That sounds great – how about fixing the site so I can view the actual documents (census, military records, etc.)again.

Great idea – I’m looking forward to the time saving benefits. Right now, the website is moving so slowly. Hope this is temporary.

It just gets worse – now nothing works but the search. Can’t get to help, can’t download the viewer. This has been going on for more than a week – what’s happening?

3 1/2 hours to try and input ONE name with a source. Each time I get this message: “Invalid or Unauthorized Input Has Been Detected” What gives?

The extra time spent “Loading” is really a drag. Also hitting enter in a text field to start the search no longer works — either have to tab to the button or move the mouse. Hitting the button is hard because it’s nearly off the screen. It would be nice to keep another button top/right or top/left as other screens sometimes do. I really dislike having to scroll to find the enter button. But on the other hand, thanks for the “search for records” button when there are no hints on the “People” page! — ddj

The enter button gripe is particular to the “add record to someone in your tree” screen.

I like a lot of the new features however, site is running very slow today. This evening I am finding the census info on left side in hints is written in German. Not good! It would be helpful to add family from census to tree without having to type in – same as in Family Tree Maker.

This new method is much too slow and requires more selecting & clicking. I must select who is added to my tree by data from census which is not allways new. Now I have about 5 more clicks to make and it is slower. This sucks.

Jim Hubbard

The information I found for Howard W. Hultgren was incorrect. His Mother is Josephina Carlson Hultgren, while Hilma Carlson was an Aunt that he lived with when his Mother was killed in the 1905 tornado in Marquette, Kansas

This is a wonderful addition but needs to be tweaked to allow mergers with existing people in the tree whose names are spelled slightly differently than the index(an “e” rather than and “a”). I wound up with many duplicate people whom I had to remove one by one.

Expanded tips about discretion and understanding the limitations would make this a more useful tool. prmc

Love it, love it, love it! What a time saver.

Hated to ask for this feature but had gotten totally spoiled using it on familytreemaker program.. absolutely wonderful to have it online now!!!

Just popped in to mention that I’m getting German on the update screen, but see that it’s already been noted and posted by another.

I too noticed the sluggishness today, then saw new input screens popping up and figured the upgrade was gumming things up for a while.

I am very disappointed in the upgrade. Not only is everything much slower, but I no longer have the ability to delete people or events. The merging capacity is poor, so that multiple duplicate people and events are created. Therefore, the loss of ability to delete people or events leaves everything a mess. I have canceled my subscription for the time being, despite having enjoyed Ancestry after subscribing last month and creating a family tree of hundreds of people and sources.

I like the idea of the change in adding everyone on a Census page at once except I keep getting a page error message and it won’t update.

I’m really frustrated tonight becaue the merge function is not working for me. I get up to the point where I want to add soemthing to my family member and when I click on the “ADD” button, nothing happens. I’ve tried it using several different accesses, one on the Foxfire browser and one directly through my interet carrier page. Nothing seems to work tonight and I am pretty frustrated as I’d like to keep going but I’m going to hae to shut it down and see if it works better tomorrow. Haven’t had this problem before and I’ve added many, many items. Hope you can fix this. Andrea

Terrific! Works like a charm. Thank you very much Kenny.

This site matches ours almost perfectly. I am happy about this.

The new feature that allows the additional family member selection is nice. However, if the person in an ancestry member tree is not spelled very similar to what appears on a particular Census record for example – the “Record Merge” forces you to add a new person in your tree in order to attach the record. For example, I located a Census record that has the name of “Maggie Shaffer”, but in my tree she is “Margaret Pearl Shaffer” and so, Ancestry wants to add a new person. For this reason, it would be great if there was a way to select the person to attach to if Ancestry doesn’t automatically find a match. Please let me know if this is feasible. Thank you.

IT’S ABOUT TIME FOR THIS IDEA TO COME WILL MAKE SEARCHING AND ADDING CHILDREN SO MUCH EASIER

THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU!!!!!!!!
new feature including rels on census fantastic, cuts work, crossed eyes, mistakes and headaches, specially when you get to the prolific families!!

I think this is brilliant but is there any way dates can be altered? because branches of my tree goes back as do many others to 1200 and earlier I find in many instances contributors put birthdates in as born in USA 1400 as an example because when people emigrated to America they took the names of the places they lived in England so I consistantly find… born Durham, North Carolina USA when it should be Durham UK.I know you can’t supply history lessons but if people knew the date Christopher Columbus discovered America it would wipe out all the misinformation that pops up constantly.

Very neat, time is saved by adding the family.

I do NOT like the new way to add census records to people in my tree…when adding the record I type in the persons name, but now I can no longer just hit enter, I must stop and click on search with the mouse…next, after attaching the record I am taken to that person in the tree rather than back to census in order to attach others in my family, again and again! and NO, I do not like attaching the record willy-nilly to the whole group at once, lets face it, the transcribers and I do not alway agree on a persons name and how do I know the right name got attached to the right person?

I like this feature very much, BUT..a problem that I’m running into is the spelling of the names of the other family members. Often different sources have different spellings or use nicknames, i.e., Mae, May, Mary; or Kate, Catherine, Kathryn. So the feature sees it as a different person, where in reality it depends on the experience of the person recording the information, such as census takers, or perhaps a different nickname is used at different times. Is there any way that we can edit the information?

I do not like the many of the new features. there are too many loading, check and recheck, with a Loading in between. While I set and wait. Also sometimes when I finally get to a hint, sometimes it is in a foriegn language. What gives here??? also, help doesn’t work. Seemes like Ancestry just goes from bad to worse. I sure wish there was another site we could use but seems like Ancestry has a monoply.

This isn’t working for me at all. Dang it.

I can no longer attach sources (census records, birth records, etc.) to anyone in my tree. I get to the “Review and save changes” screen, but all it does is show me a “Loading….” message. Nothing ever pops up. I MUCH preferred the old way – it was so much easier, and actually worked!

I love the new merge feature. It saves loads of time in attaching information to family members. I did encounter a problem with a person who was widowed and remarried. The merge wanted to put the marriage date on the wrong bride. Otherwise, I love it.

Seems like it is back to one person rather than the whole family again. However, there is an issue with what page it returns you after you add the information. It used to return you to the person’s family page, but i could hit the “back” button on my browser to get to the census record with the whole family, and then after I had added the first person, it would go back to the census record with the rest of the family members. But now, it returns you to the hints page, even after the first person is entered. For a while it returned you to the person’s page (even after the first family member was entered), but that seems to have shifted sometime today to the “hints” page.

Never mind–I can get it to do the whole family now. But the rest of my comment on where it returns you is still applicable.

This new system is rubbish. Every time you get a census to add to a family you now have to keep finding the census to add to the rest of the family,why change something that works!

Since yesterday Processing Image Request” almost everytime I try to access any type of image, but only after waiting 30-60 seconds for the response. The problem seemed less frequent in the evening so maybe it’s related to load on the system. Whatever the cause, it’s very frustrating and is really limiting the usefulness of the system.

Trying again – Part of my entry disappeared:

Since yesterday I get a message “Error Processing Image Request” almost everytime I try to access any type of image, but only after waiting 30-60 seconds for the response. The problem seemed less frequent in the evening so maybe it’s related to load on the system. Whatever the cause, it’s very frustrating and is really limiting the usefulness of the system.

I noticed you new “add” format but
it looks like you missed something
important. With the old format if
you wanted to add/attach someone you would be directed to the list of the
people in your tree. If this person
was not already on the list, there
was a place to click that said
something like “add John Doe as a
new member of your tree”. You’d
click it and a screen would pop up
to enter the info. That system is
not available on the new format. I
now have to go back to a parent or
a spouse enter the name of the new
person and then go back to whatever
record I found the person on and try
to attach it. Yes, I got in, but it
was through the backdoor. Can you
fix this?

Please call me 518-348-6478 if you
have questions.

Yours,
Rev. Barbara J. Silk

This is getting very frustrating, what used to be enjoyable has now become a chore. Attaching records before was simple and to the point, now I must take several steps and end up in timbucktoo to attach records and return to same record! Please tell me this change is not permanent!

Lets say there is 10 kids and all in a roll. On each record that comes up, it shows all 10 kids well now I have 3 of the same person and I hit saved. It doesn’t put the record under the main person it just adds another person with the same name. It would of been nice if all the 3 of the records went under each child that was listed. Now I have to go in delete 2 of each of the same child.

I am having problems adding stuff from the 1880 New York census. I am constantly getting Invalid Input errors. Plus, I have members of my family that have foriegn letters in their names (ie. è) This is also “invalid” and no records can be connected with them.

I absolutely love all the new things you have made available on Ancestry. It is slower than it used to be but then there is much more information loading. You have come a long way since I first discovered your website. Keep it up.

I love this feature! Saves going back and forth adding sources to siblings!

Now I can’t save records to my tree. Thanks a lot. Charlene

Great feature. Love it. Have been waiting for this for a long time. One question. Could we see the record image on the page where we are selecting who to attach it to? Then we could compare who is on the record with who Ancestry has suggested is on the record.

Several issues:
1.Was this product in beta for any time before being released for general availability?
2.I also am intermittently getting German headings . . .
3.I’ve learned not to use your feature that allows for adding marriage data when a marriage record is found. It doesn’t matter whether I have the spouse’s name already on the target person record or not – the software will add “Marriage to Unknown”. The only solution I’ve found is, as others have said, to delete in edit mode.
4.Frustratingly slow.

Other than that, I’m retired so I have lots of time to sit here and re-do things, so no worries. And there’s really not much German to learn to survive

~Pete

Another question/comment. I figured out that if I have already accepted a record as a hint, I can go to “Accepted Hints” for that person and then merge it to people on their tree. But, what about records I attached but didn’t get through a hint? Something I found on my own. Could you please make it so that if I go to a historical record attached to someone on my tree, from their person page, that I can then attach that record to everyone in the family at once?

I like the new feature. One other thing I’d like is the ability to add notes (such as occupation, etc.) like those found in census records, without having to save the record first and then reopen it.

I like some of your new site. I am finding that the info from hints are just in different order (like the dates). but I usually have more info than what I get. I often wish I give give you what I have.
Thanks!

LOVE IT

I like all of the features of the upgrade with the exception of the profile on the ‘List View of People in xxxxxxxx’ (tree). I am administrating a tree of over 4500 individuals and am going through the name list one by one. With the old profile, I could see a difference in the shading of the print on each name and could tell which people I had edited and which still needed work. Now I am having a hard time determining which names I have worked on.

Just found the new option to add possible relatives at the same time as an individual’s record is located in a census return. This will be a great time saver but, as you say, needs to be used with care. Neverthe less a great advancement.

Having just entered a comment I was directed to the site where other people had contributed. Crikey some people want to be spoon fed. The system gives a HINT you decide whether it is valid and wish to use it. If the spelling is slightly different then “show detail”, accept the hint and then change it or add whatever you like. Your current members are shown in the right hand panel so if you get a duplicate there is only one person to blame and it’s not Kenny.
I am over the moon with it!

I am more excited everyday with all the added features!!! I only wish that I could do this as a full time job
The appearance of the list with the option to click on who has hints is awesome too. This feature of adding other people from records is so cool. I can’t begin to tell you…..I was just enjoying playing with layouts etc. for the custom printing – basically so that I could print the image of a census and add all the other information more easily – and then I stumbled on this. I truly am an amateur – but I’ll get there! There is so much to learn here. Thank you so much for the service that you provide as well as constant advancement and progress!

Look forward to using it. It should work great as I use to go back into the record and click on each member separately to add the record. This will make that effort sooo much easier.

Dear Mr. Freestone,
Your new merging has interupted my ability to add information to my family tree. I keep getting the message that I am not authorized to enter the data. I have a lot of work to do and would like this corrected as soon as possible.
Thank You

This is a wonderful new addition for adding addtional family members, where it fails is that if a persons name is spelled differently, the merge suggests that it is a new person or if the person cannot be found automatically, it does not allow you to correct this by selecting the correct person from your family tree.

Also for those users who have a low band width connection, there should be an option to select a cut down version like the old style merge that was perviously used.

I have seen a hint only to find that when i select it, it comes up with page not found and when i go back, the hint has gone

Happy to see you are working on this problem. I havn’t tried your new system yet, but saw the opening to talk to someone. The old days there was a merge possibility which dissapeared. I have Caroline Mueller who married William Willmann. He died, then she married his brother Friedrich Willmann. The double name problem would not go away. Thank you Louis Schmidt.

Some of the information is scrambled and It could be dangerous to newer eye (person who is up on their extended tree) It is very slow even at night. I have the very old family tree converted from windows 95 and it does not work.

Am having difficulty deleting people from my tree. I remove the relationships and then attempt to delete the individual (they are duplicate people) but it does not work. Is anyone else having this issue?

This is a wonderful feature! Of course, because the census is so full of misspellings, it has its limitations. If only you could make it so we can type in the correct name to match up with the wrong name, then have the record attach to that person. I hope that makes sense.

The new layout is very nice, easy on the eyes…but

In simple terms: I work on one head of household, find him in every census possibly, with wife/wives, children, military, birth, death, etc. After I verify if I have any of his family already in my tree I then add any wife, children, etc. Having done so, I then attach each census to each family member in order not to have to search for it again [some are spelled way off...my all time favorite was when I finally found Zachariah Taylor under Lachariah Laylor!].

Before, I could go down the list in the census record, attach each family member and be taken right back to the same census to finish attaching each family member.

Now, I attach another family member from the census and I am taken to that family member…say a child of head of house. Now, I must scroll down to whatever census it was and go back to attach another sibling, then again and again.

I learned my lesson some time ago about attaching records en masse…I am still cleaning up duplicate people and deleting people born 450BC in Canada who died in 1960 in France…or some such nonsense.

So for those of us who do not care for the mass attaching of census records, is there any way to simply have us return to the census after attaching records rather than bouncing us around the family?

Allowing the enter button to work rather than clicking on the search button again, would not hurt my feelings a bit.

Some nice features with the new system attaching records, but I agree that when attaching relatives to existing people (and the record has permutations in the spelling), creating a new person is totally awful.

Worst immediate problem….I’m also getting “Invalid or unauthorized input has been detected” when trying to attach censuses. Why hasn’t this issue been addressed here? Would love to have a datapoint to know it will be fixed.

AWSOME! This could save me a lot of time in adding new people and records to my tree. You all do a great job at ancestry.com. Sometimes, it seems like you are reading my mind. Thanks a bunch.

In looking at the tree info for my mother (Jennie Jaquith Solsby) and her father William Henry Solsby, I find the last name as DOLSBY. This is totally incorrect and am sure is the reason that I have been unable to locate any information on my grandpa William Henry Solsby, born 1852 and married to Emma Elizabeth Heideman on July 23, 1883 (WEDDING CERTIFICATE on my wall)Please make these changes or corrections. I do not know how.

Love this, really good tool.
Would love something along these lines for BMD for informants, witnesses etc

Not too sure about the new search too many names are not showing up just a link which needs clicking, but all new things take time to be tweeked.
Keep up the great work

Love it! Love the changes!

This merge feature is fantastic. Way to go.

I am impressed so far.

It was help both you and myself if you could
get my E-mail straightened out. It has not been
correct for about two years and you keep telling
me it is wrong.

I am sorry to bring this up here. Erase it if you
must.

When I accessed a birth record and used the “show relatives” feature it gave Augustin W Higdon’s wife as his daughter. Her birth was also on the same record. It was the Kentucky birth record for 1852 – 1910 for Mclean County. I have also ran into a lot of transcription errors. They will be recorded appropriatly on the original records but wrong on the transcribed version. When searching for someone and the transcribed version is what is used to access results, this makes it very difficult. Thanks for listening. Debra Harris

Love being able to merge several family members at once, it has cut the amount of time I spend looking for historical records. I love looking for the records but hated attaching them to all the relatives involved because I got confused who was done and who wasn’t. It was a waste of precious time that I would rather be looking through the records and reading about my families. I like to visual how it must have been for them then. Thank you Ancestry.com for all your updates, so we have more time to spend with our families, no matter how we spend that time with them.

I like the new features in theory, but the reality is that it is not a little bug- there are some major problems with the new software. In two days, I have had two people in my tree assigned to new parents, and the system will not allow me to delete anything. I have tried deleting events, relationships, and the individual. Nothing works. I am going to wait to work on anything until the bug is fixed. I think that ancestry should give a rebate on fees for the inconvenience caused by errors and several days of wasting my time. My e-mail received a high volume /delayed response answer.

This merge feature still doesn’t work. Can you let me know when it will be fixed so I can try it then? Thanks.

Regarding the “INVALID OR UNAUTHORIZED INPUT HAS BEEN DETECTED” error message that occurs when a record fails to attach, could it be related to spelling permutations of names? I tried repeatedly attaching an 1850 census to a person I’d already named “Betsy.” After I changed the spelling of the person’s name in my index to match the record, which was “Betsey,” then the record attached. Haven’t tried to duplicate it yet, though.

I’d really like to see answers to posts 6, 18, 29, 39, 43, 56, & 63 that reference the error message and inability to attach records; and answers to posts 12, 21, 27, 38, 57 & 63 that reference the problem that creates an unwanted new person when attaching relatives’ records with name permutations.

Thanks.

This is such a time saver!!! It’s great!!!

I have been having problems for the past two days trying to add information in one of your ancestry hints, such as a census record. When I try to add it to my tree I get the following message on screen.

“Invalid or Unauthorized Input Has Been Detected ”
There is a problem servicing your request—it contains invalid or unauthorized data. The details of the problem have been automatically logged to our servers.

If you feel that you have reached this page in error, use your browser’s Back button to identify the page and data that caused the problem. Then re-enter the information.

It does no good to re-enter the information I still get no where. This is very frustrating! Can you fix this problem ASAP?

I have used the new feature several times already and love it. It really saves time and is incredibly useful. I like that it can be used for various documents.

Now the bugs seem to have been shaken out the new features on the site are great. The new way to link all the relatives on a census report in one hit is great and being able to see a list off all ancestors with ancestry hints I’ve found really helpful.

BUG BUG BUG

INVALID OR UNAUTHORISED INPUT HAS BEEN DETECTED

Simply tried to attach a census record without any editing or adjustment

Was the input invalid or was it unauthorised? In what way was it invalid or why was it unauthorised? Simply to be told to go back and redo it is not helpful. Error messages should DETECT the type of error, LOCATE where it lies and INSTRUCT how to correct. I learned this as a programmer in the 1960s !

