Category: Products

 “Why can’t I find that person?  I know I entered them into my database!”  Maybe it is because you know them by a different name than the one you entered for them.

We are taught to enter the full birth name for a person, but that person may have changed their surname when they got married, or may have gone by a nickname.  If you do a simple search for that married nickname, you probably aren’t going to find them.

This is where a great feature called NameFind comes to the rescue.  Let’s say you are looking for Mary Smith.  You open the RootsMagic search list (Search > Person List or click the magnifying glass on the toolbar) but you don’t find Mary Smith in the list.  Here’s how you do it.

Just click the NameFind button on that list screen.

That will open a form where you can enter the name of the person you are looking for.  Just type in the name of the person you are looking for and RootsMagic will begin its magic.   This screen looks quite simple, but is the gateway to a very powerful search which looks not only for a person entered with that name, but people who have that given name as their nickname, or that surname as a married name.  It even has an option to allow close matches, which will let it (for example) find Maria even if you looked for Mary.

Once you’ve entered the name you are looking for (and clicked OK), RootsMagic will jump to the first person who matches.  Notice in this case we were searching for Mary Smith, but RootsMagic found Marianne Davis.  That’s because 1) Marianne’s nickname is Mary, and 2) she was married to George Smith.

So there you have it- with RootsMagic’s NameFind, you can easily find anyone in your file, no matter what their maiden, married, or nicknames may be!

Here at RootsMagic HQ, today is “Pioneer Day”, a local holiday where we celebrate our ancestors and the diverse peoples who settled this area. One fun project for Pioneer Day (or any day for that matter) is to make a map showing where our ancestors lived and how they migrated and moved about. There is just something special about looking at a visual map that communicates so much more than a printed list of places can.

We happen to have a product which makes making these maps a snap. It’s called Family Atlas. Now, Family Atlas is a standalone program. You don’t need our RootsMagic software to use its features, although it can read your RootsMagic file as well as genealogy and map files from a variety of different sources.  One common use of it is to import your family data from your genealogy software and then create and print personalized family maps from that data. It is one-of-a-kind software that lets you visualize and publish your family history in a unique and compelling way. Be sure to read to the end of this tip to learn about a special limited-time discount on this software.

 When you first open Family Atlas, you’ll see a blank, interactive, zoomable world map. At this point, you need to add “Marker Sets” to add people, places, and events to your map. To do this, click on the Green “Plus” icon in the upper-left corner of the screen. The “Add Marker Set” screen will appear.

Click Place Marker Set and then OK. The “Edit Place Markers” screen will appear.

This is where you will add all the points that you want to plot on the map. First, give the marker set a title. Click Edit next to “Symbol” to change the color, shape, and connecting lines between each marker.  Click Add to add a new marker to this set. The “Edit Place Marker” screen will appear.

Add a label, date, and location for the marker. If Family Atlas recognizes the place, it will automatically add the Latitude and Longitude for you.  Click OK to finish adding the marker.  Repeat this last step for each marker that you wish to add.

Click OK to save your changes and return the the main screen. Here you can see your map. Pan and zoom the map however you wish. Feel free to explore the various details. You can click Atlas Options to change map colors, fonts, and more.

When you have the map colored and zoomed just as you want it, click Publish Map to take a snapshot of the map and open up the publisher tool.  Here you can add text, pictures, arrows, and more to annotate and beautify your map.

 Now that your map is ready, you may print it or save it to a PDF or graphic file to put online, add to a story, or share with others!

Would you like to learn more about Family Atlas and see it in action? Then watch our recorded webinar on Mapping Your Family Tree with Family Atlas.

Special Discount on Family Atlas

We are pleased to offer a limited-time discount on Family Atlas.  Through August 10, 2014, you can save $10 off the regular price and get Family Atlas for only $19.95 (plus s/h if you want the CD).  You must use the link below in order to get this discounted price.

www.rootsmagic.com/store/family-atlas/special.aspx

This special offer is only available until August 10, 2014 so get your copy of Family Atlas today!

 

Every person in your family tree is important, right?  As much as we may hate to admit it, sometimes certain persons are more important than others.  For example, imagine wandering around through the outskirts of your family tree when you realize it’s time to shut down for the night.  You wish there was a way that you could just pick up where you left off the next time you get on… and there is.

Meet your new friend the “Bookmark“.  Bookmarks work just like they sound… highlight a person on any of the main screens, press Ctrl+B (or do “Search > Bookmarks > Bookmark person” from the menu), and RootsMagic will remember that person for you.  Any person you bookmark will be listed in the Bookmarks tab of the side list like this…

Just select any bookmark in the list and click Go, and RootsMagic will jump directly to that person.  There’s no limit as to how many bookmarks you create, although if the list gets too long you’ll want to make sure you read last weeks tip on incremental searching.  Your bookmarks are saved with your database so you can keep them as long as you wish, or you can highlight a bookmark in the list and click the red X to delete it.

