate the data any way you like. But I don't want to turn this into a long Excel tutorial. If you don't know how to filter and sort your contents, here's a good, short YouTube video. Jump ahead to 1:44 and watch until 2:24. Short and sweet.

In your spreadsheet, choose a Fact Type (column E) to filter by, such as Occupation. Now click Excel's Sort button and sort by Fact Comment (column H).

Now you have:

• a simple view of all the occupations in your family tree
• an alphabetical list of what you typed in for the description.

I'd like to do 2 things with the occupation descriptions:

1. Fix Errors. I can scroll down the list and scan for typos. In the image below, you can see there's an address instead of an occupation. I can fix that. In my family tree software, I'll go to the person named in columns B and C. It turns out I'd entered an address for the place of work, but left out the word "dentist" for these 2 men.

A filtered, sorted spreadsheet of your family tree facts simplifies a lot of tasks.

2. Complete My Job Translations. Most of my genealogy research work is in Italian documents. I thought it was cool to enter a person's occupation in Italian, so I made a separate translation list for my own use. But one day I realized there's a Find and Replace function in Family Tree Maker. So now I'm including the English translation in parentheses, like this: "calzolaio (shoemaker)".

Family Tree Maker is smart enough to make suggestions as I type in a field. So if I type "calz", it suggests "calzolaio (shoemaker)".

But I'll bet I overlooked a lot of jobs when I did my find and replace. This spreadsheet helps me find those untranslated Italian words, like agrimensore, benestante, eremite, and so on. Now I can finish this translation task and make my family tree more valuable for myself and others.

Let's pick another Fact Type.

1. Click the Filter button at the top of column E.
2. Click Select All to make every fact type available again.
3. Click it again to uncheck the whole list.
4. Now click to select the Birth fact type and click OK.
5. Click the Sort button and sort by Fact Location, column G.

Scroll down through the alphabetical list of all the birth locations. Do you see a lot of blank locations toward the bottom? In a recent article (see "5 Clean-up Tasks to Improve Your Family Tree"), I explained the value of having approximate birth dates and places in your tree. It can give you better hints and search results.

For example, I have a man named Salvatore Martuccio who was born in about 1873. I don't want to see a hint for finding him in the 1880 census in America when he and his family were always in Italy. So I need to add Italy as his place of birth. I think I know which town he was born in, but I have no documentation. So I'll keep it loose and say he was born in Italy.

This spreadsheet makes it easier to find facts—and missing facts—so I can finish my clean-up tasks.

Here's another idea. I'll filter the Fact Type column by Immigration and sort by Fact Comment. When I first started recording immigration facts in my family tree, I used this format:

Arrived aboard the [ship name] with [wife, children, brother, etc.] to join [person's name and relationship] at [address].

Then I realized I could use the Emigration fact type to say:

"Left on the [ship name] to go to [destination city]."

With the ship name in the emigration or departure field, I could shorten my immigration or arrival description to:

"Arrived with [wife, children, brother, etc.] to join [person's name and relationship] at [address]."

I can use this filtered and sorted spreadsheet to find all the descriptions I want to edit in Family Tree Maker. Hurray! More work to do!

I'd like you to think of this method as a way of seeing everything that's hidden from plain sight in your family tree. Work on what's important to you. No matter how much you decide to correct, improve or simplify, you'll wind up with a better, stronger, more reliable family tree.

So filter, sort, and see how much you can accomplish!

And speaking of Family Tree Analyzer:

• Why You Should Be Using the Free Family Tree Analyzer
• Run This Genealogy Report To Help Clean Up Your Dates
• Use This Tool to Discover Family Tree Insights
• This Genealogy Report Shows You What's Missing

How to Find the True Cousins in Your Family Tree

I've been on a genealogy rampage lately—but in a good way. I'm tapping into my enormous database of vital records from my ancestral hometowns. And I'm using it to add about 100 people a day to my family tree.