This is an absolutley brilliant idea, it helps with all the confusion and it doesn’t take too much time., as well it helps with our arthritic fingers and hands.keep up the great progress.Thanks for keeping us occupied and for so much information.You have really made it so much easier, and cuts down all that extra time ,when we can easily ,and quickly find more family. i don’t know what i would’ve done without the Ancestry.MANY THANKS

This new merging feature has worked like a dream when I´m not using Canadians of Icelandic descent. Then this invariably happens:

Invalid or Unauthorized Input Has Been Detected
There is a problem servicing your request—it contains invalid or unauthorized data. The details of the problem have been automatically logged to our servers.

If you feel that you have reached this page in error, use your browser’s Back button to identify the page and data that caused the problem. Then re-enter the information.

i don’t know why every-one is complaining about, this is a wonderful concept.,could you also add family information on FAMILY HEREDITRY ILLNESSES that people have died from.this i’m sure will be very beneficual to any FAMILY.it will be great for any living relatives and particularly for each generation to come. I’m having a ball on ANCESTRY,and it also helps one to get to know other family tree members ,even if they are not quite the ones you are looking for .,but with the INVITES ,one can get to know other people.,who maybe in some slight chanse might know them.plus one can get to become friends, in ones own STATE or OVERSEAS by EMAIL. There is so much to GAIN by ANCESTRY. So stop and think how grateful one has to gain by just being calm and collected. I’m still trying to find out if my dad has any BROTHERS AND SISTERS but remember GOOD THINGS COMES TO THOSE WHO WAIT. i don’t mind waiting.The FAMILY LINKS WILL SOON COME TOGETHER AND ITS WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD WHEN YOU FINALY FIND YOUR MISSING RELATIVES.So people just relax -have FUN, and be very grateful to ANCESTRY for their most wonderful their GIFT to everyone.,for without them we would’nt be were we are TODAY.MANY, MANY THANKS FOR THIS WONDERFUL SITE. You are to be CONMENDABLE FOR EVERYTHING THAT YOU DO FOR EVERY-ONE, PAST AND PRESENT.

i don’t know why every-one is complaining about, this is a wonderful concept.,could you also add family information on FAMILY HEREDITRY ILLNESSES that people have died from.this i’m sure will be very beneficual to any FAMILY.it will be great for any living relatives and particularly for each generation to come. I’m having a ball on ANCESTRY,and it also helps one to get to know other family tree members ,even if they are not quite the ones you are looking for .,but with the INVITES ,one can get to know other people.,who maybe in some slight chanse might know them.plus one can get to become friends, in ones own STATE or OVERSEAS by EMAIL. There is so much to GAIN by ANCESTRY. So stop and think how grateful one has to gain by just being cool, calm and collected. I’m still trying to find out if my dad has any BROTHERS AND SISTERS but remember GOOD THINGS COMES TO THOSE WHO WAIT. i don’t mind waiting.The FAMILY LINKS WILL SOON COME TOGETHER AND ITS WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD WHEN YOU FINALY FIND YOUR MISSING RELATIVES.So people just relax -have FUN, and be very grateful to ANCESTRY for their most wonderful .,their GIFT to everyone.,for without them we would’nt be were we are TODAY.MANY, MANY THANKS FOR THIS WONDERFUL SITE. You are to be CONMENDABLE FOR EVERYTHING THAT YOU DO FOR EVERY-ONE, PAST AND PRESENT.

Invalid or Unauthorized Input Has Been Detected: Reproduce as follows:

Ancestry user: cepowell53
Tree: Charles Emmitt Powell 1953
Census person: 1910 US Federal Census Lee W Venable, b abt 1884, residence White Bread, Caddo, Oklahoma
Tree person: William Lee VENABLE, born 08 Mar 1885

What may be odd: this census record is in my shoebox

Click add (residence) as an Alternate Fact > Click Add to Your Tree.

Response is: Invalid or Unauthorized Input Has Been Detected
There is a problem servicing your request—it contains invalid or unauthorized data. The details of the problem have been automatically logged to our servers.

Delete the census record from the shoebox. > try again clicking Name Add as Alternate Fact > Residence add as alternate fact > Add to your tree.

Response is the same: Invalid or Unauthorized Input Has Been Detected

I’ve tried 1900 and 1910 census on this person with same error.

I LOVE being able to add family members from census records! It’s a great timesaver! Good Job!

I can’t figure out how this works at all – I don’t see any indication of it in the interface. Will someone please explain on what screen and where I should see something different along these lines? I’ve looked and looked, and I can’t figure out what’s changed…

Thanks,

Matthew

help!!! i can not attatch any records it hasn’ t made any difference what record i”m trying to attach, just like comments 43 and 73. in theory if it would attach it seems that it would be a timesaver.
i also have been having trouble with viewing the pedigree chart in the family view page any help would be appreciated. thanks

This merge enhancement is fantastic. I find it especially useful when I encounter another child. I can add the child, the source AND the record at one time – and put the child directly into the family.
Thanks for the constant updates. I also like the list of persons in the tree with hits – all in one place.
I guess I have not noticed the slow down since I moved to high speed access about the same time. I must be lucky. I think I would have been crazy by now if I were still on dial up!

This is a great time saving feature. However the relationships don’t seem to always make sense.
I’m linking a husband – the wife shows up fine – but none of the kids? though they are already in my tree and the names match closely with the ones in the census. It doesn’t pick up step parents or step children.

Post #85 about “INVALID OR UNAUTHORIZED INPUT HAS BEEN DETECTED”

Charles:

I’ve tried several ways as well. None of my records were shoeboxed, and clicking on alternate facts didn’t help me either. I thought it might be name permutations, but no longer.

Here are some other records that won’t attach:

Ancestry user: robinjoamanda
Tree: Huber Family Tree
Census person: Augustus E McEwen, 1880 US Federal Census, residence Lawrence, Saint Lawrence, New York, age 46, abt 1834
Tree person: AUGUSTUS E McEwen, born 17 Jan 1834

Ancestry user: robinjoamanda
Tree: Huber Family Tree
Census person: Otto Kammerer, 1900 US Federal Census, residence Mankato Ward 1, Blue Earth, Minnesota, age 23, abt 1877
Tree Person: OTTO LOUIS FERDINAND Kammerer, born 10 Jun 1876

Robin

URGENT REPAIR NEEDED

See #6,#39,#56,#63,#74,#76,#82,#85

While the trick suggested in #74 may work, it is timeconsuming and we all want to get on with attaching records.

Do you detect a note of irritation?

About the error attaching records, here are two more if this helps any–they’re occurring on the same profile page:

Ancestry user: robinjoamanda
Tree: Huber Family Tree
Census person: Henry Uber, 1900 US Federal Census, residence Reading Ward 9, Berks, Pennsylvania, born abt 1842 [Record is shoeboxed]
Tree person: HENRY Huber, born Jul 1841

Ancestry user: robinjoamanda
Tree: Huber Family Tree
Census person: Henry Huber, 1880 US Federal Census, residence Reading, Berks, Pennsylvania, born abt 1842 [Record is in hints]
Tree person: HENRY Huber, born Jul 1841

Why won’t the “new improved program” let me save census information to the names I select???

Wonderful feature, I’ve been pointed in the right direction for quite a few new names. Many thanks. Linda.

Regarding Lucy Lem – was this not in fact Hannah Goate’s granddaughter.

Lucy Fulcher married Charles lefoy Leni.

I really love this feature. It saves so much time. I would like to see an option to “choose all” instead of having to choose each person separately to save even more time. Thank you so much for this new feature. Looking forward to other new things. Would certainly love to see a descendancy tree.

I’ve tried to attach both a 1920 US Census entry and an immigration manifest to an existing individual – neither work, I get the “INVALID OR UNAUTHORIZED INPUT HAS BEEN DETECTED” for every attempt.

This really, really stinks – put things back the way they were – given the varying name permutations and birth dates on census records and manifests your “solution” only makes the process even harder now.

I do not like this merge at all. I thought it was a good idea and that it would attach the census to all the children in that census that went the parents. Instead it has added them so now I have two sets of children that are actually the same people with just different spellings. I think a little more work needs to be done or this. I understand my lack of knowledge about this feature didnt exactly help, but now I have to figure out how to delete the extra kids and get the census attached to kids as I have them spelled.

I am trying to save a document from 1920 census to my tree and I keep getting the following message: “Invalid or Unauthorized Input has been detected” etc. I tried my other computers just incase it was a certain pc but the problem continues. What can I do?

This is working well for me most of the time. Next, it would be great to be able to correct the misspelled family name of an entire family at once.

love this feature !
it does create quite a few duplicates though, even when everything seems in order and i am being careful. i didnt mind that until i suddenly lost the ability to delete people this week, so for now i am stuck with my duplicates.( brand new mac with safari browser)

having just said that, i now find delete is working again today – many thanks for quick fix !

If I merge a name of a relative, will this add an extra name even if they are already in my tree and I only want to add the fact that they are on this particular census?

jeri

URGENT BUGFIX NEEDED URGENT

Problem first reported in #6, May 29.

No sign of an answer or action.

Would appreciate a response about the E.T.A. of the fix as it is presently impossible to attach census records and sources.

Great time saver. Just used it this past week and was thrilled how much time was saved in merging the census to family members.

Thank you for this new search engine. It saves me a lot of time and typing. It makes it so much easier to add family members all in one record.

Two small problems:
1. When locating people in the index to attach records to, please allow “enter” to work rather than having to click on SEARCH.

2. In the event description line, typing quotation marks suddenly turns up as "….So if I enter quotation marks around a name ["Augustus"], it will show up in the description line as "Augustus"

The two large problems:
Now that it’s Monday, hope you will address 1) the INVALID OR UNAUTHORIZED INPUT HAS BEEN DETECTED problem and 2) the problem merging records of relatives that creates a duplicate person.

Thanks!
Robin

I really like the ‘idea’ of this feature but it’s not very ‘user friendly’ yet. I think it needs to be tweeked a bit more.
For example – This time around, I am attempting to add the wife, which it allows me to do but there are 9 children that appear in the record but only the 3rd child appears below to select and THEN when I attempt to select the one child that DOES show, it gives an error and doesn’t allow me to add that child.
On other occasions, I want to add children and because there is a variation of some sort in the record, it adds the children as OTHER Children from another marriage. I didn’t realize it had done this so I had to go back and delete said added children – instead of it merging them into the children that were already there.
It is a nice thought but it needs to be worked out so there are perhaps more options for saving and not so much automation which just seems to end up creating MORE busy work and time spent trying to keep things straight instead of searching through the records.

Kenny, thanks very much. It’s good to know.

I love the new feature where you can add additional info from the Census records. It makes things so much faster. Before you would have to take all this other info down and then add it to the other person’s family. Thanks so much for this new feature. Janie Walker

RE: comments about “Invalid or Unauthorized Input Has Been Detected”

Basically it has to do with certain characters (such as ]/[#%) in your family tree which may be misinterpreted by our servers as javascript code.

The other characters that may be causing issues are the Unicode characters – i.e., Eastern European, Slovak, etc

This new merge feature is brilliant – it is saving me so much time. As you rightly point at it needs to be handled with care, but it is excellent. thasnk you!

re #109 & #113

The explanation is OK but we didn’t have this problem before, even if those characters were there!

So this has happened as a result of your changes to the record merge.

Looking forward to your fix.

I was corresponding with someone who merged a name in my tree. can he do that without my permission/knowledge?
Can I remove it and associated names?carolyn

re: #113

A further thought about the comment concerning UNICODE characters –

Remember that this character set is designed to facilitate the globalisation of software !!

‘Nuf said.

Since this new feature was implemented, I can no longer merge information, family trees or otherwise, without receiving an error that the data is invalid or unauthorized.

This is SUCH a timesaver!! THANKS!!! My only problem is that when there are family members with other surnames, they aren’t listed as possible relatives, so you have to go to those persons & pull the file up for them. Hoping this will soon be fixed as well!

re #119

Dale – welcome to the club. This has been going on since 29 may.

the hints are great!! but messy it puts two three and sometimes more listings of the same person. when i try to clean up this mess it will sometimes remove all listings of the one i remove. how about under “relationships” or someweres a “MERGE” to get rid of duplicate entries

When pulling information from 1905 census the family feature didnot pull the family but someother person from the census. It did pull the mother and one out of four sons.

Much frustration — multiple Hints display on the person page, but the link loads in the new GUI page without any hints displayed -also, loading docs with the image viewer used to just cause Firefox to crash – now it’s IE browser as well.

You folks also have a major conflict (read browser crash) issue with Norton 360 2008 version 2.0 that causes Firefox (and now possibly IE) to bomb whenever a records image is launched — I’ve seen this issued listed in here before..when will a fix be coming? Norton points to Ancestry content scripting as the issue.

I agree that a BETA issue was needed before unleashing this nasty beast of an “upgrade” on the paying public. I am hamstrung and this takes all the fun away, folks.

I absolutely hate the upgrade! Each time I add a name from the census records, the screen then jumps to that person, instead of staying on the census record so I can add the other people.

Also, when adding locations from the main person page, the “auto” tab doesn’t pop-up underneath to let me pick a place I’ve typed in before.

Sorry but I am not impressed with the new merge function – primarily because I have yet to do it successfully! I receive the message ‘invalid or unauthorized data’ and a Vista indication that the Ancestry security is corrupted. Please put the old software back so that I can get on with my family tree—that or consider refunding my annual dues.

I really like this feature. The only thing that I would like to see is like the family tree, where you can select all members at one time, then only have to review them and uncheck what you don’t want.

There was a comment made in a previous comment that the invalid data error was caused by the presence of a special character or Eastern European character. My attempted merge couldn’t be more ‘vanilla’. It is a single line census record and there are no characters other than a-z and .,
The failure is consistent. I have spent the last 40 years in software design and development and as a development manager, I would have terminated anyone who signed off any alpha or beta test report of a piece of software that is this dirty!!

I love the new record merge feature where you can add all family members at one time. When people have several children with them, it is a real time saver

This new feature is great. It makes it so mch easier to add sources to multiple faily members.
Thanks so much.

Looking forward to advancements but finding myself disappointed when I’m in the middle of merging and then finding myself at this moment as I’m asked to comment on something I cannot download!!
In these precious moments before bedtime I feel I’ve been robbed!!

Fantastic – this new feature will save me hours of tedious inputting! Many thanks! Am now watching out for the problems other people have been commenting on… so far so good for me though!

Hi A postive comment!
Thanks for the additional merge facility. It’s excellent and very helpful in compiling the information to “cement” some facts together and corroborate information.
My only slightly negative comment (sorry) would be in relation to the home page of the Ancestry site…it does seem to take time to fully load even with Broadband at 5Mb.

Love it! Please add a feature where you can choose someone already existing on your tree to attach the record to – lots of people use nicknames or middle names on the census records that this feature currently doesn’t recognize! Once you can choose the person this will be perfect!!!!!!

I love the feature, but it does take using with care. Could you possibly move the link For Seeing the List of Relatives away from the Add to Tree button? Several times I have clicked the add to tree when I really wanted to see who else was possible. They are just too close.

Brilliant tool thanks

Re #128

Dale, I couldn’t agree with you more.

What is worse is the comment mentioning UNICODE characters. The way it was written by Robert Malay it looks like an excuse. For one thing, such technicalities will mean nothing to many people.

More important, this character set is designed to facilitate globalisation of software – maybe the designers forgot that.

Love it!!

designers is that what they are i had the idea that they were just

‘A BUNCH OF COWBOYS’

thats how we would refer to a group (or person) here in the uk who says they are able to do a job. but when they do it you find they use the cheepest method and more to the point they have no knowlage of how to do the job in the first place and in the end it all falls apart and this causes a bigger problem than when they started. thats if they have not distroyed it first. the end result what they do is worthless.

I love this feature and would be thrilled if there was a way to confirm presence of information.
“Warning, this person has a record “1910 Census” attached.” or “Warning, this name is in your Family Tree”
That way the flag can be reviewed before going further.

Thank you!

I absolutely !!!LOVE!!! this new feature. When new family members are found on records this way, you don’t have to enter every one by hand. FABULOUS!!!!
I only wish that in “SEARCH” you could narrow down to a particular county of the state THEN search for name within the county.

Why can’t I attach census records to my tree? Worked fine before. That’s part of the reason I pay for this site. It helps build my family Tree. HELP!!!!!

1. When I have a census record of the first qife the merge has on occasion brought up only the second wife and I cannot merge the information for the first wife. There should be a way to scroll through spouses in the merge.

Another problem I have run into that may have a way around it, is to add a child of one of the children. It will not let me merge the information because I have no way to designate the parent.

Can you help me with these at all?

Thanks

Suzanne Hunter

Can not add the children on this hint.

Why is it when you ignore hints that the green leaf still appears on that person’s name apart from that the new merge page is come into the 21st century

I really like the new feature. I see a lot of people with negative comments, but I do not agree with most of them. I work with this every day, all day, and this will help speed up my progress.
Yes, the website has been slow – real slow.
One thing I would like for you to add, is the “select all relatives” or “unselect all relatives”. I know you are trying to keep people from just adding “all”, but everyone must take responsibility for their own tree. To be able to “select all relatives” would be better than checking each box all the way down the line.
I DO like the new feature!
Now, if you would just make the “merge two individuals” possible, I would be delirious!!!!!
Thanks
Donna

All of you people who love the merge feature are careless.

You don’t even know if you are merging correct information into your tree.

I have written before about my family tree that has been compiled by another family member with wrong people in it, and this tree is now being copied over and over by people like you, who are merging freaks.

I just found another tree in the new AMT system, put together by someone who merged hints carelessly. They have my great great grandmother being born in 1829 with the wrong name. The person they merged into their tree was my great great grandmother’s grandmother’s sister. It’s insane. I wrote to the tree owner and of course there was no response. Where did this person merge that wrong person from?

Why from the One World Tree of course!

And guess what? People like you are merging this insanely wrong person into your very own trees because the merge feature is so darn wonderful.

None of you know what you are doing.

To Post #146 —

You work all day, every day, merging people into your tree?

Do you back up the information you are taking with documentation?

Do you order birth, death and marriage information?

Do you check cemteries for burials and find out what other family members are buried near that particular person?

Do you obtain military information?

Do you go through the school enumermation records and verify dates, locations and how many children were in that family.

Do you verify that the children you are taking from someone else’s tree are actually the children of those parents?

I have books for counties that have guardian and foster parent information in them, and many of those children that are listed with parents are actually children from other families, listed on censuses with the wrong last names.

School records also list the correct last names.

Do you check court records for divorces? There are marriages and children that are unaccounted for and not in Ancestry.com’s records. You have to go to the County and go through the records.

You have to source your information and back it up with documentation.

Working frantically all day every day merging people into your tree is sloppy and I’ll bet a large majority of the information you are taking is wrong.

Its a good idea, but someone thinks its funny to change place of birth, marriage, death and so instead of hampshire, england they change it to hampshire, USA………….

