There are many powerful tools available on FamilySearch.org. Many features of these tools are not well documented in manuals or easily discovered in the products themselves. This presentation shows some tips and tricks from a FamilySearch engineer to be more productive in using the resources on FamilySearch.org. I gave this presentation at the 2014 BYU Conference on Family History and Genealogy. While there are some portions of the presentation that are not yet complete, I decided to upload the presentation as is and plan on updating it in the near future with additional information.

1. © 2013 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.
FamilySearch Insider
Tips and Tricks
BYU Conference on
Family History and Genealogy
July 29, 2014
Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group
January 10, 2015
Ben Baker
bakerb@familysearch.org

2. My Background
• 5 years as Software Engineer at FamilySearch
• Currently work on Family Tree, but tries to use all of our
products
• Not an expert at everything, but feel an engineer’s
perspective can help others
• Way too much to present everything in the time allotted,
so want to know what items are of most interest
• Review syllabus and presentation later for items not
covered. See http://www.slideshare.net/bakers84/ for
this and other presentations I’ve given in the past.

3. Essential Tips
Everyone Should Understand These

4. Purpose of FamilySearch
The purpose of the Family History
Department is to help Church
members fulfill their divinely
appointed responsibility to discover
their families and submit their names
for temple ordinances

5. Key Indicator Reports
Ask your
• Family history consultant(s)
• High priest group leader
• Bishop
• Stake president
about this report for your
stake/ward.

6. Share Your Knowledge
As shown from the purpose statement and key
indicator report, increasing participation among
all members is paramount.
Share what you know with:
• Your family, from immediate family to distant cousins
• Your friends, from ward members to those not of our faith

7. Why Youth Are Needed
Elder Neal L. Anderson challenged the youth at RootsTech 2014 “to set
a personal goal to help prepare as many names for the temple as
baptisms you perform in the temple.”
https://www.lds.org/topics/family-history/temple-challenge
Why?
Because temples shouldn’t have to provide names
when your own family needs your help and
Experiencing “both halves” of the blessing builds faith
NO MORE TEMPLE WELFARE!

8. Critical Paradigm To Understand – Part 1
Where you can help the most
1. Find your relatives in indexed records and link
them to persons in Family Tree
2. Upload photos, stories and documents of your
relatives and link them to persons in Family
Tree
3. Help index historical records
4. Clean up data in Family Tree
5. Reserve temple ordinances for your family
Family Tree
Digitized Images
Indexed Records
Historical Records
(Microfilm and
original
documents)
Living Memory
Photos, Stories,
Documents, Audio
Completed LDS
Temple
Ordinances

9. Critical Paradigm To Understand – Part 2
The best way
to find people who need LDS temple work is
to find people who are NOT in the tree yet
The best way
to find people not in the tree yet is
to find them in a historical record with
someone who is already in the tree

10. Embrace Change
Embrace change, don’t be afraid of it
Click on new things to see what they do
I don’t think you can mess up anything in a single
click, but be sure to read warnings.

11. Keep up to Date
Read the FamilySearch blog at
https://familysearch.org/blog/en/ for
updates on new features and other
happenings.
Subscribe to the blog via RSS
Google “how to subscribe to an rss feed”
for helps – I use Outlook and feedly
Use the categories and search for
information you’re most interested in

12. Family Tree Specific Tips and Tricks

13. Family Tree is “Our Tree”
• Freely available to anyone worldwide
• Reduces duplication of effort
• Increases collaboration to arrive at the best
information
• Information added outlives contributors
• Link person profiles to additional information
• More on this topic in another presentation of mine
titled “Finding ‘My Tree’ Within FamilySearch Family
Tree’s ‘Our Tree’”
We can all go further faster by working together

14. Record Hints are Awesome!
• Searches indexed records for you
• Will find records based on all information,
including maiden and married names
• Often overcomes errors in records
• Only presents high confidence matches
• Significant increase in sources attached
since rollout

18. Congratulations!
You have just found someone
in a record that is not in the tree

20. Record Hints in the Descendancy View

21. Search Records Link
Starting point
Search section for how to refine

22. Starting Point for Further Refined Searches

23. Example Search Refinement

24. Use Other “Tree” Views

25. Descendancy View

26. Fan Chart View

27. Portrait Pedigree View

28. Use Underused and Powerful
Features of the Watch List
• Navigation to distant relatives
• Filtering by various criteria
• Sorting by various criteria
• View latest changes over the past 30 days
• Filter and sort latest changes