Everyone from my ancestors' hometowns can fit into my family tree somehow. But right now, I'm going after my distant cousins. Here's how I'm doing it:

• I pick one of my direct ancestors, like a 4th great grandfather.
• I locate every one of their children.
• I find out who each child married, and I search for their children.
• I keep searching for children's children until I reach the end of the available vital records.

It's a blast to add whole families to my tree that some distant cousin is going to find through an Ancestry hint.

What happens when you research your ancestors siblings? Your family tree grows to include hundreds or thousands of blood relatives.

With all this recent growth, as of this writing, I have 36,434 people in my tree. Many of them have crazy relationships to me. Like step-father of the son-in-law of the 2nd great uncle of my great aunt's husband.

Now that I'm concentrating on blood relatives, I wondered how many of each type of cousin I've located. How many 1st cousins 3 times removed have I found? How many 3rd cousins 4 times removed?

To find out, I exported a current GEDCOM from my Family Tree Maker file. (Make sure you are the root person in your GEDCOM file.) Then I opened it with Family Tree Analyzer. I clicked Main Lists to see a spreadsheet view of everyone in my family tree. Then I clicked the Export menu at the top of the program and chose Individuals to Excel.

In one second flat, I had a spreadsheet with all the facts and people from my tree! I opened the file and sorted it by the RelationToRoot column. Then I filtered out any blank relationships, hiding them from view. (Family Tree Analyzer doesn't include crazy relationships like the one I mentioned above.)

Use Family Tree Analyzer to instantly export all your family tree facts to a spreadsheet. Then sort and filter to see how many types of cousins you've found.

Now I can click with my mouse and pull it down to select relationships of the same kind. Then I can see at the bottom of the spreadsheet how many rows I've selected. Here's what I have.

I'm using an abbreviation below that I learned from another genealogist. C means cousin and R means removed, so 1C3R is a 1st cousin 3 times removed.

# of First Cousins in my family tree:

• 1C–5
• 1C1R–30
• 1C2R–108
• 1C3R–97
• 1C4R–190
• 1C5R–259
• 1C6R–166
• 1C7R–65
• 1C8R–10

# of Second Cousins in my family tree:

• 2C–44
• 2C1R–172
• 2C2R–29
• 2C3R–193
• 2C4R–439
• 2C5R–339
• 2C6R–114
• 2C7R–15

# of Third Cousins in my family tree:

• 3C–101
• 3C1R—112
• 3C2R—116
• 3C3R—556 Whoa!
• 3C4R—485
• 3C5R—179
• 3C6R—29

# of Fourth Cousins in my family tree:

• 4C–18
• 4C1R–21
• 4C2R–215
• 4C3R–361
• 4C4R–205
• 4C5R–44

# of Fifth Cousins in my family tree:

• 5C–16
• 5C1R–86
• 5C2R–159
• 5C3R–70
• 5C4R–44

# of Sixth Cousins in my family tree:

• 6C–19
• 6C1R–28
• 6C2R–16
• 6C3R–20

# of Seventh Cousins in my family tree:

• 7C–9
• 7C1R–6
• 7C2R–3

# of Grand Aunts and Uncles in my family tree:

• grandaunts and uncles–14
• 1st great grandaunts and uncles–46
• 2nd great grandaunts and uncles–68
• 3rd great grandaunts and uncles–103
• 4th great grandaunts and uncles–89
• 5th great grandaunts and uncles–77
• 6th great grandaunts and uncles–77
• 7th great grandaunts and uncles–9

# of Great Grandparents in my family tree:

• 1st great grandparents–8
• 2nd great grandparents–16
• 3rd great grandparents–31 only 1 missing!
• 4th great grandparents–53
• 5th great grandparents–84
• 6th great grandparents–108
• 7th great grandparents–72
• 8th great grandparents–20
• 9th great grandparents–5

I love seeing this breakdown of my people. I'm astonished to learn that I've identified three of my seventh cousins twice removed. The only thing keeping me from finding 8th cousins is a lack of records. But I'm psyched to keep adding more and more cousins. And their spouses. And their spouses' families.