I truely love this new feature, but I see some hangups that are consistant. If the spelling of a name in the database is different than that in my tree – it doesn’t find the relative. I am working on one family now that the son is listed by a middle name and the linking to relatives wants to add a new child. It also doesn’t allow a choice – if a second spouse has a similar name to the first. I’m finding that I rarely can link to an entire family, some in the census just don’t get matched up with the tree.

This feedback area is to report what customers think of the new software features = not what the customers think of each other.
I must say to #147 and #148 – that both of you are pretty CONCEITED to ASSUME that you know what I am doing with my tree. I am NOT “working frantically” all day “MERGING” names into my tree. I work ALL DAY, EVERY DAY, searching and researching names to put in my tree. I do NOT just slap in a bunch of names from One World Tree!
What you two need to do, is just answer the question that Kenny asked you about the SOFTWARE features – and let the rest of us take care of our own trees, even though as #147 said = “None of us know what we are doing.”

Hints that are incorrect ones persist even after I’ve checked them out. Is there a way to deactivate a single particular hint that you’ve figured out doesn’t apply?

Please when I merge I some to have duplicate people on my Ancestry.com listing. SO I have gone back to delete them, Then have deleted some that I needed to keep: Is there anyway to merge those duplcate people on my family listing.

I love the feature (though I’m still unsure how to use it fully) but I can’t seem to find the previously accepted hints for people who don’t show new hints. How do I access these?

Also, I was going to use this for a 1930 census record, but since the extracted names did not match the family names I have (and if you look at the record you can see that my names are actually correct) it tried adding the children as new individuals. Is there a way to request that the merge family records search for possible matches based on parents and ages or allow you to select someone from your existing tree without having to go through the old fashioned way of adding each individual? And once someone is added is there a way to flag the record with the “alternate” name without having to submit a separate report?

I hate the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a FIX for the viewer, I’ve done everything, resetting the security, tried to go to C: Prompt to type it in…before a new item comes along they need to get the bugs out of this one, without us getting so frustrated. I’m ready to just throw in the towel.

After merging an item, that needs to indicate that it has been merged. And/or mark it to check later.

George

Would love to be able to save an entire set of census records instead of having to save each page seperately (i.e. one click to save all pages for the 1900 US Fed Census for District X, City, County, State). Many of the older records have my family members on every single page. Becomes a pain to save each page.

Hello,

Good idea if the record has been transcribed correctly. If it has, it saves time. If not, then I have to go back to the actual copy and dig the information up. Not very time saving, eh?

Hmmmmmmmm. German, eh? I knew it weren’t Spanish or French. That aside, I am quite perplexed by the bad adding of family members as in people under 10 having children or the child being merged into a family 200 years older. People born and died on the same day and giving birth after that. Parents born in another country and the children born in at least two or three different states in the USA or the country. In the 17th,18th and 19th century people travelled by ship to the new world. They didn’t go back and forth from England to the new world. I have two more months on my subscription and I am spending too much time on correcting the bad information I run across or dealing with the merge feature when it tells me it can’t do what I’m asking it to do and then I go back and enter all the people on the record manually and go to the spouse and it works fine and I have two of everyone to weed out. What’s going on?

I love this new feature, appreciate your words of caution, but this is beautiful…thank you, thank you. I found it quick and easy to link this to my existing people. I discovered a while back that it helps to review the original document, add any new people and then attach the record. I will have to test this new feature for creating new people and then attaching the record. But I love the time savings and less effort in double checking the facts to ensure all members on a record have the same updated comments/details I add.

I am also pleased to see the feedback of others, I feel less alone as I see I was not the only one with an issue and can save time spent second guessing my difficulty. Another good move.

As for the latest changes to searches, it is taking some time to adjust to the new process and it has been slower but only because I have to adjust my search approach. I appreciate your upgrade efforts and opportunity to test and provide feedback.

I have a problem with this new feature. If I try adding all family for a census record when the family is already in my family tree, it will find the father and children but not the wife. If I add the whole family, I’ll end up with the children listed again with an unknown mother or two entries for the wife. There doesn’t seem to be a way to add a census record for the whole family and assign the wife’s info to her maiden name.

Being able to add data to an entire family at the same time is absolutely AWESOME… Thank You!

Now, if only you could add another merge feature so that I could check for duplicate individuals. As careful as I try to be, duplicates occasionally happen, since it’s hard remembering everything about 5,000+ individuals.

This is great!

It would be wonderful if you could add the ‘Select Someone Already in Your Tree’ link for those entries with initials or misspellings.

This is a wonderful feature. So far it has worked great. The only ‘problem’ I see so far, is not being given the option to attach the record to children that Ancestry doesn’t automatically match up, like “Molly B.” on the record not automatically pulling “Mollie Belle” out of my tree. I am amazed at how well it does, but would like the option of making manual matches for ones you miss. Thanks for the cool new tool! And I must say, after looking at some of the other comments, there are a lot of impatient people out there! No news there, but I didn’t think genealogists were among them! Remember the days of searching indexes by hand and writing the courthouses, praying for a sympathetic clerk?? Relax!

Perhaps you can address two questions for me. Is there someplace to enter Significant Other as opposed to Married? Also, I used to be able to search for Duplicate individuals but now it seems like you have to KNOW the duplicates before merging (specific individuals). Thanks

I would like to see a merge option for duplicate people… is there such a think like on family tree maker… Lucy

Kenny How do you use this new Merge feature and were is it?, I must be dumb(can I get a job at Ancestry?)

#151 Donna -

I see that you have been designated the Blog Police for this particular Blog. Thank you for your attempt to put me in my place.

However, you need to be aware that the subject of this particular blog line has nothing to do with software, but is about the new record merge feature, of which I commented about. I am on subject.

THE RECORD MERGE FEATURE IS FLAWED in that the thousands of people using it do not know if they are taking correct information, yet these incorrect records are being merged over and over again into thousands of trees, being printed out into family books, so on and so forth.

What I wrote obviously went right over your head.

The new merge feature is excellent and saves a lot of time. Two things that would improve it (if it is possible in the future – I’m not complaining!):
The spouse’s (mother’s) name shows as the married name on the merge – I have to be careful to go to hide options and remove the married name before it records it. It would be very helpful if the surname appeared as a blank for married women.

I have already accidentally duplicated children when the name differed slightly – it would help if other children of the couple who do not appear on that census appeared in the right hand column – it would be immediately be apparent if there were duplicates then.

Thanks and keep up the good work

Your new search still stinks. The person I just checked never lived outside the U.S.A. but the majority of things for Birth, Marriage and Death are for the U.K., four out of five. This is a well documented person and her birth and death places are present in my database. I’ve always thought the search needed improvements. When I enter a persons name I expect info on a person of that name in the various spelling, not people totally unrelated. If I search for a Rebecca X I don’t want to scan through names such as David X. I’ll look up David later. At that moment all I want is Rebecca. I waste time that could be used finding actual info going through page after page of people often times in different countries let alone different names. If I want stuff on children and spouses I’ll look them up. It would take less time than it does now. If I do the more detailed search it never turns up anything, says no records found. Then in the general search there might be several things right off the bat. It’s frustrating to say the least. I hope this makes some sense, I get rilled up when I try to explain it to others. Otherwise I’ve found many records and useful things here. I have so many people in my database and hate to waste time.

This option saves a lot of time I really appreciate the thought you have put into it. I have 2000 people in my tree and adding all the time, so this is a big benefit.

I haven’t used this new feature yet, but judging from the comments posted here, a person can truely benefit from the time saved; IF one is careful. No amount of “soft-ware” is going to replace the accuracy of a live, human person. I’ve been a subscriber for over a year now. The amount of information I have gotten through all the records is awesome. But, the most dear and most accurate information has come from Ancestry members that I have met. I’m talking about all of the relatives I have met—AND NEVER KNEW I HAD! So, although this “ancestry thing” ( as my daughter puts it ) can get a bit frustrating, I can’t think of a better way to spend a rainy afternoon. Thank you Kenny, and everyone at Ancestry.com!!

Thanks for this wonderful new software feature. Thanks to Kenny and the ancestry team for listening to the members regarding new AMT software features.

I hope that you can improve it one step further so that when the software is not able to match to someone already in the family group, that we could manually select the person from the tree that needs to have the historical record attached to. This new feature will be a big help also when the 1940 census comes out.

And #148 and #168 Carole,
We are getting a little tired of you.
Do you think you are the ONLY person who knows what they are doing? You sound like it.
Most of us know our families very well, and we are using this new software feature to attach the historical record sources and citations to our family already in the tree. You apparantly are only posting on this blog to complain and ridicule. You direct your posts directly to members you KNOW NOTHING about. If someone dares post something positive in these blogs, there you are posting how we all know nothing.

I would like FTM 2008 to include the feature of syncing my software with online tree account. It’s a pain to try to keep both trees updated.

I am having problems getting census records to open when I access them. I have the newest download feature but it just keeps blinking and want let me open the census file.
Thanks
Jimmie

I really enjoy the new merging system it helps me grow my tree faster, and sure you can make mistakes so you have to be sure you have the right people.
Also I wish you would come up with a merge system, that will merge people I already have in my tree with the exact same new person if they match. My home tree has this capability so you don’t get to many of the same people.
Thanks
Jimmie

re: #147, #148, #151, #168, #171

First, please will you ladies stop getting personal and retract your claws or go somewhere else to do it.

Second – the new merge feature which now seems to be bugfree (thank you Kenny.)

I learned long ago not to trust, blindly, automatic offerings generated by software. But then, I’ve been working with computers since 1966 when I was a programmer. (Yes. There were computers even then!)

I check the ANCESTRY offerings as best I can (#148 !) When, and only if, I am satisfied I either attach the suggestions ONE AT A TIME or enter the info by hand. A methodology that is old-fashioned, long-winded and very safe. I don’t get any of the problems that many of you are suffering; there are no duplications (as far as I know) in my tree and all of the names are consistent. Alternative spellings are no problem – the human brain is quite good at detecting them.

It’s up to you what you choose to merge into your family tree, using this software. Kenny is right in his advice. If the software offers nonsense and you merge it blindly into your tree, not only is it your own fault but also nobody else has the right to criticise you or blame you for perpetuating nonsense. The fact that perhaps the nonsense came from someone equally careless as you is irrelevant. And if you’ve done it through inexperience, you’ve learned the hard way. At least – hopefully you will have learned after having spent the time to correct the nonsense.

If you want to build a complete family tree without real research effort, ANCESTRY will help you to do it and quite painlessly, too. Don’t complain later or request / suggest even more automatic features to overcome the difficulties you then experience. In this blog, it seems that many of you are doing just that!

Reflect! ANCESTRY (i.m.h.o.) is about connecting people. And that really works. But it is NOT a good genealogy system; there are much better ones. Instead, use it to find the reliable info that is out there and then be selective.

Finally – I find it odd to see people describe this new merge as ‘awesome’. It does not at all fill me with awe. (Maybe I’m cynical or perhaps my vocabulary comes from an earlier, British generation?)

Very pleased to see info on the Oakleys who are my direct desendents. Edward Oakley was married to LAVINIA Smith.They were married on December 26th 1876 at St Mary’s church Luton. Her brother was Rodney Smith a famous traveling evangelist. I do have more information if you are interested.

I love the merge, the only thing that I feel is missing is the link to select all relatives like you have when you link a family tree.

The new merge is great but I wish that it would allow for misspelling of names either on the census or in the transcription.

I wish you had an undo feature.

Keep up the good work. Even WOW has an update or fix a week. May be you should consider their tact and have a few hours a week in which you do site maintenance. They close down from 1am to 11am PST every Tuesday.

:0 Virginia

#181

UNDO is the one thing that is missing throughout ANCESTRY but one can understand he difficulty of implementing it !!

Sorry. Meant that to be #180

As for updates and fixes you have to reckon with times that are convenient world wide. Which they are not !

For me, ANCESTRY is appallingly slow between 16:00 and 18:00 GMT and you can work that out for yourself, whichever time-zone you are in.

I’ve long since stopped being frustrated except that I sometimes wish that Americans would recognise that Europe exists.

For me it is now around 9:40 pm !

And for those who are just about to load http://www.ancestry.co.au it is now just before 7:00 am on Saturday.

You cannot win !

I think it is great. I’m out of time to fill in everything I wish. Why do I have such a hard time adding marriage dates and places? I just joined ancestry a week ago so it is new to me. I do see mistakes or unproven or questionable stuff. I add as alternative. It’s all great!

Like the ability to add records to all relatives and the new header showing parents, spouse and children of the person being searched.

It would be even better if…
– there was a ‘manual match’ option for times when I have the person in my tree but the record has spelled their name differently.
– it seems to require selecting a spouse even if my info is a perfect match when adding any children; if the spouse is unselected, the children get added as “parent unknown”.
– and in a really idealized world, the system would signal when the record is already attached for an individual.

Keep up the good work!

The U.S. Federal Census Record on 5 April 1920 City of Chicago, Cook Illinois, Donald P. Jacobs Male Age 2 M the Information on Ancestry.com is not Correct Says born 1910 age 10 on this Census Record

Actually, it seems to me like a step has been added. Previously once I found the census record of the person being searched for and saved it to him, I would have to click on that record to get back to it. But then for each subsequent person in the census once it was saved to them, it would automatically go back to that record and I could click on the next person and save to that person. Now I have to click on the record each time to go back to the entire record so that I can get to the next person. Unless I’m missing something about the way you say to “merge to multiple members of a household.” I don’t really find any option that makes it as easy as you make it sound.

I love this new feature. It is a real time saver! Thanks for the innovation! I wish it went a step further to include in-laws with immediate family members. Sometimes widowed parents are living with their children and are listed on the census records, but they do not show up on the add family members feature.

I wish you had some sort of feature that allowed corrections across records. Sometimes I find errors in place names and such and it would be nice to correct it once and have it go wherever it needs to like with the find/replace feature in Microsoft Word. That’s it, we need a text editor feature for all the text in the file. Thanks

Great idea, but OH SO BUGGY. Say I’m workingon Ebenezer Moody. Up comes a birth record of his daughter Miriam Moody’s birth. Great! That documents Ebenezer. Except then a form about Ebenezer shows up side-by-side with a form filled in Miraim’s information — presented as if Miriam’s info is changed info about Ebenezer. Miriam doesn’t show up as a “view other relative”, nor does her mother, even though they’re both on Miriam’s birth record (of course). In fact, the only relative who shows up is Ebenezer’s son

Next, I find Ebenezer’s own birth record, which of course includes his parents. But *they* don’t show up under “view other relatives”. The only one that shows up is son Jonathan again.

Same thing with Ebenezer’s marriage — his wife doesn’t show up under “show other relatives”. Nope, it’s son Jonathan again.

Some of this looks like alpha software, frankly, not even beta. Not that I mind doing product testing for a good product, but I can’t help wonder, where’s your QA team? Are they part of product planning? Scheduling? Do they sign off on releases before code goes live? You’re product manager, dude; QA should be your best buddies. They’re the ones who keep the egg off your face.

My previous comment may not be valid because after reading some of the other comments I’m thinking that this merge feature must be related to Family Tree Maker trees and not to “My Ancestry” trees. I was working in “My Ancestry” at the time I read this and that is what was on my mind. And although I’ve gone back and reread the comment by Kenny Freestone, it doesn’t say which one it refers to, so . . . I should have kept my comment to myself until I was sure!

#173 Lynn must be Donna.

Sorry, I am here to stay.

#177 vhiddai – Thank you for your post. You are right on the money.
Sourcing the information you are merging is what I am trying to say to these people.

Unfortunately, from what I have read on most of these blogs is that a great majority of the new members of Ancestry are blindly merging people into their trees and not sourcing them.

These people are interested in building a tree as quickly as they can without doing any research beyond merging.

Through the merge feature, people are also taking information from the One World Tree which is overloaded with errors.

This is the danger of the merge feature.

And you peole who are “tired” of me, then don’t read my posts. Skip them.
The option is yours.

I do not speak with negativity, I speak with common sense.

Source your work people. Just because you can save a census to your tree, and add those people on that census does not always mean you have the correct family members.

Families named their children the same names and birthdates were very close. Brothers that married and had children named their children basically the same names. It is not uncommon to find 6 Andrew Jackson Smiths or George Washington Browns all born within a very few years of each other and living in the same general area. Pick up one of the wrong George Washington Browns from someone elses tree without sourcing that George or his family is your George, and you errors in your tree that you will pass on to other mergers.

Adios and happy merging.

Some of this data needs correcting so how do I do it?

I really like the new feature. It saves me alot of time. I use slooow dial up. I had been having some problems and called your support on the phone, a very nice young man sent me step by step instuctions via email and everything seems to be running more smoothly now. However, I came across a mistake in one of the census. The site had the Grandmother listed as the Mother. (I submitted a user comment.) So I will have to access the page again and save the info. Maybe it would help if there were check boxes to id the person as Mother, Father, etc.
You may even want to include same sex partner afterall, it is 2008.
Thanks

For some reason – sometimes the children (relatives) listed appear twice on the screen to attached the record to them as well as the parents. When it does, it lists them the second time as ” unknown mother”

AWESOME FEATURE!!!

3 comments:
1: please [again, I ask] make the search button work with enter key as it used to
2: please have the screen return to the census I have just saved a person from [so I don't have to keep getting bogged down waiting for the automatic search to finish in order to manually go back to the census!]
3: ever since this ‘upgrade’ after only a few hours the census records ‘view original’ freezes and refuses to load

I have no use for mass attachments, you can keep it or leave it, I suspect what I ask should not affect that

Faulty hints. Misspelled last names like “Botten” that is clearly “Bottin” on the document. The result is duplicated hints with one being an incorrect spelling of the last name. This will also take up extra storage space making your service more expensive! Every bit adds to the whole. I know last names are purposely altered. However, there should be a link supporting this if the spelling has changed.

Page says to add other family members shown on this record (census) but none of the other members are available.

re: #194 Carole

Dear Carole, you want to stop the spread of bad family tree information. Sorry for you, you won’t do it no matter what you say, just as you can’t stop the spread of computer viruses. Instead, you can advise about procedures (like “don’t open e-mail attachments from unknown people”) to reduce their proliferation. One experience with a computer virus is sufficient for most people.

In any case, this blog is about the merge feature, not about genealogical research. My startpoint – there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this new merge feature. It’s not the knife’s fault if you cut yourself. Nor is it the fault of the manufacturer. And the first time, it’s not your fault either.

In the old days, apprentices learned through experience how to use their tools. Many of the people posting in this blog are novices. Look at what they post. It is mostly a cry for help. To chastise is not always the best way to teach. No matter how much advice momma gives the baby will still touch something hot: hopefully, only once.