Bookmarks are also great for when you need to temporarily go somewhere else in your tree and be able to quickly return to the current person.  Just bookmark the person you are on, go do whatever else you need to do in your tree, then quickly jump back to the original bookmarked person.

So remember, while every person in your family tree is important, bookmarks let you mark those that are the most important to you at the time. And, to avoid any hurt feelings, you might want to make sure any living family members don’t notice their absence from the bookmark list.

You’re looking at the index of people on the main RootsMagic screen.  You see “Aldred, Mary” but you want to move to “Taylor, William”. Your only hope is to scroll down through the list, past thousands of names and 20 letters of the alphabet until you find what you’re looking for, right?

Sadly, we see this happening all too often, even with experienced RootsMagic users. The saddest part of all this is that it is completely unnecessary with RootsMagic’s fantastic incremental searching.

How does it work?

Step 1) Click anywhere inside whatever list you want to search in order to “select” that list. You can tell if it is selected because the colored bar highlighting the selected record will be blue instead of gray.

Step 2) Start typing the text you want to search for. RootsMagic will automatically jump to the first matching record and will put an orange box around the text that you’re searching for.

Step 3) Keep typing the text you want to search for until you find what you’re looking for. In the case of a list of names, once you match the surname, press the , (comma) key to start searching on given names.

Step 4) If searching a list of names, start typing letters of the given names until you find the record you are looking for.

That’s it! You just jumped through thousands of names from “Alred, Mary” to “Taylor, William” with just 8 keystrokes!

And the best thing? It will work on almost every list in RootsMagic! Try it on lists of places, sources, fact types, and more to quickly find the record you need.

So if you haven’t used this feature in RootsMagic, what are you waiting for? Try it for yourself. And the next time you see someone slowly scrolling through a list in RootsMagic, share this time-saving tip with them. You’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you saved someone from  hours of unnecessary scrolling and be promoted to “RootsMagic Hero” in their eyes.

As you’re exploring around your family tree, do you ever think, “Who is ‘Lysander Liske’ and how is he related to me?” Followed by, “Hmm. You don’t see many babies named ‘Lysander’ anymore.”  While RootsMagic doesn’t have the power to name babies, it does have the ability to always show you your relationship to the selected person on the main screen.

To display the relationships as you navigate around the main views, do Tools > Set Relationships from the main menu.  RootsMagic will bring up the following form where you can simply click the Set relationships button, or you can click the Change… button to select a different person to set the relationships for first.

RootsMagic will scan through your database and set each person’s relationship to the person you selected on the form.  Then as you navigate around the various views, RootsMagic will display that relationship in the status bar at the bottom of the screen.

In this example, the relationship between the highlighted person (William Thomas Lloyd) and the selected person (Dr. James Smith) is first cousin twice removed.  As you move from person to person in your file, the status line at the bottom of the screen will be updated to show the relationship between the highlighted person and the originally selected person.

You can easily select anyone in the database and set the relationships relative to that person, so it’s easy to display everyone’s relationship to you, and then change it to show the relationships to an ancestor you are researching.  One important point to this though is that when you set the relationships, it sets them for the people currently in the file.  If you add additional people to your file after setting relationships you will need to redo the Set Relationship command to include those new individuals.

And with that tip, “Congratulations”, meet your “second-cousin 3 times removed”, “Lysander Liske”!

 

 

Many of our user’s around the world will be celebrating Father’s Day this weekend. In commemoration, I’m going to show you a unique feature in RootsMagic that makes working with lines of fathers (and even sons) a snap. Isolating lines of fathers and sons can be useful in genetic genealogy when you need to find just those men in your file that should share the same Y-Chromosome. Others have used this feature for surname studies, tracking legal records, and more.

The magic happens in the “Select People” screen. You’ll see this screen when you go to export a GEDCOM file, select people to color code, print a report for a group of people, publish a website online, and more. Any time you need to select a group of people to work with.

Type the name (surname, given name) of the starting person of the line you wish to select. Once the person is selected, click on the Mark group button then select Genetic lines of highlighted person.

Here you have several options. To select the line of fathers for the highlighted person, choose Y-Chromosome Line (Y-STR). If you select Ancestors of highlighted person, you’ll follow the line of fathers up the tree. If you select Descendants of highlighted person, you’ll follow the line of sons down the tree. Click OK twice to complete the selection.

Ta-da! You’ve now isolated a line of fathers and sons! Happy Father’s Day  to all those important men in our lives.

P.S. – We don’t want mothers to feel left out of the excitement. Astute readers will have noticed the option to select a genetic line based on Mitochondrial DNA Line (mitDNA).  Since Mitocondrial DNA is passed directly from mother to child so this option will similarly allow you to isolate a line of mothers and daughters.