You say you don't venture beyond your direct ancestors? These cousins are your people, too. Does everyone ask you if you've finished your family tree yet? Tell them you have several hundred cousins still to find. And their spouses. And their spouses' families. Tell them this is one puzzle that's never finished!

Find out what else you can do with Family Tree Analyzer:

• 4 Problems You Can Fix with Family Tree Analyzer
• Did I Find a Scandal in My Family Tree?
• Let Family Tree Analyzer Find Your Duplicates Duplicates

Make Consistency King in Your Family Tree

Run this program to clean up typos and boo-boos in your family tree.

I've been a webmaster or web content producer since 1997. I've always believed consistency makes a website a look professional.

When I started building my family tree, I realized consistency is critical there, too. I wanted my tree to be as professional as possible. That includes recording and documenting facts in a consistent way.

Once in a while, I like to use the free Family Tree Analyzer tool to give my tree a consistency checkup. There's a new version of the program out, so visit their website for the download.

You need to export a GEDCOM file from the latest version of your tree. Then launch Family Tree Analyzer and import your GEDCOM. Choose the Export menu at the top and select Facts to Excel. This generates a spreadsheet you can save. Now you can sort and filter the information as you wish.

Use Family Tree Analyzer to export your facts to a spreadsheet. Now inconsistencies are easy to find.

I want to check the consistency of the occupation and location facts in my family tree.

Consistent Treatment of Foreign Words

When it comes to Occupation facts, my family tree is full of Italian-language job titles. Two years ago, I used Find and Replace in Family Tree Maker to add the English translation to these Italian words. For example, I searched for "sartore" and replaced it with "sartore (tailor)". But I wonder if I overlooked any Italian job titles.

Let me find them in the Facts spreadsheet I created. I can either Sort or Filter the FactType column. (I prefer Excel's Filter function, but you can do what's comfortable for you.) Now I can scroll down the spreadsheet with my eyes on the FactComment column. I'm looking for Italian words that have no translation.

I see a few that are words I still can't translate. I also see one common word that I left untranslated by accident. It's contadino. That's the most common occupation in my family tree. It means farmer or peasant. The spreadsheet tells me this job title belongs to Francesco Iampietro. I'll go to him in my family tree and make the fix.

Paging Francesco Iampietro. Holy cow, look at this crowd!

It figures. I have 12 men in my tree with this same name! But this is an 1817 fact, so that narrows down the list a bit. After viewing the facts in my tree for almost every man with this name, I can't find this 1817 fact. The spreadsheet tells me his GEDCOM individual ID number is 12869. So I'll resort my spreadsheet to show more of Francesco's facts.

He turns out to be older than I thought, born in 1740 and died on the date in 1817. When I view his facts in Family Tree Maker, I can see that I updated his source citations, but I overlooked the missing translation of his job title. I'll fix it now.

The spreadsheet shows me one blank occupation fact. I had added a year and place, but no job title. I'll have to view the original document to find this person's missing occupation.

I may want to revisit the records with untranslatable job titles. I'll bet the documents have bad handwriting. I hope they'll make sense to me now because I have more experience.

Consistent Treatment of Place Names

Next I'll turn to place names. I like to include the word County in U.S. addresses. For exanple, Burgettstown, Washington County, Pennsylvania, USA. I find it makes some place names easier to understand. I can sort the Facts spreadsheet by the FactLocation column. Then I'll scroll down the list looking for places missing "County".

I quickly found a Brooklyn, New York, address missing the word County. It was the home of a family named Abbate. I can:

• go to the Abbate family in Family Tree Maker
• update the address, and
• choose to update every instance of the original address at once.

I'll continue checking for the missing word County. I'll also see if anything else looks like a possible typo. For example, if an address shows up many times, followed by a different spelling, I'd bet that lone address is wrong.

Family Tree Analyzer is a great tool for finding inconsistent place names.

I see one place name listed as Unknown. When I view that person in my tree, I see I forgot to add her address to the Residence fact for the 1940 census. Easily fixed.