The novices extract info from others’ trees quite freely. The reasons:- lack of knowledge and experience about where and how to search, a heap of ‘free’ info for the taking, and the desire to create a complete family tree quickly. This new merge feature is a god-send. Just think what an enormous heap of people one can add: parents, spouses, children, dates – you name it.

Then they start to discover that census returns contain transcription errors, spelling mistakes and even deliberate original misinformation. Others’ family trees have people married before they were born or hopping backwards and forwards across the Atlantic to be baptised, married, buried. And the IGI contains all sorts of oddities and inconsistencies. In the meantime, they have placed all this stuff in their family tree.

I’ve been down that path. In the end I deleted everything and started again. That’s the first and last time! I don’t trust the trees of others further than I can throw them and I check everything. But every baby has to learn to walk.

The novices simply post requests for more automatic ‘bells and whistles’ on the tool; I hope Kenny will resist. The present automatic features are creating sufficient difficulties.

SO WHAT IS NEEDED?

The newcomers need (public) advice and guidance about what to do, what not to do and how to use the tool to best advantage. Then they need help on how to recover from mistakes. This blog is not the best place for it and, indeed, many won’t see it.

[imho] The ‘merge page’ should contain an amount of basic advice on how to use the tool, a pointer to where more can be found and not just a cryptic comment that you can review and select relatives. So you can! [imho] Somebody has to write the handbook.

However, dear Carole, I have horses and I have long since given up trying to force them to drink.

The ability to add relatives that show up on a hint, e.g., in my case right now a Census, is really convenient, but – I can’t do it because the individual is widowed and her children who show up here are the children of her deceased husband. If I use this convenient feature, they will be added again as children of an unknown father. I’d like somehow to be able to pick the parent if I choose to click on children of the primary individual.

re: #196 Shelley

ANCESTRY has no consistent way of handling partnerships and the idea of same-sex partnerships hasn’t yet caught on.

I have provided Kenny with a test-case tree based on reality in which there is a same-sex marriage. One of the partners is the natural mother of a baby conceived with a donor after the marriage, the other adopted the child for legal reasons.

In one place the child has an ‘unknown father’, in another the donor appears as ‘father’, in another the natural mother does not have a child although she has the female partner (labelled ‘husband’) who adopted the child.

Such a mess arises in a system that has grown simply by having bits added on rather than being a coherent design.

However, this blog isn’t the place for this discussion which is why I contacted Kenny by e-mail.

I have been adding updates and now find that it tells me I have to select one parent before I can add relatives. What’s that all about? Why can’t I add relatives?

Too all

i dont want this to be taken the wrong way. but every one of us have a right to an opinion and a place to vent as long as it does not become personal (eg so and so is an idiot would be unwelcome and totaly out of order.) the fact is carole , others and i feel strongly that the merge feature is helping to premote SLOPPY RESEARCH and perpetuating FALSE ANCESTRAL TREE DATA. When you see as carole and i have your data which in my case i have worked on for 8 years using accepted geneological resores (eg parish records) screwed up by this in our opinion defective feature which alows merging from ALL SORCES on ancestry. i sure we are aloud to moan and yell and try to point out that care should be taken. unfortunetly we are not all Shakespears when it comes to the writen laugage just one look at my writen english which i have dilibetly not crorect (i’m dyslexic) should show you this. all carole and i are trying to say is hey this merge feature is not a very good idea for ancestry to aplie to all sorces.

personally being able to merge records such as census and parish indexes and such like as a sorce citation is ok if you like to build a tree in the AMT, as long as care is taken (that i belive is what carole is saying too) but for ancestry to alow the merging from none offical sorces such as submitted trees especially the error riden OWT should be re thought by ancestry and those that are not very experinced should be warned by our selves if we feel it appropriate (those of us who are cearful know not too i am sure). As we are talking about the merge feature and this blog is entitled
New Record Merge Feature
So this is where OPINION AND RANTS should be aired by ALL in regard to the merge feature. if it was about the tree system then of course we should write there but at times our opinion/rant will cross over into more than one blog heading.

I am so disappointed and not happy when I see my work I have done on one bit of my family corrupted because of the blanket merge feature from ancestry as I was almost the first to sort it out I now keep getting the blame for the erronouse data that OWT infact created so yes I am ANGREY with the ability to merge but more so with ancestry and will take every opportunity to shout this from the roof tops

re: #206 Judy

You have every right to vent your feelings in this blog. But what is your problem?

You say “I am so disappointed and not happy when I see my work I have done on one bit of my family corrupted because of the blanket merge feature from ancestry as I was almost the first to sort it out I now keep getting the blame for the erronouse data that OWT infact created”

Is your family tree corrupted by somebody? I doubt it unless you gave editing permissions.

Why do people contact you, blaming you for erroneous data? “I now keep getting the blame……” You know how to answer.

Do you want recognition that you were “almost the first to sort it out…”?

Is it only now that someone can pick up and add info from OWT to their own tree? No. It is simply quicker and easier.

Do you own the info in your tree? No.

Have you published your tree? If so, others can extract info from it.

By banning the merge, do you want to stop them from doing it? Simpler not to publish your tree.

As I see it your problem is “that the merge feature is helping to premote SLOPPY RESEARCH and perpetuating FALSE ANCESTRAL TREE DATA.” How do you know that your own ancestral tree data is not false? (I find the word a little extreme.) Were you there when someone was supposedly born in 1803 or do you just take someone’s word for it? There were no birth registrations in those days!

To save me repeating my further thoughts, please look at post #202.

To Carole and Judy

I will probably keep on getting afterthoughts on this topic and posting a PS but here are some more questions for both of you. They are based on your worries bout ‘correct’ research. Not only that, I’ve looked at some of your posts in other ANCESTRY blogs and can only agree with the substance of what you said there.

If you want to build your family database, why not use a specialised genealogical database package instead of ANCESTRY? I do.

Why don’t you keep your careful research to yourself and perhaps your immediate family? In other words, quarantine.

Why do you publish your family tree anyway and who is your target audience?

If you need to publish, couldn’t you do it some other way than by using ANCESTRY? (There are far superior methods, including building your own website, which I did.)

imho, ANCESTRY is excellent for searching census records but not much else other than the chance of making contact with family members you never knew existed. I now correspond and share information (like copies of BMD and other certificates) and researches with a 4th cousin in Australia, found through ANCESTRY.

imho, It is too slow, too cumbersome with too much emphasis on the cosmetics (Ok there are reasons) and looks something like “the house that Jack built”. I spend ages watching the “waiting for………” message while it loads all of its goodies.

OWT contains unreliable nonsense. Others’ trees provide occasional pointers to possible relationships, provided you take them with a pinch of salt. I only built an ANCESTRY tree so that I can pick up such pointers.

You just have to learn to live with the warts on this particular (mostly free) software, use to your own advantage the bits that work and ignore the other irritating bits just like you do with W******

Complaining about what others do with it is as productive as complaining that kids nowadays can’t do mental arithmatic so pocket calculators ought to be banned.

With all best wishes and commiserations…

Overall, I am very pleased with the improvements here. I agree with some of the others about coming up with duplicate entries if the name isn’t spelled exactly the same. And if I have a spouse named Mary E Maiden Name, it won’t recognized that Mary E Married Name is the same person! That’s frustrating.

I hadn’t noticed any slowing down of the system–guess I was one of the lucky ones!

Thanks for the update!

vhiddai
And once again we are not all Shakespeare when it comes to expressing ourselves in the write word
You say “I am so disappointed and not happy when I see my work I have done on one bit of my family corrupted because of the blanket merge feature from ancestry as I was almost the first to sort it out I now keep getting the blame for the erroneous data that OWT infact created”
Is your family tree corrupted by somebody? I doubt it unless you gave editing permissions.
I quite clearly lay the blame in the above to being the merge being aloud in OWT and have not blamed anyone BUT ancestry

Why do people contact you, blaming you for erroneous data? “I now keep getting the blame
Do you want recognition that you were “almost the first to sort it out…”?
Because I was the one who researched the data first WITHIN ORIGINAL PARISH RECORDS until then some of it had been taken only from the familysearch site by others and there were mistakes
I then put my corrected version up for all to see and everyone knows this now by word of mouth (email). it’s a bit like Chinese whispers if ‘a’ tells’ b’ then ‘b’ tells ‘c’ that ‘a’ was told by ‘me’ but ‘c’ then goes to OWT and adds data that has been created there by MERGING my original work with anther completely unrelated tree that I seem to be missing then ‘c’ passes this on to ‘d’ citing me as researcher ‘d’ pass it on and so on I am bound to get contacted by some one eventually and if that person is using the details ‘c’ has passed on with my name and they then discover the details are wrong they have my name and I get contacted asking me how I arrived at the erroneous detail which ‘c’ added YES THIS HAS HAPPENED and to make it worse I was contacted via another site by that person who uses the site exclusively and never used ancestry. When I checked both here on ancestry and several other sites I found the data I had supplied to be used by ANY PERSON that was interested with out any form of copyright notions on my part had in SOME trees been taken and shown correctly but there were ones which now showed the erroneous details also. I have then had to TRY to inform these people with the details taken that OWT had created by merging that the data is wrong. Now that anyone can add data to their trees in AMT from OWT extra the problem is going to get worse by the ability to MERGE FROM TREES

Is it only now that someone can pick up and add info from OWT to their own tree?

I never said it was

By banning the merge, do you want to stop them from doing it? Simpler not to publish your tree

I NEVER said that merging should be band totally on the contrary I said

personally being able to merge records such as census and parish indexes and such like as a source citation is ok if you like to build a tree in the AMT, as long as care is taken (that I believe is what Carole is saying too) but for ancestry to allow the merging from none official sources such as submitted trees especially the error ridden OWT should be re thought by ancestry and those that are not very experienced should be warned by our selves

Have you published your tree? If so, others can extract info from it.

THAT’S WHY I PUBLISH MY TREE we have a little thing here in UK giving us ‘the right to information’ as far as I am concerned if the info I use is free in the first place in parish records (which it is) then I don’t have the right to put copy right on my work . if I get it for free I will shear it for free so others can join in the research and more info is then likely to be found .

How do you know that your own ancestral tree data is not false? (I find the word a little extreme.) Were you there when someone was supposedly born in 1803 or do you just take someone’s word for it? There were no birth registrations in those days!

Firstly others who have now joined in the hunt for the ancestors I talk about above have also checked the details and I do say they should check it out. I use not only parish records but transcriptions by places like IGI too for the same person. Why simple I was checking out a parish record and too me the ‘t’ in winter looked like an ‘s’ and seemed to read winser / winsor a name which did also appear in the same records when I checked the transcripts by the official genealogical society for the county they had winter so I ASKED THE ARCHIVEST his opinion which he gave as being winter so I do not assume and try to use more than one source

There were no birth registrations in those days!

I BEG TO DIFFER while it is true that the General Reg Office records here in the UK date only from sep 1837 THERE ARE OFFICIAL PARISH RECORDS HERE IN THE UK SOME OF WHICH GO AS FAR BACK AS 1539ISH A FEW GO BACK EVEN FERTHER THAN THAT.

YOU SAY IN POST 177
First, please will you ladies stop getting personal and retract your claws or go somewhere else to do it.
AND IN POST201
Dear Carole, you want to stop the spread of bad family tree information. Sorry for you, you won’t do it no matter what you say, just as you can’t stop the spread of computer viruses. Instead, you can advise about procedures (like “don’t open e-mail attachments from unknown people”) to reduce their proliferation. One experience with a computer virus is sufficient for most people.
AND IN POST206 to me
You have every right to vent your feelings in this blog. But what is your problem?
You have I feel become personal a little bit too much yourself. I at least did not tear into anyone persons single post as you have done. when I made post 205. I tried to keep it impersonal and pass my opinion on the subject but if I failed I am sorry for any offence caused to you or anyone else in that post. This time I have defended myself because you decided to make my post personal and answer me in the same way you asked others in post 177 to stop!
At the end of the day

I still stand by what I said ; note the word helping

“that the merge feature is helping to promote SLOPPY RESEARCH and perpetuating FALSE ANCESTRAL TREE DATA.”

This will continue to happen while ancestry continues to allow merging across all fields instead of just official records only

vhiddai

i am not whole against your thorts on the subject as i said my tree is up so others can join the hunt and as the info is free anyway why not shear it. i am luck in that i live close to the county the screwed up rellies come from and can see the regs fairly regally OTHERS CANT DO SO.
I RELIE ON OTHERS CHARITY TOO SOME TIMES to point me in the right direction wheen i check the data i use it saves long hunts in the records if you know where to look roughthly in the first place from
others research

as for building my tree here in AMT

forget it i have expressedmy reasons in the blosg post else wher i like you use a home based reliable system

To Judy

Goodness! I really opened the floodgates!

Sorry that you took it as an attack (was not intended) but now not only do I understand your concerns and what underlies them but also I have every sympathy. Furthermore I agree that you have every right to be irritated. I would be, too, in the situation you describe. I have been part way along the same path myself, but not to the same extent.

So what can we do about these things? For one thing you mention that we should warn those who are not very experienced. Agreed. We should and can. Next step is to plan how to do it in a positive way so that one doesn’t look as though one is simply blowing off steam.

After that, how can one persuade the novices, plagiarisers and quick tree-builders to heed the warnings? V.difficult to impossible when you think about the easy paths that ANCESTRY provides.

So there must be pressure on ANCESTRY to get their act together? This is what I can see that you are trying to do. What sanctions, other than public opinion, can be brought to bear? Not a lot, I think. How can we find others who agree and are prepared to club together? While a vociferous pressure-group might have some effect you have to reckon with the fact that ANCESTRY is primarily a money-spinner and only secondarily is a provider of a service.

Ideas…?

After merging from a census record the additional family member it created a duplicate with a different spelling of the first name and another person it shows 2 mothers now – and neither of these duplicates can be deleted. Before the rollout of the new features I was able to remove family members without any problem.

I wish you would come up with someway to merge indiviual names…When adding some spouses, I have found that it will make a new name in the list of individuals. The only way to fix it is delete that second name. But when doing so it breaks the tie to the correct family. Therefore, I end up with two of the same families, or double the information. Need to be able to merge certain people and certain family members……

vhiddai

comments accepted.
at the moment i dont see many avenues open to address the problem other than too take the oppotunity to vent on here when an entry gives us the oppertunity to. if we the bloggers keep the subject open as often as the comments warent more people will be told each time. it might be one per year who has not seen the blog per year but it could be hundreds. if ALL OF US keep protesting when we feel apropiate to do so the word will get out eventurely NOT THAT I WOULD EVER BELIVE THAT ANCESTRY WILL TAKE THEIR BLINKERS OFF they are stuck in their own little world of money making.

i have seen recently that one person in eroupe i think its anna in
sweeden with out navigating out now i cant be sure sorry if i am wrong has been so concerned that she contacted her geneological society and they too were concerned

i recently answered a letter in one of our genealogical mags on the subject and the mag did say they plan to print if possible. i have also done so on the verious mags blogs (6 issued here but not all
have blogs) but make sure i dont open the debate (not that brave)

it is only in these ways will we get the message out

SO EVERYONE DONT BE SHY IF YOU HAVE A CONCERN RE THE MERGING OF RECORDS FROM TREES NOT THE MERGER OF OFFICAL RECORDS shout at ancestry when the opertunity is there as long as it is warented that is with in the blogg subject no which hunts as this will not get us anywhere.

Laugh at me if you like.

Laugh at me if you dare.

The only way I know to get in to this blog is from that merge page “provide feedback”. I can then poke around for other blogs – only initiated by ANCESTRY staff.

It seems to me that if ANCESTRY.COM is at all interested in what we think, it should provide an easily-entered and properly administered forum as in so many other websites. We ought to be able to start our own threads provided we have a login account.

If you look at the “Community” tab you find nothing except member connections and message boards, all based on surnames!

Is it that they do not dare to have such a forum? Didn’t it occur to them? Don’t they want to spend the effort? Or are they not really that interested in what we think?

imho It is a pressing necessity.

Judy

Posted the above before I saw your reply. Thanks for your comments.

I am pleased about the reactions for other genealogical societies. I am horrified about the implications.

The other day, there was a neat feature that didn’t last — here’s a plea for making it permanent!

When linking in a parent from the list of people who already exist in your tree, there was a shortcut showing the spouse(s) of the existing parent and allowing you to select one of them. This was really great, esp. for my Scottish ancestors who used the same forenames many times. Without the feature, I have to go through dozens of identical names to find the one with the correct birthdate.

A small improvement would be to fix the inconsistency in the selecting a person from the list of names in your tree. After entering the name in the search fields, hitting enter should start the search. Instead, it requires taking your hands off the keyboard and using the mouse to click ‘Search’. In most other contexts, Enter will launch a search.

I also would love to have a quick way to print my family group sheets (with birth, marriage and death info) from the main pgm. Having to to to the press page, set up a new ‘book’, select which type of page, which person, which spouse, etc. is too time consuming for an operation I bet many of us would use.

Thanks!

It’s working well, I can see it once in a while, not always even though I’m on the family view. I’ve used it several times today as I am picking up stragglers (in the family lines) and I’m testing this out.

I think it is a GREAT tool and if some of you don’t understand the feature and have not merged other family trees responsibly into your trees, you might not understand it. I have done it all, even started over with one tree due to my errors of not knowing what I was doing with merging another set of family files in.

I would suggest you make a Test tree, put in a few names then see what you can do until you get familiar with it, then when you are confident, merge carefully.

Remember when you merge if you see NEW by the Family Member name it will create another record. If it is not what you want but the others are, uncheck that persons record, copy what info you want to put into your existing person and then merge.

Other than that, you will see the word new to the fields that it will be adding to you existing members names.

Hope that helps someone out. I’ve been asking for this feature and am very happy to see it in action.

Now as for the New searching techniques on ancestry (another feature) I am not keen on that …yet.
I keep reverting back to my old view, then later testing out the new again, but I just don’t get the results that I can get or perhaps I’m just not comfortable with it, yet.

To all of you who think we should not be allowed to use this new merge feature = = I just wonder why you think that ALL of US out here (meaning everyone except YOU TWO OR THREE PEOPLE) = are so stupid that we cannot decipher anything on our own?
You think that just because something is offered, that we feel compelled to take it.
Well, you are wrong!
I go through many steps, searching and researching and checking and rechecking each name, before I put it in my tree. When looking over the Ancestry Hints and rarely – the One World Tree – I go back and forth many times – and I HAVE EVEN FIGURED OUT HOW TO CHECK OR UNCHECK A NAME – TO EITHER PUT IT IN – OR KEEP IT OUT of my tree!
Imagine my stretched intelligence = figuring all of this out on my own = with no “restrictions” or “regulations” to PROTECT ME FROM MYSELF!!!
And SHAME on Ancestry.com to offer a service that I want and that I pay for every month.
Come on – all you people that are talking down to us = because we want this new merge feature = just let us wallow in our ignorance, and please drop the superior attitude and the lectures. Just let us enjoy our trees and the building thereof.
Let’s call a truce = and everyone just return to your own tree = OK?