Have you ever started exploring around your family tree and found yourself lost, unsure which line to follow to get back down to your more recent ancestors? The Color Coding feature in RootsMagic makes it easy to leave yourself “breadcrumbs” so that you always know which people are your direct-line ancestors.

The first thing to do is to find yourself on the RootsMagic main screen. Once you’re selected yourself, choose Tools > Color Code People from the main menu. You’ll see this screen:

Choose whichever color you like from the Set color box (I prefer something that really stands out). Select Ancestors of current person and then click OK. You’ll now see that all the ancestors of the selected person will appear in the selected color, whether on the main screen or in various reports and charts.

Now if you ever get lost in the upper-branches of your tree, just click on the Family view and look at the list of children:

Whichever child is marked in your selected color is a direct-line ancestor. Just click on the arrow to the left of the name to climb down the tree until you reach familiar territory.

Of course, this is just one possible use for Color Coding. Not only can you color lines of ancestors and descendants, but you can also color people based on endless criteria such as where they were born, if they are missing information, if they are the end-of-the-line, etc. You can use up to 14 different colors, each with a different meaning of your own choosing.

To learn more about Color Coding, be sure to watch our short video demonstrating it:

Have you ever stared at your RootsMagic screen wondering where to look next (or maybe even where to start)? There are so many record types and websites to search that you aren’t even sure where to begin.  Or maybe you are a seasoned genealogist who just wants to make sure you don’t overlook anything.  Did you know there is a program called GenSmarts which can help you choose which records to search for any person in your file?

And best of all, we have the chance to offer a special discount on GenSmarts for a limited time.

Research Suggestions from GenSmarts

GenSmarts is a program that makes research recommendations for people in your RootsMagic file.  If you have GenSmarts installed, you can highlight any person in your file, then select Tools > GenSmarts Suggestions from the RootsMagic menu, and RootsMagic will display a list of research suggestions for that person.

So how does GenSmarts come up with these suggestions?  It creates a profile of your ancestor based on where and when they lived, and then matches that profile with its inventory of known records to make predictions about the record trail your ancestors may have left behind.  Each suggestion will include the logic behind the suggestion, and where that type of record can be found.  Keep in mind that these are suggestions… GenSmarts doesn’t know if your ancestor is in a particular record, just that it is the type of record your ancestor is likely to show up in.

If a record type is available online, you can just click the “Look online” button and GenSmarts will attempt to find your ancestor in those records.  GenSmarts knows which online sites have which records, so it knows whether to search FamilySearch, Ancestry, FindAGrave, or whatever other site has that particular record type.  If more than one site has the records, it will default to the free site.

What if a suggestion is only available from a pay site (like Ancestry), but you don’t have a subscription?  GenSmarts will take you to the “teaser page” of the site so you can get an idea whether a record exists for your ancestor.  You can then add the suggestion to the RootsMagic person’s to-do list, and later print out a list of all the suggestions you need to pursue for a particular website.  You can then take that list to the local library or Family History Center where you can do the actual search.  This little trick (as well as other GenSmarts features) is shown in the video below.

Note: GenSmarts is primarily focused on US, Canadian, and UK records, but there is a little support for records in some other countries.  If you have other questions about GenSmarts, here is a list of Frequently Asked Questions.

Special Discount on GenSmarts

The folks at GenSmarts have allowed us to offer a limited time discount on GenSmarts.

GenSmarts is available either as a download or on CD (not both).  The discounted price is $19.95 for the download, or $24.95 (plus s/h) for the CD.  You must use the link below in order to get this discounted price.

http://rootsmagic.com/store/gensmarts/special.aspx

This special offer is only available until June 15th, 2014. So get your copy of GenSmarts today!

It’s Memorial Day weekend in the United States which means that many of you will be visiting gravesites of friends and family to honor and remember them. Did you know that RootsMagic can help you plan your visits and make sure that you don’t miss any ancestral resting spots?

Listing Everyone Buried in a Location

Would you like to have a list of everyone who was buried in a given location? The Individual List in RootsMagic does just what you need.  To create the report:

1. Choose Reports > Print a Report from the Main Menu.

2. Select Individual List from the report types and click Create Report. The Report Settings screen will appear.

3. In the People to print option, choose Selected people

4. In the People to include box, choose Select from list. The Select People screen will appear.

 5. Click on the Mark group button, then choose Select people by data fields. The Search for information screen will appear.

6. In the first row, set the options to Burial, place, contains, and the name of the location you wish to search.

7. Click OK three times until you return to the Report Settings screen.

8. Check/Uncheck any options from the Information to include section to you wish to show or hide.

9. Click Generate Report to see the list.

Voila! You now have a list of all individuals in your file that are buried in a given location. You can also experiment with different options to include precisely the people and information you need for your trip.

And while you’re there, don’t forget to take pictures of the gravesites and record GPS coordinates to record in RootsMagic for later. But that’s the subject of another tip for another day.

Happy Memorial Day!