29. Navigation

30. Filtering on Names

31. Filtering on Places

32. Filtering on Dates

33. Filtering on Deleted Persons

34. Sorting – Part 1

35. Sorting – Part 2

36. Changes to People I’m Watching

37. Changes to a Specific Person

38. Changes by a Specific User

39. Changes of a Specific Type

40. Printed Charts from a Person Page

41. Printing Charts from a Tree View

42. Fillable Pedigree Charts and
Family Group Sheets
• Same as official LDS paper forms
• Can save and modify later
• Easy to share with others
Insider Techie Tips
• If you are LDS and want to print without LDS temple
ordinances, change show_ords to false in the URL
Ex. https://familysearch.org/tree-data/pedigree/K2V7-PV5/spouse/K2V7-P92/pdf?show_ords=false&locale=en
• If you’d like to print without Family Tree person IDs, add
&showPIDs=false to the URL
Ex. https://familysearch.org/tree-data/pedigree/K2V7-PV5/spouse/K2V7-P92/pdf?show_ords=false&locale=en&showPIDs=false

44. Difference Between Family and
Family With Sources Options

45. 7-Generation Fan Chart

46. Portrait
Pedigree

47. Printing Pages Without Defined Forms
3 Ways to Initiate Browser Print
• Right Click and Select Print…
• Select Print from main or File menu
• Ctrl + P

48. Synchronize With a Desktop Manager

49. GEDCOM Upload is Not Evil

50. Process to Submit Tree
1. Upload GEDCOM to FamilySearch
2. Compare each person with those in
Family Tree
3. Add persons not already in Family Tree

51. Editing Relationships

54. Visualize Relationships
Parent Child Relationship
Father Mother
Child
Mother
Child
WifeHusband
Parent Child Relationship
with Single Parent
Couple Relationship

55. F M
C
F M
C
F M
C
F M
C
F M
C
F M
C
F M
C
F M
C
F M
Tips
• Visualize or even
draw out the
relationships when
trying to decide
how to fix
something
• Pay attention to
person IDs
• Remember how to
edit and delete
relationships
M
C
WH WH
WH
…
…

56. Managing Your Settings

57. Make Your E-mail Public

60. Use the History List Dropdowns
• Use Tree and Person Lists to Jump to Tree View or
Person Page View
• Use the Go To: textbox to jump directly to a person ID
• Click on your own name to go back to you
• Click on your starting person ID to jump to that person
• Click on a person in the list to jump to that person
• Start typing a name or person ID to filter the list
• Select Add Unconnected Person to add a new person to
the tree that isn’t connected to anyone else with
relationships.

61. Viewing Changes of a Particular Type

62. Sort Sources With Arrows or
Drag and Drop

63. Memories

67. Documents added to the memories section
can also be attached as sources to persons
in Family Tree by following the steps below.
1. Go to the person page for the person to
add the document to
2. Click on “Create a New Source” in the
Sources section
3. Select the “Add a Memory” radio button
4. Click “Add File”
5. If you’ve already uploaded the document
you want to add as a source, select it
from the memories shown on the screen.
If you haven’t uploaded the document yet,
drag it to the plus sign or click it to find it
on your computer.
6. Enter an appropriate title, citation and
notes and click the Save button.

70. Scope of Interest
Internal term used to define those persons who will
show up in this section of memories and also in
temple opportunities.
The system is showing you persons four
generations above you along with their spouses
and children. This may be expanded in the
future.

73. How to Contact User Who Uploaded a Memory

77. Search

78. LDS Church members can now gain
free access to the resources at the 3
other major family history sites.
• Ancestry
• FindMyPast
• MyHeritage
To sign up, go to
https://familysearch.org/partneraccess

81. Example Using Facets to Narrow
Down Collections
Show me all collections that contain
birth, marriage or death records in
Illinois between 1800 and 1849

83. Collection Specific Search
Select a specific collection
Search within that collection only

87. Temple

88. Sort By Vitals

89. Sort By Ordinance Type

90. Sort Into Family Groups

91. Sort By Date Reserved/Modified

92. Sort By Two Columns

93. Filter By Name

94. Print Your Reservation List
3 Ways to Initiate
• Right Click and Select Print…
• Select Print from main or File menu
• Ctrl + P

96. Share or Unreserve Work You Can’t Do

98. Indexing

103. Develop Your Skills

111. Provide Feedback

114. Family History Resources on
Lds.org and Mormon.org

118. Other Useful Tips

125. Attendee Suggested Tips