This is GREAT!!!! I have often wished that I could take the census information on the family and add it all at once instead of piecemeal. Thanks.

Sweet!

Thank you, Donna

In the defence of those you mention, I would only say that I think they are genuinely concerned about the integrity of the information in ANCESTRY. I just think they could do something more positive with their concern than protesting with such hyperbole (”the thousands of people” – see #168).

For example (and see post #219) simple guidance and well-written advice for newcomers who have had an ANCESTRY subscription for one week and have just come across this merge and the One World Tree. Perhaps a few succint (but not cryptic) hints on the merge page. Nothing more and no talking down.

Personally, I don’t care about the integrity of the information – it has none anyway and I learned to work exactly the way that you do. I wouldn’t expect that ANCESTRY can or will do anything to improve information integrity – it’s far too late for that – although it would be a pity if the whole operation fell into disrepute because of it.

Take to absurdity the complaint about permitting the merge feature to merge the ‘non-official’ information from others’ trees. Then logically you must also remove the ability of it to display census records (which are actually official) as they are sometimes badly transcribed and contain wrong spellings, inconsistent addresses, erroneous relationships and mis-stated ages which people will copy and spread.

The merge feature itself is not flawed. Perhaps those thousands of people who were counted merging incorrect records into thousands of trees will also work out how use it sensibly.

Still I think we need a general forum accessible from the homepage.

To vhiddai

THANK YOU

Great idea – makes life easier

help!!!! This merge feature didn’t work at all and then worked for a day and now it is still not working it will not attach any records at all I have waited for several days and it hasn’t came back. please fix
soon!!!!!!!! and to others please keep comments limited to web site bugs so web site bugs can be identified easily and fixed!! thanks

That’s why we need a proper forum where we can develop our own threads.

To everyone—

Please take a moment to send an e-mail supporting the idea of a real forum. It is very necessary and can only be of benefit to us all, including ANCESTRY.

The more people that support it, the more likely it will happen.

I was adding a Social Security death record and it offered me “the rest of the family” and showed a sister. How would this be on a SS death record? Also, I had a sibling that showed up as “rest of the family” for some time on various different unrelated records.

Generally speaking, I love being able to add the rest of the family. Just bugs to iron out and perhaps the need to better understand some of the documents and what they do and don’t contain.

Response to #217 by Cindy

I hadn’t noticed the auto fill type of feature box upper right side “Find a person in tree” or “See full list of people”. As you type it would generate a list of possibilities of family names, like an auto fill feature.

Today, however after reading your comment, I stopped and watched the circle go round and round and saw that it was working, checking my list of names for possible matches as I typed. I really like that, so I’m with you in regards to enjoying that new feature.

long post, sorry…

As for some people that are complaining about the errors in names, ages, etc, I’m with you, they need to be fixed.

I’ve found many “Man married to Man” files in the Missouri Marriage Records, 1805-2002 data base,

IF I send in a Add Correction, I will get a generic email back, stating that ancestry does not have control over others people’s information and they are just passing along what was entered by that organization. I’m thinking What, it’s in your system! How can you not have control? Then I realize that this is a Missouri based information bank and I can see that they do not have control.

It’s still kind of funny to add a marriage where the record purports the wrong information being a Man married to a Man, I have 2 or 3 of these records in my family tree from this same database.

Example:
http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=momarriages&h=501928354&ti=0&indiv=try

Missouri Marriage Records, 1805-2002
NAME: James L Wilbourn
Marriage Date: Jul 1898
Marriage Location: New Madrid, Missouri
Marriage County: New Madrid
SPOUSE Name: George Carmody
Father’s Name: James L Wilbourn

This is apparently an error and it’s suppose to be Jennie Lee Wilbourn. I learned today that her last name is most likely spelled Wilbourn not Wilburn, another alternative to address.

The image is too light to read, but it’s the one on the right. If I didn’t know who I was looking for I would not have found it. Some of these things are taking me years to track down due to transcription errors.

I reported the Unreadable image issue, but it takes a while for them to get back to that database during their quarterly maintence, info provided to me via emails from them.

I can send a blank-it type of letter to ancestry support but then I get the generic letter back reporting that they have no control over others’ databases.

Ok that’s fine, but what about support for us? I’ve identified 3 such marriages in the last few days of family members where Man is married to Man. There is no place to go to get it corrected. I can include a comment and hope that helps others out, but as for ancestry, I get stuck in the perverbial loop ….we can’t control other’s information. I give up reporting some issues, I’m learning.

I’d love for them to address the wrong Age and estimated year of birth issue since that is another main way of searching. I am constantly adding corrections as I go along and I’m getting tired of doing it…but then when I run across one that someone else supplied that helps me and I gain steam again.

YES We do need a Blog!

I’ve been with ancestry for about 6 years. I just started using Family Tree online. Unless I have documents to support the addition to the family, I am not comfortable with the new family names that come in via One World Tree feature.

While I’m researching, at times I’ve added in a couple of possibilities, although they contradict each other, ie: 2 census records for 1870. Am I confusing the facts, well, possibly. But it’s my Tree, My Work and until I see them in a census or other “official” form, I just don’t believe what is stated without proof.

That’s where the merge comes in from the Census. That’s helping me out a lot, I really like that because we are working from official docs, minus the transcriprtion errors. I don’t have to rely on someone else’s info and bring in their errors in my database.

As for others trees, I use them as tips and go into their trees, check their census records, click the Add Family, then on that next page before you hit continue, you can right click on the family tree name or right click on the person that you are researching, open in new window, then browse around. That will get into their records.

You will be able to see what census they have attached for whomever, marriages, if sourced, etc. I do what you might call a “preview” and let them help me with my research. That’s what I’m doing on the Wells in my family right now (branchced off of Carmody mentioned above). It’s working rather well.

I don’t like bringing over some records from some trees, if you do that, you won’t be able to edit your information correctly.

I have a Ernest Everett Mills in Missouri. I brought in someone elses info and now he is not fully mine. Therefore, I created a 2nd one and am digging into this persons records to see if it fits in with mine. Afterward I will delete their person and get free of their tree…I hope.

I’ll hush now,
Cathy

Okay, so I’ve been using the new feature for about a month, tad slower, but I like it. Time saved when dealing with families of say 14, all get sourced in one shot. Love that!!! One very maddening feature of this new merge feature is: Have a name to merge and the family comes up. Great! The only “family” offered are siblings. Go to check the box and whoa – no, so sorry, can’t do that unless you first click the parents (who aren’t even there!). So, how about freeing this up a bit so that I CAN click on the siblings. Yes, in some cases, have figured out who the sibs are and am still looking for their parents. Just a suggestion, but it’d sure be a big (& faster) help!

I love it.

It is a good feature, but it offered only one of Joel and Elsie Berry’s three children shown on the 1910 Census

Re answer#232

Huge!

Kenny thanks very much, indeed.

Suggestion: For those who didn’t know about it, put this link at the top of this and all other pages where you invite feedback. Tell people like me to put their irrelevant comments in that place and not here.

Further suggestions are in a direct e-mail to you. They are irrelevant to this page!

I LOVE this merge feature, however there are a few bugs in it. It doesn’t always recognize children or spouses as current family but as “other unknown” This can cause you to duplicate the children in a family unless you watch very carefully.

Thanks for keeping up todate on features!!!

I have 2 Henry Bowens, one 1720 -1784, who’s parents are Moses Bowen 1674-1760 and Rebecca Reece 1676-1780. The other Henry Bowen 1678-1755 , show parents to be Moses Bowen 1674-1760 and Margaret Levisa Smith bn. 1741. Henry Bowen 1720-1784 was married to Lily McLlhaney and Jane Carter 1683-1702. Both Henry Bowen show to be married to Jane Carter 1683-1702. I need some help sorting this out. I have children that are mixed up. Thank you , Ann B.

This is HUGE time saver! I wish I had noticed it when you first rolled it out.

I really love this new merging feature. Just remember that the female spouse has her married name not maiden or unknown. So you need to change it. Otherwise, I love that you can add children you don’t have just by clicking on them.

Excellent idea. I’m having a problem selecting a sibling because it says “must select at least one parent” but the sibling is the only person available for selection.

I love this new feature! The only thing I would change is to be able to select people from your tree instead of only getting the matches supplied. Sometimes it selects the wrong person from the tree and I don’t see a way to change it.

again it’s been ten days since this started and i still can’t attach records. is it being fixed? what is the status? I can’t be they only one out there, Is there another way to get help?!!!!!!

This is a great time-saving feature-I had hoped for this but thought it would be a long time coming. GREAT WORK!!!

I’m still having difficulty with spellings when trying to link family members. Something as simple as Lula instead of Lulu can prompt a new family member. Maybe if there was an option to link to members in your tree as an alternate. Family tree maker allows you to scroll through the children and match them that way.

Otherwise – this feature is really nice.

I HAVE BEEN USING THIS PROGRAM FOR 15+ YEARS . THE MERGE FOR 2 PEOPLE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A JOKE. WHEN U MERGE U SHOULD HAVE THE 2 PERSONS TO BE MERGED AND A BLANK PROFILE SO U CAN TAKE THE INFO FROM PERSON 1 AND PERSON 2 AND DRAG THE INFO U WANT TO THE FINAL PERSON PROFILE. THAT WAY U CAN PICK AND CHOOSE THE INFO U WANT.
I DO NOT KNOW WHY THIS CONCEPT IS NOT LOOKED AT AND EVALUATED
THANKS FOR LOOKING

I like this feature. I agree with comments 12 and 21 about a way to spouses or children whose names are slightly different. Also, you cannot add another sibling unless you add a parent. This makes a duplicate on the parent’s information. I really love this feature, though.

Wonderful addition, when attaching records to a person, to be able to see the relatives and attach records to them at the same time. What a time saver! Thank you.

LOVE the merge! It’s so nice not to have to type that info in. Especially for relatives in the 1900’s between the SSDI and the 3 censuses, you can pretty much eventually get accurate info. Has been very handy for the wedding and graduation family tree poster gifts I’ve been creating. I remember when I with great anticipation was waiting for the 1930 Census, and now the 1940 census is just around the corner. As always an endlessly fascinating obsession!

I like this feature, however I have hit a few snags. Let’s say I know one or two children of a couple, find the census record that lists all twelve-I merge, and up with 14. It would be nice to be able to weed out the duplicates, or maybe somehow flag there is a duplicate name. It’s great if you don’t know the person’s spouse or children, but a headache if you know a few. It’s complicated to go back and read each name if you are not that familiar with the family. I’m also having to undo about 20 hours of duplicates my daughter did to try and “help” me-she is only 11 and wasn’t aware of the duplicate factor. So, I will use this feature but only if I don’t have any info on the person. Thanks!

worked great this am and pedigree view showed back up. 2 hours later pedigree view disappered along with ability to attach records to existing people.

I love it! I do have a request, however – as censuses (censi??) are notorious for misspelled names, would it be possible to attach a family member’s information to someone that already exists on my tree?

That way, I won’t have to delete the second, third and fourth wives because the census taker couldn’t spell BERTHA.

Many thanks!

When pulling up relatives, it pulled up the wife by the married name, and did not pull up her 3 children listed in the census.

I am hoping any kind dear soul will take pity on me and translate my family tree maker file into a GEDCOM file. I am trying to help someone with their genealogy. One of their ancestors sent me a Family Tree Maker file — I’m sure full of great relevant information. However, I don’t have Family Tree Maker, I use PAF. If you could convert this file into a GEDCOM, I would be eternally grateful!
Many Thanks in advance,
Sherrie Wieland

I love being able to merge from other trees. It just pops the info that I was needing for family members so much faster than normally searching, HOWEVER, I am finding that it is hard to get back to my tree from this page. It seems like a dead end unless I back up page by page and refresh on my tree. I have only been a member and doing genealogy for a few months and maybe I just haven’t got the hang of it yet, but you provided a feedback link and I jumped in with mine. Thanks.

Not sure where the discrepancy lies. Kate/Kathryn Hawkins seems to have two possible fathers both at same address. No mother for father #2, so I have added neither until further reseach is available.

I am having trouble deleting the multiple entries of the same person. i tried following instructions to delete the extra entries,but have had no success. Any explanations as to why this is not working would be appreciated. Thanks, Diedra Hyatt.

This is not a comment about your website, but rather a correction on someone’s reading of the 1920 Census attached to Mollie A Beasley, MILLER tree. It shows her as Mollie Wall, but age 5 or something? This is Mollie Beasley Wall with her two children now living at home with her father William Shadrach Beasley. Please pass along this information. William Shadrach Beasley was one of my great-grandfathers & I know that Mollie A (a sister to my grandmother) was born in 1893 & married to L C Wall earlier.

This is GREAT!!! It will save a whole lot of time and effort.

So here’s what I think. First of all, I have been at this for 1 year exactly and consider myself a novice. I have seen a number of changes on the site, mostly good I guess. What I’ve noticed with the new record merging is that I am not as comfortable with the accuracy of what I end up adding to my tree as I used to be. It seems my new motto is, “I’ll clean it up later”. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t get to it. Cleaning up merging errors is multifaceted an can be a nightmare. My tree is public so if I don’t get to clean up the errors then everyone can see them and someone may think it’s accurate information. A potential vicious cycle.
For a short time there was a merging feature where my tree remained where I could always see it on one side of the screen and my choices of what was available to merge was on the other side. I scrolled down and made my own choices as to what to merge. The only feature (or maybe you would call this a tool) missing for me was the ability to have the information just chosen then added to the other side of the screen where the tree is so it can be seen at all times. That way before I hit DONE I could make very important corrections and delete the extra ancestors or non-ancestors before it becomes that nightmare I was talking about earlier. I certainly can’t remember what name scrolled by a moment ago, particularly when there are 4 versions of it and I’m looking at hundreds of names. I bet most of us can’t and why should we have to remember in this day and age of computers.
My trees have always been public and in the past did not understand why anyone would have a private tree. Well, my tune has changed and so have the private vs public status on most of my tree’s as of yesterday. I’m not comfortable having them public until I can correct my work. What a shame.
So, in a nutshell, my feedback for ancestry.com regarding the merging of records is:
1. Yes, it’s handy BUT it’s creating alot of clean up and deleting work. Sometimes this work is quick and easy. Sometimes it makes me want to throw my computer out the window. Because of the need to delete and clean up it created a nightmarish potential for inaccurate information to run amok.
2. Make it simple. I don’t mean simple so your clients don’t have to think, I mean make it user friendly with the potential for the client to make choices as to what to merge and give them the tools to make accurate choices. (see above regarding split screen).

That’s all for now. Probably I’ll think of more later.
Kathleen

THANK YOU!!!

Since my ancestors mostly seem to have had LARGE families, this is extremely helpful to me!!!

I’ve had some success with this strategy. When trying to merge a family from the census, it often won’t accept the wife, therefore if you go ahead, all the children get added to Unknown Mother. Try this: instead of starting with the father, start with the mother. Attach the census record to her tree, then when relatives are added, the father’s name will usually be accepted. This still doesn’t always work with all the children, but it’s worth trying.

Nice feature but it would be best if you could tell whether you’ve already added that particular census information to the additional relatives. If you already have, you end up with duplicates.

Love the new merge but for a few glitches. When the year is out by a year(ie 1856 the next census 1855) the system put in a new person. When the name is spelt incorrectly the system add the family as new people even if i manually correct the spelling

What is a website? I don’t think I have one. I have been using the newest features until today. I sure did miss them. When I saw the feed back button I just had to tell you I was really missing the new feature.
Is this what you are talking about in the merge feature?
I noticed that you are keeping tabs on if I don’t accept hints. Sometimes I already have better than you are giving me and I’d rather not accept the chance of a mess-up or they are not the right people. Will I not receive any more hints if I don’t use all that you give me? Where can I go to get help when I need it? Sure have enjoyed giving my in put. Thank You

I love the new merge option, but would ask if it’s possible to allow me to select an individual for those records that don’t quite match my existing and therefore try to create a new record in my tree – can we have an option to allow me to select the individual on “new record” options?

Brilliant, it saves so much going backwards and forwards.

I find this new relative features fantastic. It is so much easier to see if I have the right information and then at it to my tree. It makes growing my tree so much easier and faster, so I don’t have to retype information ovr again.
Great Job Ancestry, Love your site
Regards
Deborah
Outer SE Melbourne
Australia

I love the new feature – being able to merge several family members at one time, from census records. That brings up my problem. Because of variations in spelling, etc. I ended up with several duplicates in one family. It will not allow me to delete these individuals, nor can I find a way to merge the duplicate individuals. How do I go about removing these extras? One is a wife & others are extra children with same names. I know I must have done something without paying attention. I would appreciate your help. Thanks
Bobbie

I have the largest database on your site with about 36,000 people. If the name or dates don’t exactly match it don’t show the people so I can merged.Like the 1910 census of John Perry Branscum.

I like this new featture. If only you could ad the link that lets you add everyone from that list to the tree. Instead of checking each name.

How do you merge info of people whose names are spelled different but are the same person or family???

We cannot add any records to our tree. All I get is a spinning wheel saying “loading”

Brilliant – saves loads of time and prevents transcription errors

Hi Kenny,
I am trying to be positive and watch carefully what I do before I choose to merge. I began a brand new tree yesterday so the slate was clean. Today I have so many duplicates I don’t know if it’s really a time saver or waster for me. I am reading all of the positive comments and wonder what they are doing that I am not. Before the new merge I got very familiar with whatever family I was working on. I would almost always open the actual census and look it over because it helped with the hunt. There might be family living next door you had not been able to find the traditional way, etc. Also it’s not uncommon that names and dates are transcribed incorrectly and looking at the census yourself is a big help. I find I don’t tend to look at the actual census much with the new merge function and I’ve been thinking about why my ‘hunting’ style has changed and I think its because there’s a sense I don’t need to since the merge function has given me all of the family names etc. It is not as satisfying for me, it’s like an assembly line work. I feel more confused about who belongs where and I would rather add the correct people to start with than to figure out who to delete. If the merge function were accurate or at least much more accurate I would like it and use it. For now I am going back to my old way of ‘hunting’.
I anyone has any tips or hints for me or if I am missing the big picture here please let me know.
Thank you
Kathleen

I really appreciate this new merging feature. Even better,the caution to “merge responsibly” and to be able to review the record person by person (with some genealogy sites, it’s merge all or nothing!).