It's a pretty quick process to find errors and inconsistencies in your tree's facts. Why not make this a regular checkup? How often you should perform a checkup depends on how often you work on your family tree. I find that I'm reminded to have a checkup each time Family Tree Analyzer releases a program update.

How's your consistency looking?

Let Family Tree Analyzer Find Your Duplicates Duplicates

The duplicates in your family tree aren't as easy to find as that.

I've written about the free program Family Tree Analyzer many times. It's the work of programmer and genealogy fan Alexander Bissett. See the bottom of this article for links to other articles about this software.

Today I've installed the newest version of FTA, and I'm eager to find something else to explore.

I've looked at the many options on the Errors/Fixes tab before. But this time I'm focusing only on the Duplicate Fact and Possible Duplicate Fact options.

Be sure to try the Possible Duplicate Facts option in Family Tree Analyzer.

Hopefully your list of duplicate facts won't be too long. I have 7 duplicate facts and 65 possible duplicate facts in a tree of 21,001 people. That's a reasonable amount. I can look at each one and fix the error.

As I whittle down my list of duplicate fact errors, I'm finding they fall into these categories:

• Just plain forgetting that you already entered that fact.
• Accidentally choosing the wrong fact type, like Marriage instead of Marriage License.
• Adding the wrong date to a fact. This often happens to me with the 1940 U.S. census. It shows you someone's address on a date in 1940, but it also says if they were in the "same house" or "same place" in 1935. Sometimes I may paste in the 1940 date again instead of typing 1935.
• Attaching a fact to the wrong person. I have a married couple in 1800s Italy with the respectful titles of Don and Donna. I accidentally gave both titles to the husband!

The types of duplicates formed a distinct pattern.

And then there are some results that are not errors. Family Tree Analyzer does call them "Possible Duplicate Facts" after all. Here's where I'm seeing that happen:

• Duplicate marriage banns. In Italy, a couple might post marriage banns in the bride's hometown and the groom's hometown—on the same date. That looks like a mistake, but it isn't.
• The same type of fact with no date. There are cases where I entered 2 addresses for people, but I didn't add a date. I need to go back to the source and pin down a date.

I'm very satisfied with this exercise. These are the types of errors you'd never find on your own. It's great that Family Tree Analyzer can be another set of eyes for you.

Find out what else Family Tree Analyzer can do for you.

Here are some Family Tree Analyzer articles you may have missed:

• How to Find Errors in Your Family Tree
• Use This Tool to Discover Family Tree Insights
• One Report, Endless Possibilities for Improving Your Family Tree
• It's Time to Make Your Family Tree Clear and Consistent

Pluck the Stragglers Out of Your Family Tree

I love when someone finds their family in my online tree and contacts me. Last week I heard from a new-found 4th cousin.

More often our connection is distant—cobbled together through the relatives of in-laws. I had this type of connection last week, too. A woman found her grandmother in my tree and wanted to know what else I could tell her.

I told her everything came from the 1920 census and a few New York City death certificates. But I had nothing else to offer.

In fact, as I wrote in my reply, she shouldn't be in my family tree at all. I explained that her grandmother's sister married a man named Celentano. That man's uncle married my grandmother's 1st cousin, Consiglia Sarracino.

I knew from the names Celentano and Sarracino that this was some of my earliest family tree research. When I started, I followed every possible thread for my American cousins.

I used censuses to stretch out the Celentano family as far as I could. And then I built out the families of the people who married into the family. That's how her grandmother wound up in my tree.

Enforcing the In-Law Rule

It wasn't until much later in my genealogy life that I created an in-law rule:

I will not add anything to an in-law's profile beyond their facts and their parents' facts UNLESS my cousin asks me to research that family.^*

^*This rule does not apply to my Italian research where entire towns are inter-related.

Establish a rule to keep your family tree on the path you want.

How many other far-flung in-law branches are still in my family tree? How can I find them in my enormous file?