I do seriously believe that ancestry.com is the best genealogy site because you give us all these records to review, other public trees to peruse, plus access to stories and photographs others are willing to share (bless them one and all!).

And to top it off, everything on an individual’s tree is added ONLY if and when they wish.

Thanks for continuing to update and improve ancestry.com

Deena Herod

This is a great feature!

This is absolutely my favorite option. Before I had to hand write other information in order to show it on my tree. Either that or print each page. Anyway, my hands Thank You Very Much!!
Sheila

What a marvellous improvement you have made to the retrieval of data,now instead of laboriously typing in information on each member of each generation; it is there at the click of a mouse!

Well done!

I am new to Ancestry ~ 1 week, so all of this is new to me – UNTIL I came to #124! I thought it was just because I was doing something wrong that the notice kept popping up about `~error…has to close…send report…’. This occurred when I was loading census pages and pressing the arrow to go forward. I just got used to clicking “Close” and then immediately reopening from my desktop. I am not super computer savvy, so I appreciate the information posted here. It has been helpful.
I have no recollection of what the site was like before when I tried it in Aug 2005 for 2 months.
I am amazed at how much I’ve been able to do in one week. When I think of what my GGGGmother had to do to make the paper tree she made…
I think that I have to use the language of the country I am looking in in order for the information to come up. I would be looking in Germany, born & died there and would have a US Census list with “possible hints” show up. And I have seen a few ancestors with similar names living for more than 100 yrs – i.e. 1625 – 1733. I think this really unlikely.
Using the computer to research certainly has a steep learning curve. I thank all of you who post helpful hints for beginners like me.
Blessings on you and yours,
Steph

Type your comment here.

This site is fantastic! Thanks for the merge feature. It really speeds things up. I think I’ve done about three or four years worth of research and tree building in the last two weeks for a fraction of the cost of a professional resercher.

I would like to see a manual override matching system because sometimes I know the family members match but the name spelling (or some other detail) is just different enough that the people don’t match up automatically. I can still attach the record by searching it again for the unmatched people, but it is less confusing to do it all at one time.

In addition, I would like to be able to manually add information from the census pages (like the street address written on the side, the dd/mm of the census, occupation, etc.) that does not automatically transfer. The detailed info helps me compare information for individuals to ensure I have selected the right record.

Thanks for making genealogy for the masses!

I am having a hard time trying to get the Adam
Hahn relationship prior to his marriage to Anna E.
Rettig straightened out. I give up at times. This is
in Indiana.

I have all this information on my Family Tree Maker but don’t know how to merge that with Ancestry. Do you know any shortcuts??

Type your comment here.

I absolute LOVE the new merge feature. This saves me a lot of typing and a lot of going back and forth to add this record to each family member. Thanks!!! This is one of your best. !

I love this feature! I had been thinking about suggesting it but never got a round-to-it!

Thanks much!

I might comment more after I have used it for awhile.

You have provided me with a hitherto unknown sibling for g.grandfather. Now I will have to find out what became of her!

I think this is realy helpful. Absolutely wonderful if I am just finding and adding new people. The only down fall is that if I already have this person, it’ll make a duplicate. So if I find someone in 1910, 1920, 1930 census, I now have them listed 3 times. Any suggestions?

Regarding #287, my basic rule is “Merge, do not Add”. Until Ancestry.com can merge two individuals like Family Tree Maker 2008, the pain of duplicates is just to much to risk uncareful adding.

I found the new system confusing- example my ancestor is Lucian Bland
then it lists himself as a parent (no way I could see to change this)and his true father was also listed- then his sister was listed as his mother.???
Maybee I’m just not understanding what you are trying to tell me- I’m open to new ideas and appreciate any help I can get..Catheron

I absolutely love this new feature of saving census information to all family members mentioned … with the choice to “responsibly” merge that information. What a time save for us!

hello, this is one of the features that I have enjoyed on the offline Family Tree Maker 2006 for a while..but a glitch that someone else may have already commented on is that when you merge people with a name that is transcribed incorrectly (for whatever reason, sometimes through no falt of the transcriber..)it still makes them a new person, and how are we supposed to merge the two individuals after the addition of family info…this is also a feature I truly enjoy on the FTM 2006..will wait for a response..and thanks for all your hard work on making this program so flexible…

Very diappointed. While it looks great, I’ve spent too much time having to delete duplicate “other members of the family” because the program failed to recognizet them as the same person. It is much faster to just attach each person individually.

It’s a great idea, too bad it doesn’t work better.

Great feature. I’m finding it very helpful. It saves the laborious task of entering the same data to family members. There are still glitches with merging this data to another person on another tree. The selection drop down does not change to the tree selected. The software merely picks up the next tree in alpha sequence. Wish you could fix that as I want to merge data from one person to the same person on another tree. Also wish you would allow for merging descriptions.

Ref: New adding and merging of family members from Census records:
If one parent is not included on the census listing, i.e. they are away from home, in hospital, visiting or even dead, then the children are added as having unknown parent and even duplicate themselves if already listed from prior censuses. Very time consuming then to delete them all and start again.
Otherwise, I love it.

I will attempt to answer my own question ( 271 ).
After doing all the many things that support told me, clearing catche, deleting cookies, etc., I turn my firewall off and that did the trick. If you are running XP turn the XP firewall on for some protection while you merge records. Now that I got it working, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being best, I rate it a 9.

Thank you for this great new feature! I was pleased and surprised at how well it worked.
I would also like to comment on the Iowa State Census information–which is GREAT with one exception. When it appears as a location, only the town shows up on the record, no county or state unless I type it in. Please check this out and see if it can be adjusted.
Thanks for all you do to help make our family history better.

Ken,
Thank you so much, especially the things you said about responsible merging. The progress here is meaningful.
Again,
Angela

Love this feature — it realy speeds things up in adding records to multiple family members. It’s especially useful when discovering new people for the first time.

Here’s a problem though — sometimes the record has a name wrong (misspelling or nickname), but you know who it refers to. The feature wants to create a new person, not recognizing that it’s really someone already in your tree. There should be a way to override the creation of a “new person” and connect the record to an existing person.

Hope you can add that functionality. Right now, you have to leave the wrong item unchecked and go back and manually connect the record to the right person.

Thanks,
Bill Bernardy

The merge facility works well as long as the names to be merged from the database are nearly identical to those in my tree. It appears to be keying only on the name, which can be varied and even wrongly transcribed. It would help if it also considered birth dates and places and, as in FTM 16, offered the option to attach a record to any name.

I read the comments about how easy it now is to make one’s tree grow, with some amusement at the implicit naïvety.

Years ago in England there was a TV series entitled “Never mind the quality, feel the width.”

1850 Merge doesn’t seem to be working. Charles is 1 and it’s bringing up his children..and no one on the 1850 census record.

Kenny, I can’t tell you what a difference this makes…well i’m sure you know. It takes very little time to look at the important information without having to toggle back and forth to double check dates, names, etc. I love researching but i don’t have a lot of time on my hands.and i haven’t even used it to its full potential yet.
Thank you so much for the improved site. Its awsome.

I like the fact that it was designed to save time, however there are still a few bug that drive me crazy. Due to the fact that I am usually merging census data, the names can be inaccurate/incomplete and therefore do not link up with the members in my tree. Perhaps the problem is it’s too automatic. If I choose the people myself from the family list, I wouldn’t have this problem.

I think I am still a bit over-whelmed with all the new options, but even so I have found family that was “lost” for years. I am really in a fog sbout merging the same people into one person; but I will figure it out! Thanks, to me the site is vastly improved and I like it.

AWESOME!!

This search is awesome!

I am pleased with the new search. Sure it’s a wee bit annoying to have to click on search and it’s a wee bit annoying to be taken back to the person I did the merge on but…

I like being able to merge many people from the same family at one time. Lots less clicking (more than making up for the having to click the search button when choosing a person or when getting back to the screen I was on).

I can copy and paste between many people at a time. I alter the formatting of places. Now instead of having to type the new format on everyone of the 12 children Mr. Fertility, I format once for him, and then copy and paste to all of his children for the same census record.

I especially like being able to merge info from one of my trees to another. I keep two copies of my trees – a private one where all the info needs to be sourced (as opposed to coming from public trees) and a speculative one where I put best guesses and info from public trees. I use the speculative one to “try out” different info I’ve found. It’s been very helpful in making connections and furthering my research. When something has been confirmed in my speculative tree, I merge it back into my strict tree. When my strict tree proves something wrong in my speculative tree, I merge from my strict tree to my speculative tree.

I like the new merge Very Much.

New record merge feature – brilliant idea. Makes adding new people/families so much easier. Makes you want to search more. More like this please!!!

If the name in the census record is poorly transcribed – attaching the rest of the family is not possible because it thinks they are all new. You must link each member seperately. It would be nice for the linking to be smarter and allow you to pick from the existing family.

The merge feature is great when it works, but it seems to operate erratically. Today, for instance, I wanted to save a census record to the head of family. Although there were a wife and six children listed, only one child was offered for merging. Often, the merging of relatives is not available at all. I cannot figure out why the feature works some times and not others.

Good when it works, but not this time.

I am finding this new facility extremely useful. It can sometimes save hours of searching. Adding parents, siblings, husband/wife and children, then attaching the source to each person is great.
I always make sure that the info is correct first.
Thanks.

On this page why can’t I keep the death date and place.
I always consult the census documents and they are a bit difficult to get to.
ceim2634

I am using the merge feature, it’s really wonderful, when it’s available. It seems to not like the 1850-1870 census. It would be wonderful if we had an option when merging to choose the family members name.
Example: I am merging Noah Ganner and his family. During the 1920 merge it was flawless.
In this 1910 merge it is not picking up Emma Doyel as the wife, so I have to uncheck her, it’s seeing her as a new person. If I had an option here to add her in, then I could merge the family record to the correct person.

This is where people get frustrated, this is the error made normally. As I’ve pointed out before, watch for that word NEW Person if you see that, stop what you’re doing. You can always go back and pick up that individual after you get the rest of the fam added in.

It would be nice though to have an option there to choose the family member name when the record is off like that. It might cut down some of the confusion of people adding in extra people.
Thanks for listening. I’m enjoying this very much when its available on the page!!

What a great feature. Awesome, makes easy work of adding relatives that otherwise may not have been entered!

I like the merge feature, but I’m dismayed to find that the transcriptions of the census records are often so wrong. For example, the 1930 census shows my grandfather’s place of birth as Finland when he was really born in Ireland – and the actual document clearly says “Irish Free State”. And that’s just one error I’ve seen. How can I go about getting the transcriptions fixed?

Hello Kenny,
Any idea if Ancestry are planning to re-link all my sources that were previously linked, before some sort of bug or an intentional decision was made to break all the records, I have spend many hours enhancing my family history by ensuring everything is sourced, in a very short time Ancestry has undone this.

Regards
Robert Lowe

I think it works nicely. In fact I was so tired of looking someone up and getting this multitude of people that had been randomly added to that person without a thought or a bit of research. I’m happy with that change.

It would be helpful if, when adding family members from a record, we could select someone already in our tree. For example, my grandfather was John Edward McDermott. Sometimes he’s referred to as Eddy – which the system adds as a new person. And sometimes the census has a space in the name (Mc Dermott). So I add all the records I can find, then re-open them and manually attach them to the correct names, then go back and delete the duplicate people.

I like it. It works good until it gets all mixed up and adds the wrong people because of family trees with maiden names of mothers name isn’t the same as one it recognizes and I end up deleting children and reoganizing, losing more time than I saved–but it is a really good start.

I really like this new feature. It saves me the time of adding every family member, one at a time, then going back and attaching their sources. I do believe that attaching the sources should be done responsibly, but I really wish every person could be added, instead of the website choosing who it thinks should be added. Sometimes it doesn’t catch that there are 2 different people, but their ages are just close (or sometimes twins). It would also be good to allow the user to decide whether a person in a family was ‘new’ or not. Misspellings of names doesn’t constitute a new person, so it would be helpful if that could be another option that a user could decide to use or not. Also, it would be great if family members on censuses older than 1880 could be added/merged the same way. It’s true that not every person living in the home was a child or parent, etc., but the genealogists who strive for accuracy would check into that before adding them into a tree anyway. The other variety can still do it the wrong way, too. Just a couple thoughts on possible improvements or options, but overall I really like this new feature!

Great addition to the census records. It sure makes the input of family data much faster and efficient. thanks

The year of William Henry’s birth is recorded incorrectly. He was born in 1879 and was 32 years of age at the time of this census – 1911

Love it, it saves so much time and effort.

Merge feature not working…unable to
Save to Tree.

I love the fact that you can attach a historical document to several family members at one time; however, there’s always the issue of transcription errors. For example, I attach a historical document to John Puzo and then want to attach it to his wife Domenica and daughter Rosanna, but the names on the census are “Manuel” for “Domenica” and “Rose” for “Rosanna”. As a result, it prompts me to “Add a wife” for “Manuel” and a child for “Rose” . . . how do I override??

Love this new feature, much easier to track sources and link family members.

MY TREES ONLY FAMILY. SOMETIMES PARENTS HAVE DIFERENT NAMES – LIKE:
TATAM,TATUM,TATHAIN,TATHAM, ETC; VAN VORCE,VAN,VAN DYKE,ETC; ROYSE,ROYCE.RICE,RHYS,ETC. SOMEONE DELETED MY ENGLAND ANCESTORS! WHY?
THANKS, REN

On this particular record, it is showing the parents backwards… with the mother’s name connected with the father’s and vice versa. So there are still a few kinks in it; however, I LOVE this new feature!

Love the addition to link family, only problem is if the name is spelt slightly differently or family name reverses from one census to another eg. Elizabeth Hepzibah Gregory then Hepzibah Elizabeth Gregory, it shows up as a new person and there is no way of being able to connect them except by going back to the original record. Find it brilliant otherwise.

Adding the census records to the other family members listed saves a lot of times. Thanks

so far-so good, i’ve just started today!

This feature has enabled me to find lots more relatives very quickly.

Great idea to be able to merge family members at the same time as you do the 1st but there isn’t enough flexibility. It won’t allow you to chose to associate a nickname to a given name so names on both records must be exact spelling. Same with marriages and children, exact names and spellings as well.

I love merging the census records to family members. It helps save a lot of time. Thank you,
Nancy

Great! I must have used this feature a thousand times the old way. You know, add the people to your tree one at a time, going back over the same steps back and forth and back and forth.

This is the most efficent change you have ever made. I Love it.

I love the Record Merge feature. The biggest issue I have with it, however, is that if a name is spelled differently, you only get an option to add a new person. You should be able to merge that data with an existing relative, also.

While merging the 1870 census of John Thomas Ransdell I was offered the option of merging his son, Vere Ransdell who was not born until 1895. There is a glich somewhere.

I love the new search features! One suggestion, keep the 5 star ranking to enable us to whittle down thousands of possibilities into dozens. Also, if we put in NY as birthplace, only return births in NY, not other places.

Thanks.

Right now I am still confused. I need easier access to my list of people. I am not sure I am doing it right also.

I think this feature is incredible….but why is it that it appears sometimes and other times it doesn’t?

Since the installation of the Enhanced Image Viewer I have had problems attaching the census record to an individual in my tree.I have had to save them to my shoe box until hopefully I am able to attach them to my ancestor.Is anyone else experiencing this or a similar problem? Before the installation of the viewer I had no problems at all.I have had a computer technician look at my computer he said the problem is with the website.I would appreciate any thoughts on this issue so I can move forward.

When one of the parents has passed away, it lists the children as being from and unknown spouse when merging them. Is there a way around this?

The more I work with this new software the wearier I become of it.
ceim

I cannot merge the 1930 US Fed Census for Amelia Mollie Busch. I get a page error and it continually shows that it is loading, but never completes the action. I was trying to load her and the rest of the family.

The idea is good. However, it needs to be more versatile. Users should be able to see all of the possible matches in their trees, and they should then be able to match the found records to the correct tree members. The ancestry.com match makes too many wrong assumptions about who matches with whom, and it can’t yet figure out that variations (even simple ones) might be the same person. So most of the time I can’t use the feature, because it dumps too many unnecessary duplicates into my tree, and I have not yet been able to find a graceful way to merge duplicate persons in my tree. But please, keep working on it, ‘cuz when the kinks are out of it, it will be a useful feature.

Love this option before I would have to go to each individual and connect them to the document. This is such a time saver. Please keep up the great ideas.

Thank you

I can’t tell you how much I LOVE THE NEW MERGE FEATURE!

Since I started building my tree one week ago, I have been able to add hundreds of people to my family, and don’t have to do hardly any work at all!

I just sit here at my computer and accept the hints. Ancestry has made it so easy! Thank you!

Since there are so many trees with the same information in them, I just KNOW the information is correct, so I don’t even have to do anything at all except keep on building my tree. I can’t believe how much royalty is in the family. I’ve gone as far back as 542 AD already.

I can’t wait. I figure I should be done with my family next week, and then I’ll start on my wife’s family.

With the new Ancestry book printing thing, I plan to print out several copies of the trees and give them to my family members for Christmas.

Thank you Ancestry for offering your “Family Trees for Idiots” program to all your new subscribers.

I love it!!!!

LOVE IT! Now, if only it would recognize duplicates and alert us to that .. it would move up to AWESOME!! Looking forward to that being a feature in the future…Please? Also, unless I just haven’t found it yet, a way to easily and quickly compare/merge duplicated individuals… so far, I’m doing that checking manually, and being much more careful in checking before entering…which can be a bit cumbersome sometimes. Nothing is perfect, but this program does keep getting better and better! YEA

The option to add the individual FAMILY members (via Census) does not always appear. Just now, the system showed 1 out of about 12 children, did not open for the parents so I could not merge the one available child, since I could not select “at least one parent”.

Thanks
Sherry

I am so impressed at so many new things. I haven’t been a member for about 6 years. What does bother me, is that I know that the system is adding someone as new, when they are just a variation of the spelling. It would be great to either save the info, or add it to the correct person.
But I am not complaining! I love this site.
What happens is that I sometimes get multiple spellings added and people. It would be nice to be able to merge these entries as one would merge with other people’s trees.

This is very exciting and much needed. I see the progress you are making and see so much more that needs to be made. With this option, can you also include a comment for error correction instead of going to the census page itself to do this. I’ve submitted several corrects already.

thanks, this is a great addition, certainly makes my life alot easier
x

When adding persons attached to the record, it would be helpful if there were categories other than “spouse” and “child”….for example, “mother-in-law”, “brother”. Thanks.

great tool time saving

Show relatives doesn’t seem to work for the 1860 census, just shows the family member you were working on last.

I find this is a valuale tool for merging large families. This merges the family quickly all at one time. When I come across a file that doesn’t have this feature, I have to go into each person to merge.
I urge everyone to us this tool when available.

The features are great if the information transcribed is correct…..

Great Tool, But When Names are spelled wrong. I get extra spouse`s and children.I need option to change spelling of names to stop new persons from being added and stop new spouse`s from being added I need to uncheck new person name and enter correct Information. Great when It works but lots of work when not.when I have Missed spelled Info.I just do one at a time. Thank`s Kenny

re this comment..
This is a wonderful addition but needs to be tweaked to allow mergers with existing people in the tree whose names are spelled slightly differently than the index(an “e” rather than and “a”). I wound up with many duplicate people whom I had to remove one by one. —
so did I and would suggest that existing family be displayed so you could skip some potential Dups .. but more than that -existing spouse should be displayed with option to merge or create new spouse ..
otherwise you have to go back to your tree and add correct parent should spelling or even maiden/Married name keep the present spouse from being displayed.

Some of the new features will be great when the bugs are worked out….in the mean time, it stinks! I’m paying for a service I can’t use because I do not know where the information is going to end up within my tree. It is extremely frustrating!

I have valid duplicates in my tree–brothers of one family marry sisters of another family. I would like to see the system point to the duplicates—there is no way to differentiate which line you are in when you save information. The documentation does not always end up in the line you were searching.

The merge function I have found to be a total pain….I end up with children of “unknown parentage” and duplicate entries. All time consuming to go back in and correct.

Some documentation I have saved to an individual works fine one day, the next day— it’s gone. Like it was never there. I add it back in and 3-4 days later the original set of documention mysteriously reappears, creating duplicate information and wasting time.

What was once an enjoyable passtime has become a nightmare—you don’t get much research done for correcting errors or tracking down where the information ended up. Until this site is fixed, I am seriously considering canceling the subscription. I certainly have better things to do with my money than pay for frustration—I can get that for free

I believe that the name of this person is Florence Richards.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this feature!!! Time saving, easy to use; I couldn’t have designed it better myself!

How do I avoid duplicating sources in the census attachments? I find I end up with duplicate citations on a person if I attach from the child’s census record. Sandra

I like this feature alot. It is very helpful with large families.

Please add it to 1850-1870 censuses.

Thanks

I am enjoying all the advancesments you are making. I also need to review the information befor recording it. If you would write a place were we can keep your information for review.

I am not a computer programer. I maynot be expressing what I would like in proper turms. Please Advise.
helen.hiner@mchsi.com

I love the new features. It makes working on my family tree so much easier and exciting. I don’t get frustrated wondering if I missed someone or not. In fact, I haven’t been able to work on getting my website up because I enjoy working on this site so much. If I were going to add anything, it would be some sort of alert when a date is obviously wrong – such as a parent’s birthdate being before their children’s. When I find one, I will try and research it further and correct it, but when you get into the “G” zone you tend to get overly excited and assume that the dates are correct. I wouldn’t make it so you can’t continue without correcting it, but some sort of little note popping up would be helpful.

I think this is a great feature but I think it needs to come a bit farther along. Merging the info to match the person/family. What is missing is a way to merge info or names that are not exactly as listed in the record hint… for example: I have a relative named Margaret in my tree and when I get these hints they never work out because she is often listed as “Maggie”, the merging feature should allow for us to choose from a list of names to merge with to allow for slight name differences but which we know are the same people. Also sometimes the names have spelling errors in the hints/records but we know its the right person.

Love this new feature. It speeds up the building of the family tree and allows a double check of facts as you build

Like the ability to include relatives, BUT, in adding the information sometimes an individual who is already in my database is duplicated. Example Harvey Faust married Ella Faust. No maiden name shown. In adding his wife, she was duplicated because she was already in my data base as Ella Horn, her maiden name. Is there a way to merge duplicate individuals? I know I can delete, but it can be very time consuming, especially if there are a lot of children.

As with all changes, we sometimes have to give something up. So to be able to view, merge and add other family members on the same census, is wonderful. I do believe the problem we are having is that we are compelled to accept the name as listed in order to “attach” the document in whole or in part. If there was a way to merge and “edit” the names so that it would not add a new person by default, this would help. I read several of the messages and it appears that because the “name” may not be spelled the same way on the “hint/doc/or other tree, by default it will add an entirely new person. Thus making us now have to go back, delete the unwanted additional person, and then search again for what we just deleted in order to get it attached correctly. I have faith you will fix it. Until then, We should all use with caution. Or at least two tylenols. LOL

The merge lists siblings, but will not let me merge their infor… says I have to select at least one parent, but there’s nowhere to do that either. ARGHH!

These new changes are driving me crazy….it’s taking me so much longer to find anything. Also, I have other trees…now I can’t find them. What ever happened to “My Ancestry”. Your efforts to improve your system is killing me. Norma

My second year wit Ancertory.com. You and your staff are doing a real Great Job.
Thank You for the hard work all you put in to make this happen
‘
Larry Jolley

Hi you have a record in the 1901 english census that has been transcribed incorrectly. It relates to the Hotheuls family at richmond st. I can say without a doubt that this should be the wheals family. the 1st record should be charles h wheals not charles hotheuls. I know this because they are my great grandparents, great uncles.

Terrific feature. Someone is really thinking out there. Really appreciate the efforts.

I like the new way of doing hints with the list of all the people. I also like the new addition of showing the whole family on Census hints. Only problem is some hints don’t show the whole family…why? Maybe it needs some tweeking!!!

When I add a record to someone, and it allows me to add relatives, it often doesnt find that person is already in my tree. It would be very helpful if we could “choose” the person it should be attached to.

THANKS!

This is my 2nd day working on the update Ancestry.Com
Kenny the program is a credit.
I read the message section and feel that I am comfortable with this program.
The older program was a pain, the newer program helps you along as you go.
Thank to your Staff and You
Larry
PS
I do not have a web or Ancestry email having problem understand that is my problem I have TBI.

I REALLY like the “add relatives” in the census feature, but it doesn’t work in some census years and for some reason in the years where the feature did work a couple of days ago (1870 for example), I’m now getting “phantom” siblings (no first name, no dates) to be added and not the people who are actually listed in the census record. Yesterday I got the “phantom” sibling AND actual people.

I love being able to attach a census record to several members of the family BUT sometimes I’m offered that option and sometime I’m NOT offered that option even tho I know other family members are there. I can’t figure out how to always have that option??? That is frustrating. Need button or something to get that option all the time.

I love this it is so easy to add family members to the tree. It saves so much time!

I love the family merge on the census records. Others have mentioned this, but the addition of the ability to merge family members from the census to EXISTING individuals would be a huge help. If the names are slightly different in spelling, it wants to create a new person. Thanks!

This is such a time saver! Now I can get on with my work without having to write everything down and then enter it in the record. I love it!

This records merge is a really fantastic addition. It saves so much time when discovering and adding new members to your family.

Thank you! This makes it MUCH easier to add siblings. Thank you!

It would be nice if you could manually select someone from the family tree for which to add the record. It often misses a spouse or child because of a misspelled name or difference in name. Otherwise, I really like it.

There are time I make a mistake a I cannot get it to go away.
ceim isobell2@verizpn.net

In the vien of merging responsibly I would like to be able to send the hint to my shoebox for later study.

The merge feature is really cool, except that I have a situation where a guy had two wives, but I can’t add the 2nd wife, I can only merge her information into the 1st wife’s information. It’d be cool to have a way to say “No, I don’t want to merge these two people, I want to add a new person entirely.” That’d be awesome. Thanks.

I like the new system. Much more efficient, and yes you still have to check names with different spellings, as you should be. My only dislike is the type-ahead feature has changed. It is no longer available on some name additions and the default now serves up a lot of irrelevant names, similar to getting American place names incorrectly served up by some of the sources. I preferred the old type-ahead which appeared to work on your own selection of place names, so you could add in district names and other relevant information with one click. (Is there a switch for this?).

At times the option is not available. Other times even though a spouse already exists the site makes the same spouse a new spouse creating two sets of children belonging to the same family. Mostly however I find this feature a great time saver.

I found the birth record for William Thomas Edgar Moore and instead of giving me the option of adding his parents. It gave me his spouse.
Her name was not mentioned in the document.
Thanks

It would be helpful if there were a box at the top of the relatives on the historical events so you can add them all instead of having to click each box individually.

How do I correct Ancestry transcription of names on the census reports?

This addition has been wonderful. It saves me time, as well as paper. In the past, I made a copy of the preview page, so I could be sure to connect the record to all persons. Keep up the great work!

Thank you, Kenny.
this is my grandmother.

With the family name undergoing a spelling change, but finding the correct family, I was not able to add the source all at once, but had to do do each one at a time. Not really the best feature YET. Work on it.

samuel H luscombes’ father is recorded on 1881 census as edro? it should be edward born buckfastleigh devon

Hi Kenny,
I’m a board administrator for ancestry.com “Baumgart” message board. If you are knee deep with your own problems that does and dosen’t make me happy. You are doing such a heck of a great job on all the new features. Everyone you have done lately has blown my mind. I love the ease of moving from one area to another. One I would like to see is if you know for certain that information that comes up is in error that there would be away to change. An example is
in my great uncles. The site is connecting one of my great aunt son with his cousin. The cousin is coming up as a son which is definitely not true. It’s because the son and the cousin had the same first name. And Ancestry.com is automatically trying to pair the cousin as a son.

Keep all thgose good changes coming but please take some time off to go fishing. (lol)
Ydabtow
Eab

I LOVE the new feature for accepting other relation to attach! It is coming in handy for my husband’s family which have 10-16 children per couple!!

I am so glad I waited to work on his family!

Can you make it possible to select all relatives from more pages? There are some results where this is not an option.
Also, the feature does not appear to work consistently, in that sometimes the parents and or husband/wife are not added to the family tree, despite being selected to be merged.
Also, please make it easier to locate and search on women’s maiden and married names (possibly display both on every record). This is especially helpful when a maiden name is not known, instead of just saving “Mary (unknown last name),” I would like to save her as Mary (blank), married name Smith. Since this option is not available, I routinely save the married name as the middle name for all women who’s maiden names are not known to me.

I am ready to see how this works. I really don’t know yet.

Like the new features, does seem like to all takes longer now!
Frustrated with getting undefined when ancestry family trees appear and then being asked to check back in later. Sent comment in email to ancestry days ago and received no comment.
Also, love the adding relatives feature except just tried to add a relative but won’t let me without adding parents and as it was a civil war record parents are provided.

This is really an excellent resource. It is a time-saver and makes it much easier to source other family members on the same record. Thank you so much.

When you have added a “hint” to someone and go back to the list it should be noted that it has already been added wither by a color or a tag “added”. Also, when you go to a persons page i.e. when you find famous relatives, it would be really, really, really wonderful if you could just add that entire line and family in one click. I have to add person after person after person. It’s great that the info is there but you should’nt have to cut and paste when it is already all in there.

Re: Thomas Baird
Bn. 1850 Ralls, Missouri
Information came up regarding his siblings. Unable to add siblings to his file as no parent was mentioned.
Frustrating!

Often, when trying to add passenger list data to my tree(s), the wrong data entry form appears. it is entirely useless as it doesn’t have the entry spaces for anything. What a waste of time.

We also think the new multi-colored format is giving us trouble. We are receiving multiple “Error Messages” and cannot easily open up the information.

It would be cool to have the “Add as alternate fact” check box on this feature, like we have on the One World Tree merger.

This new feature is certainly not as good as it first appeared to be. It misses out some family members for no apparent reason, adds on people as ‘new person’ when they are already on the tree so duplicating them, and doesn’t always link chilren with parents properly so a child will be posted with an unknown mother or father when that parent is actually there but has been ignored for some reason. It now takes me longer sorting out the muddles than it used to take putting everyone on individually.

Kenny,
the merge appears to be an excellent tool/benefit, with one caveat: bad information from folks who do sloppy genealogy work. I know this is not your fault, but it gets old passing on whole families when someone has input dates of births of 3-4 children after the mother has died or when she was in her 70’s.

Berger Nelsen Is the Father of Clifford N. Nelsen

This would be a great feature, but it doesn’t work at all for me! There needs to be a way to search for specific family members to attach to the additional people in the census record. I tried to link a census record to a family. It tried to add a new child to the head of house for each of the children listed. There was no way that I could find to attach those children to the children already in my database.

I love this feature – what a time saver to be able to incorporate a whole household on one page, from one census record. I haven’t experienced any noticeable “slowness”, either. I also like the new search page. One thing I wish for – the bubble at the top that shows the info for the person in my tree I’m searching for, I wish that would stay visible on the screen as I scroll down, so I wouldn’t have to keep going back up to the top of the screen to check dates and stuff.

Thanks!

Wonderful!! I would like you to add a select all button, then we can uncheck the people we don’t want.

I’m can’t seem to get the record to accept all of the children from the record. Help!

I found this feature easier to use than the one by one access, as I have lost several entries and do not know how to get them back again. It means I can also the record in their context. Thank you.

While doing some record merging I noticed a very simple ERROR. The problem is because father and son have SAME NAME. So some got confused and merged father and son’s dates.
Joseph Patchen b1610 d1689
SON
Joseph Patchen b1643 d????

The time saved is excellent,but it does tend to show married women as new….(different surname and sometimes marginally different year of birth. An option to relate to someone else in your tree would be good.

POSSIBLE BUG —

Census REcords for George C Dent are showing several family members but they can’t be merged.

Each of the census records I’ve tried to merge shows “John Dent 1814 RI” as a sibling. I can merge John to George but john isn’t on any of the census reports. don’t think John is George’s brother either.

While I enjoy the automatic searching for documents, I am having difficulty when a document includes another name–such as parent, brother, etc. If the name is not exactly as previously given, it makes a new file. Either I forgo adding the new person or have a duplicate. I find myself spending most of my time going through duplicates to make corrections.

Hi,

really appreciate this site and the hard work. Well done.

I have a hint aginst my Great Grandad. it tells me he had a son – James – whom i do not know of and my ftaher neither.

I’ve gone in and searched the BMD fopr this young man, and that throws nothing up.

Please can you tell me why does a hint pick this up but I cannot then get a hit in the BMD register?

I can accept it’s a freak/error and no hard feelings!!!! Just wnated to check with you guys.

Once again, fantastic site, love it ot bits

Ian

I love this new feature. It helps sooooo much you cannot believe. Getting information one one family at a time helps sift through what you will need and what you have wrong and comfirming what you have right. Thank you so very much
Shirley Kading

While I think this Nolan might be related, I am only given a choice to add the hint, or ignore. The Thomas Nolan listed might be a brother of my great grandfather, so I’d like to put it in the Shoebox, but can’t figure out how to do it.
I love all the new features in Ancestry, as well as the compatibility with Legacy.

I have not found a fix relationships on this that I have used in family tree maker, or am I justing missing it?

it gives a child to add but when i try to check “mahalia higgins” an error box pops up stating “you must select one parent”

Because of incorrect Data on my grandparents I did not want to merge the sibling documents for my Uncle.
How do I get the correct data there.

My Grandmother’s first name is incorrect and my Grandfather’s birthdate is incorrect.

Thanks JHiscock

I already had this info in my tree.

The merge feature for everyone in a specific file ie a census record, only works for the immediate family. In other words lets say that a sister or brother is also listed as living with the family only the spouse and children are able to be added, unless the parents of the brother and sister are listed. Additionally, if there is more than one spouse it will not allow you to add the second spouse unless it overwrites the first spouse. Any fix in the works for this?

How do I show an alternate name on a record–my G-grandparents are listed in your records as Littick–correct spelling is Littrell
Thank you

Great feature, time saving.

I am just getting acquainted with this new feature and I already love it. Thanks for this helpful upgrade.

Nice feature, but in my particular case I got an email that Ancestry had found a possible “match”, which in fact was a match for a different individual on my tree but I had no way of linking it to another individual….other than the one that came up when I clicked on the information. Having the ability to “link to someone else on your tree” would be a great idea.

The merge of other relatives should allow for the selection of someon from the tree list if no match or an incorrect match is identified.
Thi feature would also be great on birth records where th mother/father are listed, like in Texas.

i can not merge anything into my trees anymore why i am i paying for this it dont work anymore

Why can’t I add information that is available in the record to the people listed in the record, when those people are listed in my tree? I just tried to add info from a census,and all it wanted to do was add two “new” children who weren’t new at all, and it ignored all the others.

All in all, a great improvement, though!

Though I appreciate your encouraging restraint in merging individuals, it would be nice to have a select all option when one is viewing the relatives of a found individual.

This family tree feature has been wonderful. Months of work that I had done previously has been found and merged in minutes by this system. Thanks. It seems to only be searching other family trees. Is that an intentional limitation or coincidence for my research? No direct response expected.

two more comments from me:
When I try to merge an indidual from a record where only one of their parents was listed, it wants to attach them to a second marriage. If the program could “ask” me first it would be great. Second related comment is that it is very easy to mrege an individual and hints, it is not easy to delete them if you discover later that they weren’t merged correctly or their not related after all. An easier editing interface would be lovely.

Ever since you added this I keep gettting “Error on page” and I can not merge any of the information. I have tried everything to make it work right. It sucks.

this is exactly what was needed. it moved adding a census froma 20 minute task to a 2 minute task and anything that imporves effciency by an order of magnatude gets my gratatude.

JC

This is a great new feature and overall very time-saving.

One thing I’d like to see addressed is that you often can end up with duplicate “Residence” entries for the census year if you’ve already attached the census to one of the parents (because to add the children using the merge function, you’re required to select the parents). It seems like something that the system should be able to detect, and not end up with multiple duplicate citations on the same individual.

Thanks,

Wes

I love this new feature!! It is also wonderful that I can make the corrections needed to the information. Such as, James Carlan b.1846, Ireland landed in the states on July 2, 1864 according to his immigration papers in PA. This is great!!! Thank you so much for doing this!
Annemarie

when merging the 1900 census document into my family tree for Mathilda Imler up pops her hubby harry C. Mock – but this time as a “new person” – he is not a new person – he is already in my family tree with the exact same birth information as listed in the 1900 census documnet, thought the merge wants me to add him as a new person – thus duplicating him my family tree. This has happened many, many times when trying to merge family data into my tree in recent weeks – please recheck this feature so that you can better help those of us using your search engine, which we pay for, to build our family trees.
thanks,
Libby trautman

this feature for marraiges only ever adds the mother! the spouse would be nice too… especially in the case of muliple spouses

I don’t get the hints. They are nothing different than what I already have.