I explored Family Tree Analyzer software for a while, but it wasn't a shortcut. Maybe there is no shortcut.

Stragglers in my tree would come from my parents' and grandparents' generations. Those are the people I would have found in my early census searches.

Most of my close cousins are from my maternal grandmother's family. In my earliest days, I would have spent time on the families of Grandma's aunts and uncles, the Saviano family.

This is a manageable group to work with. Grandma had only 3 Saviano aunts or uncles who lived long enough to marry and have children.

Uncle Semplicio

As a little girl, my mom was afraid of her great uncle Semplicio. He was an older man with one eye. He literally lived in a closet next to her apartment for a while.

Long ago I met someone online with a connection to Semplicio's wife Giovina. With his encouragement, I built an enormous tree for Zia Giovina. Once I decided to follow my in-law rule, I cut out every relative but Zia Giovina's parents.

Looking in Family Tree Maker, I see families for 3 of Semplicio and Giovina's children. I can view each family to see if I need to delete anyone. Nope. Everyone was following the in-law rule.

Aunt Filomena

My grandmother's aunt is an example of going out of my way to document an in-law. But I want it this way. One of her grandsons is very interested in our family history, and he helped me with it.

Plus, Filomena's husband came from a town very close to Filomena's Italian hometown. There may be a family tie somewhere in their past!

Uncle Raffaele

Uncle Raffaele died long before I was born, but his wife Lucia was sometimes at family gatherings. My brother and I knew her and Aunt Filomena as "Zee Loo Gee" (Zia Lucia) and "Zee Vulla Men" (Zia Filomena). We never saw Zee Vulla Men without Zee Loo Gee.

I have extended families for Raffaele and Lucia's children in my family tree. Clicking through to view them all, I found only one in-law family I should delete. I do want to preserve the research, but not in my main tree. I'll follow my own advice and export this group of people to a new tree before deleting them from mine. (See "How to Export and Delete Branches from Your Family Tree.")

Exporting the 46-person branch was easy, but it didn't seem to capture the media files. I'll do that myself. My document tracker file will help me see which media files belong to this batch of people.

Deleting the branch was tricky. There wasn't one ancestor whose descendants capture the whole group. Instead, I worked my way through the families, noting all their media files. Then I viewed a family tree chart for each group and deleted them from my family tree.

I made sure all the right media files were no longer in my main tree, and I exported a new GEDCOM from Family Tree Maker. A GEDCOM is a text file that follows a standard format that any family tree software can understand. I opened the GEDCOM with Family Tree Analyzer to see if I missed anyone. Would FTA find unrelated people from this branch still in my family tree?

If your family tree is big, Family Tree Analyzer can narrow it down to certain types of names for you.

Here's how to check:

• Launch Family Tree Analyzer and open your latest GEDCOM.
• Go to the Main Lists tab to see everyone in your tree on the Individuals tab.
• To exclude close family and true cousins from this search:
  • Scroll to the right to find the Relation to Root column.
  • Click the arrow button at the top of the column to open a small window.
  • Unclick Select All, then click to select only the blank field at the top of the list.
  • Click the Filter button to close the small window.
• Scroll all the way left to find the Surname column.
• Click the arrow button at the top of the column and choose Sort A to Z.
• Browse the shorter list for the last names you don't want to find.

Success! I didn't find anyone who wasn't supposed to be there. Now I can backup and save my Family Tree Maker file.

But I'm not really done, of course. I have some cousins through my paternal grandmother, and her mother had a bunch of brothers. I can run through this same process with that branch and a few others.

Should You Do This, Too?

The main reasons for going through this export/delete process are:

• to stop misleading people into thinking you're their blood relative
• to stop spending time on branches that aren't the focus of your family tree
• to conserve computer resources.

Plus, I don't like it when I see a name in my tree index and think, "Who on earth is that?"

Consistency Makes Your Family Tree More Professional

Be consistent with facts in your family tree for a professional result.

I'm surprised you've stuck with me. Some of my genealogy suggestions seem like a lot of work. And they are. But if you're building your family tree out of true interest, you'll want to do it right.

I've asked you to add details to your document images. To download entire towns full of vital records. To use spreadsheets to document and track everything.

Since I didn't get much push-back on those tedious projects, I hope you'll be open to this idea: Consistency.

In my day job, I'm a website content producer. I've always thought consistency gives any website credibility. If a website says one thing on one page, and something different on another, the company doesn't look professional.

Now imagine you're visiting someone's family tree. If they use a different address format for everyone, for example, their work looks unprofessional. Would you trust someone with a half-mowed, weed-filled, messy yard to be your landscaper? Do you trust someone with an inconsistent family tree to be your source?

Lately I've noticed 3 areas where I want to be more consistent:

• job titles
• addresses
• immigration descriptions

Let's see what I can do about it.

There are a few ways to see if you're being consistent in your family tree.

Job Titles

In Family Tree Analyzer, I can see a list of every occupation I've recorded in my family tree. If you haven't downloaded the free Family Tree Analyzer program, go there now. You're missing out.

Launch Family Tree Analyzer and open your latest GEDCOM file. Go to the Main Lists / Occupations window.

Granted, you'll have different job titles because they were like that on the source document. But, did you make any typos?

If you find an entry you don't like and want to change, double-click it to see which person(s) has this job title. Make the edit in your family tree software.

All my ancestors alive before 1898 were born in Italy. So I have a ton of Italian-language occupations in my family tree. Using Find and Replace in Family Tree Maker, I added an English translation to each Italian job title. For instance, "pastore (shepherd)".

I noticed a few translations where the Find and Replace messed me up because it was a multi-word job title. Massaro means steward or farm manager and pastore means sheep farmer. But a massaro di pecore is a sheep-farm manager. I wound up with a job title that says "massaro (steward or farm manager) di pecore (sheep farmer)".

With Family Tree Analyzer, I can spot these boo-boos and fix them in Family Tree Maker.

Addresses

I like to add the word "County" to U.S. place names. It's a personal choice, but I think "241 North Road, Poughkeepsie, Dutchess County, New York, USA" is clearer than "241 North Road, Poughkeepsie, Dutchess, New York, USA".

Whichever format you prefer, be consistent. Scan the list of locations in Family Tree Analyzer's Locations tab or the Places tab of Family Tree Maker. Does anything glaring jump out at you?

Having a blueprint for recording certain facts makes it easy to be consistent.

Immigration Descriptions

I first started building my family tree by searching the Ellis Island website. Then I bought Family Tree Maker and came up with a format for immigration descriptions. It went like this:

Arrived aboard the [ship name] [with whichever relative(s)] to join [person] at [address].

But I had to change that format after a while. You see, I started recording each person's departure date from Italy as an Emigration fact. That's the day the ship left the port of Naples. In the Emigration fact's description field in Family Tree Maker, I use this format:

Left for [port city] on the [ship name].

I like that format. But since the Emigration fact includes the ship name, I don't need to repeat it in the Immigration fact. From then on, my Immigration fact follows this format:

Arrived [with whichever relative(s)] to join [person] at [address].

Whenever I notice the old format I fix it. But it'd be great to see a list of all these facts and work to correct them. The best way I've found to review all the immigration facts is to open my GEDCOM file in a text editor.

I can search for "IMMI" and keep pressing the F3 key to see the next one and the next one. When I see one I want to change, the person's name will be a few lines up. Then I can switch to Family Tree Maker and make my edit.

Think about your own style and habits when working on your family tree. Is there anything you changed along the way? Should you go back to the older facts and make them match? I would, but I didn't win the Miss Consistency crown for nothing.

If you want to tackle any particular fact-type, opening your latest GEDCOM is a good idea. Remember to make updates to your tree, not the GEDCOM file.

I wish people wouldn't say they want to trash their family tree and start over. Don't throw away your work. Fix it. And polish it with consistency. Look how professional you are!