William Odis Ratchford: I have , anyway what I thought I done is add to Christopher Aclin what I had found in the Census and other events into his profile under the above tree. Like today I receive Hints for the item I had already place in his profile. I look for what I had intered. Not there. Can you tell me what is wrong. I follow the directions some info gets in some don’t. I dont agree with some of the info offered. But I still would like for the ones that I have selected to be input. Please let me know were I am going wrong. I don’t have enough time left to keeping going over again and again. Maudotha

This is much better than before. Please don’t change it unless you find other sources for us.

It is great and grand being able to merge and yes you are right, don’t do the willy nilly, but you know we almost have to at least once to learn not to. It is great though, cannot say enough good about it. I would like to be able to add on the lodgers or servants, somehow under the umberella without having them show as family. Keep up the good work. Diane
Linda it sounds like you have Vista, I forget how I did it, but you have to go in to the viewer and adjust it to the compatiblity of Windows 2000 it will work then. I fumed at first too. Most computer shops can help over the phone or call Big Bill.
LOL Diane

I wish ya’ll would add a extra place for people to put nick names so people can add them with putting them in the name space

I am having a few problems learning
how to operate the new program.
I am related to Thomas H. Houston
and have not been able to make correction when needed.

I am still learning,
Mary mayfield

This is a fantastic feature, or WILL be, IF you can get it to work properly… especially since the old “add” had to be done twice… once to add a person with birth date, then again to attach the census record you got the info from. What I found here on this family add is what others menioned: It thinks a “new person” must be added when the name is misspelled or differently spelled. It is COMPLETELY useless at this point, as I have no need to have multiple records, so I will have to go back to the old method of adding each person one by one. This is a significant flaw in the otherwise possibly exciting new feature.

There really should be a match-up option which works similar to the old feature which finds [or offers] the matching record and allows me to choose with whom to match the record and then allows me to make corrections to the name field, for example.

I look forward to using it when it actually works as it should! For now, it is a hopeful and often-maybe-sometimes-useful feature. (It’s about a 50-50 success rate so far, what with all the enumerator and index transcription flaws.)

I think it is great when reviewing census and you are able to add others on the list. I was writing the names down and transfering…thanks saves me a whole lotta writing.

First thank you for your hard work. Ancestry.com is money well spent and is extremely addicting. This merge feature is a great addition.

What follows are few possible improvements related to this feature.

1. When adding members to one’s family tree from another member’s family tree or census, occasionally a person will be considered a new person when in reality that person already exists in one’s family tree. It would be very helpful, in these instances, to be able to manually associate a person that is mis-identified as a new person with someone who is currently in one’s tree.

2. At times I have added records for what I thought was a new person into my tree, but later realized that these records actually belong to someone who is already in my tree. This results in two people in my tree when in reality there is only one individual. It would be very helpful to have a less manual process to merge the duplicate persons into one person in a tree.

Thanks again.

I a constantly reputting in the same information about my ancestors. They question is WHY? That is the only problem I continue to find with this program, plus someone is changing my information and I am the only one that is suppose to have access to my family tree.

Margaret A Dildine was my grandmother and her date of death is: 15 Jan 1975 Phila. Pa. Barbara Diane Corbett is my maiden name, and I go by B Diane Hart, the mother of #1 Frederick William Hart. bdhart421@bellsouth.net

I set up both of these trees when I first started on Ancestry.com

Like the new UK census detail layout with it’s attached family but would like to see a space to enter the description details.

Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. I haven’t been able to figure out why it’s not always consistent. I love the feature….when it will let me merge or add family members who have been born since the previous census but it won’t always give me that option.

Frances Mae Peters Goes into The Peters Tree.Elvis Ray Peters Sr. is my husband (susiesonshine)Edith Sue Sconce-Wardwell- Peters. I asked to work on the Peters records.
THANKS

I like the imrovements. I would like to have the option of going back to the list of people with hints so that I can work on the next person with a hint without going back to the tree. Thanks for your hard work on the site
Laura Hill

It would be nice if there would be some way to add individuals whose names are wrong but are actually family members. For example, if someone’s name is William and it comes up as Bill it would be nice to be able to add that person without it becoming a new person.

The facility to include relations when attaching an Ancestry census hint is excellent but I have one remaining beef. When a new person is created from a census transcript, the residence data does not get attached to the new person. It is necessary to do a second attach of the same census record in order to have the residence data included for that census year. I suspect the problem is that the new person form which appears during the process has no field to accomodate the residence data being transferred from the source census record.

I got a hint of a family member. I went in to add him and the offer was to add additional family ( a sibling). When I tried to add it, the software told me that I had to choose a parent, but one was not available to choose because only the sibling was attached to the record. So long story short, I had to add the sibling independently of the family member.

I really like the merge the whole family as a unit until I get to variations in the spelling, or the child without a parent, or people with slightly different birth years and then I end up with one or all of the family members duplicated. This is most frustrating because it means that the little merge feature has created more work, instead of eliminating the time I need to round up all the loose people from the census and various tree records.

ulir papper born hull 1877
should be alice papper
see 1881 census

ulir papper born hull 1877
should be alice papper
see 1881 census
daughter of james and mary ann
papper

Great feature, love it! Now, how about the ability to merge duplicate records instead of deleting the extras, then going back to add details? Esp. helpful when there are spelling variations of the name. Spelling variations would become alt names with the ability to choose the preferred name.

I think that this will be a nice new feature. Many times I have had to keep going back so as to include all family members from a source like the Census. I like what you are doing.
Thank you,
David

In the 1850 census, I found my record with husband, wife, and many children. When I asked to add relatives, I got only one more to add.

I really have enjoyed being able to merge records into my tree, but I’ve found that its very easy to copy bad information from other peoples trees and from census records.

I amreally finding this new feature helpful. Thank you. Please keep the improvements coming!

this rarely shows other relatives, and when it does, it is siblings and will not allow me to add, unless i pick a parent and there is no option for a parent.

how does one merge two people that are the same person, I did it thru one of the census merge.

I like this option!! It saves so much time and effort. Will be glad when it works on earlier census reports

I like the merge features very much. However, and this is not the first time this has happened (!), sometimes census record names and facts are misread (i.e., Macey for Marjorie; or, in the most current case, a mother is listed as a sibling by ancestry.com) by whomever recorded all your census “facts” and we are not given an option in the merge to make those changes which need to be made!
It would be most helpful to have a little button at the bottom of each pair of people to merge that would offer us the option of changing some of the information Ancestry reads to what the census gives us as true or “facts” we have records to prove otherwise.
Thanks for your consideration!

I really like the feature.

My main comment is one already made – it doesn’t handle variations in names very well. (#12, #21, #27, #61, ….).

Whoever transcribed the 1852 census for my family is wrong. He included a neighbour s child as one of the family; the census clearly shows otherwise.

How do I fix relationship mistakes created by the new feature? I can’t figure out how to attach children, who have been added by the feature to their parents or how to make sure a spouse, whose name is spelled incorrectly by the census merge with the actual person in my tree.

What I would like to see is when someone mergies your people with theirs I would like to have a email sent to me notifying me that someone has a link to me.
Then let me know who they linked with.
Then I will be able to check out their link and maybe it will be a break I have been hunting for.

I am so happy with this feature. It has already helped with birth dates, places of birth, etc. Thank you.

Misspellings of names and other misinterpretations make it impossible for me to accept some of the hints given even though the people mentioned are in fact my relatives. How can I make the necessary corrections?

The only problem with downloading information to ones tree is…When the names have been wrongly transcribed there is no option but to use the wrong name. I think there should be a way of un-ticking the name box. I have had this problem on four separate occasions!!

When ‘other’ family members are shown the system does a fairly good job at figuring out if you’ve already got that person in your tree thus allowing a merge but sometimes it can’t figure it out or it gets it wrong.. (due to slight variations etc).. I suggest a ‘default’ guess but also a drop down of the other family members that I can associate the new data for.

I love the new feature even with its imperfections. But it stopped working yesterday. Every time I try to use it, the same name comes up as related; sometimes that is the only name that comes up even though others are on the record, and sometimes it comes up along with those others. Looks like a bug.

I absolutely love this feature! The only thing that I would like for you to add is a link to “attach the record to someone in my tree” if the program has not identified the correct person.

When saving family members to my on-line tree there is no facility to save them to one parent only when it is clear that the children are from a previous relationship. Can you add this feature please?

A big thank you to Ancestry, I have been trying to find my grandparents on the 1901 Census for years and today you found them for me.
You have helped fill a missing link and helped me fill in another piece of the family jigsaw.
Thank you again. Colin.
Ps If you have time I have an interest family member on my wife’s side (Goodliffe family tree) a Col William Winer Cooke.Died at the Battle of the Little Big horn and was later exumed and taken back to Hamilton in Canada.

merging is excellent, can you add to more areas… and allow corrections when the merged item is mistakenly seen for a wrong member due to the census takers incorect spelling, ie: courtland henderson wanted to merge with his father, not his already documented name in my tree…etc.

thanks great work, it is getting better and better.

All of the information that appears in a source does not show up in the list of items to merge. For ex., the Minnesota Inscription… shows cemetery but then it doesn’t appear in list to merge.
How do you merge from Ancestry into Family Tree Maker? No one seems to understand to help me. When you write an article – there are all sorts of levels of experience. I am a 2 week beginner and get lost in the explanations. Companion Chart CD doesn’t work- won’t open – and your techs are not familiar with it.

Thank you so much, for adding options that help make sure you have the correct person so that you don’t keep adding the same person over and over! Thanks so much for resonding to my earlier E-mails! Cindy Wright

I found your 1880 census for Charles H Driskill listed him as Chs. H. Driskin as well as his daughter Mary F. Driskin. This is incorrect for the name spelling. They are correctly listed in the household of Milton L. Fore but the names are mispelled and don’t show up in searches at all as I only had enough info from family records to know the difference. We knew he lived in his father in laws household and that his wife was not listed there so that is how I searched and still took almost an hour to find the right one since I didn’t know it was mis-spelled “Driskin”. I hope this helps as I often have difficulty reading the old hand-writing…

Kenny, about 488’s question about merging to Family Tree Maker if this may help… you may have already told her but I found the same problem but what I have done is download/save the file from Ancestry.com to my pc. I then convert that file to a “ged.com” file sometimes by having to save it and change the file type to “ged.com” manually in the “save as” dialogue box. Then, I merge the trees on my pc which also makes it more compatible to upload back to my Ancestry.com tree… hope this helps.

The merge feature is wonderful as long as you are aware that if you merge the children on a record where one of the parents is deceased that they will be added to the tree as children of parent an unknown spouse. In this case you will have to “fix” those records by adding that parent using the “Choose someone already in the tree”

I really like the new feature that gives you ability to attach all family members at the census level. Saves a lot of time and clicking!!
I also appreciate that you have to check over them one by one just to make sure they match to your info. I like the suggestion made by some to be able to use a “drop down” or some other selection tool to pick someone that the system may not have picked up as a match to that family.

Thank you for the hard work!!

Ditto suggestion 493 by Tammie, namely allow the selection of a match to an existing person that your program did not detect or to select someone other than the one your program selected. You can use the same subroutine as you do when adding a relationship to an existing person.

I saw that on a record of Hall Neal Bowers that Ancestry.com had listed Florence Bowers as his spouse. She is his daughter, not his wife. Hall Bowers is my G.G.Grandfather and Florence Bowers is my G.Aunt. Please update this record if possible. Thank-you so much, Nancy Kottcamp

Your(?)typed interpretation
of my grandfather’s name on the 1920 census is incorrect. Is there any way to change it? His name was EARL JOHN HUNTER, born Perrysville, Green Twp., Ohio, 13 May 1906. The typed copy has “CARL A.” His parents were EDWARD BURUS HUNTER and MAUD (MINA) BECKLEY.

Thanks, Sandy

Sometimes the directions state that I must choose at least one parent to link when I am connecting a document to more than one relative. Yet I am given no parent to link.

The 1920 census was transcribed incorrectly for my great grandparents and their family. The last name should have been spelled Jenkins, but they have Jankins. Abraham L. (for Lincoln) Jenkins, Yamhill County, Oregon. It made this record much more difficult to find. If you can correct that, It would sure be appreciated.
Thanks, Sue

It’s a good feature, but I don’t see a way to merge information from a census record to a person that it doesn’t already suggest. For example, my relative’s name was Caroline but she went by Lina. There’s no link there to say merge with an existing person and I can tell it which person this is.

I find this “new” system to be very frustrating as it adds the same people over and over again. The old system was much easier!! This system is probably helpful for beginning a family genealogy but not for one already established.

When you click on see all relatives and click on a sibling you cannot merge because the parents are not listed.

Every time you have changed the format for a Family Tree, I have had to go in and re-enter all the hints that I had accepted in the old tree. This is very annoying and time consuming. The pictures and stories for personal profile have not always followed either. I hope you quit make all these changes!!

If the family members merging feature would allow a link to the current family tree, then valuable census information of family members could be added even though the census name is misspelled and is not recognized as a current tree member. It is a shame to have to forgo using the information from the census because the census has a transcription or name variation error — which is so often the case. I am hoping you will add a link to the family merge feature to click on an existing tree member for relatives.

the last name for this family is wilcox not wilson

Who is doing the data entry? There are many misinterpretations of what exactly the names are supposed to be. Where do we send the corrections for this?

re #198 .3
I have been struggling for a year on ‘My Ancestry’(since the viewing option was improved) with census records ‘view original’ refusing to load and causing all programmes in use to shut down. Yesterday it took 5 tries before I was successful! Has anyone else had this problem?

Type your comment here.

I,m having trouble finding the floor.

Hi: I don’t have much today since I anm a novice, but I would like to comment on the listing as Mary DING. Since this family in the census is my Grandfather GEORGE KLING and Grandmother is Mary Ann KEENAN – KLING. I looked at the copy of the19110 Census and yes the writing looks at first glance as DING a closer look with a maginified lens shows rth the writer had written Kling not Ding thank you. Bob Kling

I’ve tried, both the old search and the new search, to add 3 diffrent ‘arrivals’ from the NY passenger lists, and every time the record wants to add just name, birth info and death info. The arrival information doesn’t even show: not the date, port, etc.
Something happened when you created this new ‘add family members’ thing.

Linnie should be Lizzie Noe Cooper

I AM becoming very frustrated. By trying to merge and link or add things to more than one I have ended up with gibberish in some areas. I have people duplicated in the list but then you can’t gt there from here. I am not hearing back from technical support which is even more aggravating. It was going great until the free period ended now I seem to be having the problems. I really dont want to think that there is a correlation. I have been going on the site for years.

I do appreciate that the help I am obtaining is far more than I ever would have gotten before the advent of the internet. Thank you for all your knowledge.

I love this new feature its great, however I would love it if you had a feature that chooses to “select all” like you do when merging a tree. I know we have to check family names, but it would be good for large families.

It would be helpful at this point to be able to add individuals to my tree and choose a person in my tree that is included in the records under a different name.

I can’t add any information from “hints” any longer – if I use my PC at work (not always convenient!!), the information gets added to the ancestor record(s) – from Census records or merge data from other family trees.

If I’m at home using my Mac with Firefox (2.0.0.16 latest version), I just get a screen that says loading but however long I leave the records, no data gets added to my ancestor records.

I have previously been able to add information to ancestor records using my Mac and Firefox.

Any suggestions?
Pippa

There should be a way to merge two children. In some cases the same person is listed with different names. As of now I know of no way to merege them correctly.

REF COMMENT 515
OK, I’ve checked your help section – despite my browser saying I had the latest version, seems I didn’t. So I’ve upgraded to Firefox 3.

The problem with Attaching Hints still persists – I click on the ADD TO YOUR TREE button, but all I get is the loading screen.

I love this new feature that allows you to add the relatives, children and spouses automatically when looking up information.
This is really a time saver.

Tammie

I,m a new member never used your resources. I’m looking forward to it.

Type your comment here.

I have never used this resourse before . I’m a new member

I have never used this resourse before. I’m a new member

The ancestry site has helped alot all though I am not finished yet. The hints are really great. You all have found great uncles that I didn’t even know that I had. I showed my mom and of course she knew all of them. Once again thank you.

I’m getting a LOT of duplicate people (listed as New Persons). There must be a way to merge the records together without getting tons of Duplicate People. Please advise…

One of the things i have seen frequently happen with this feature (merge additional relatives) is that a relative not listed on the original record will show up with several records as being there. This person if selected completely compromises the integrity of the database.

There is an error, in the information it is showing the neighbours as the parents of the Jackson children.

On the merge feature. It would be great to add the feature of selecting from our tree when the person comes as a new person. Almost always it’s a spelling error or transcriped wrong and this feature would allow us merge the right person in the tree.

My grandfather, Kess Lawson Forrester, is listed in the 1900 census as Kess I. Forrester. The other members of the family indicate this is his family.
How do I attach and correct this for future website readers–that Kess I Forrester is Kess Lawson Forrester, Kess L. Forrester?

FRED NIEMEYER WAS MARRIED TO SENA OHLENSEHLEN LENA WAS HER SISTER THAT LIVED WITH THEM FOR MANY YEARS TO HELP THEM OUT WHEN MY GRANDMOTHER ENDED UP IN A WHEEL CHAIR..

I love the ability to add source references for all family members in a census entry. It used to take me “forever” to access each family member individually. I have tried this several times with great success.
THANK YOU

It’s frustrating that for example this shows a son Joe living at the same address, and I know that’s it’s the same as the son Joseph, but my only choice is to add another son Joe. There must me some way to match them up. I’ve made the mistake before of creating duplicate kids, and don’t know how to fix that!

I have noticed lately when attempting to add hints for my grandfather that the records with “add hint” link have been trying to say that, for instance, his mother (Annie)comes up as the person I need information on. Instead of showing “additional family members” as his parents and siblings, it shows spouse and children (as if he were his mother or father), but I am needing to add as parents and siblings.
I refer to Ulis F (aka Franklin E) Reynolds or King, born 1896.
I keep trying, as I am trying to learn the maiden name of his mother, but this slows me down.
Also I am getting a box that says my request cannot be processed at this time, referring to other census links on the same person.
Help?
Is there something I am doing wrong?

I love this feature. Doesn’t always pick up everyone I want, and sometimes the option isn’t there at all, but it’s wonderful when it is there! (especially for those very large families)

So how does the merge work? Please tell me where the directions are located. Thanks

I like this feature, but there is one thing that still bothers me. There are times when several results come up matched to either the wrong person or showing as a new person. We should have the option of changing who the names are matched up with during this process also… it saves having to go back through and manually adding or changing them later.

Kenny,

I really like the new merge feature when it works. If the date information is different, a new person is created. Today I wanted to add a record for Laurin M Hardy’s siblings, but the record didn’t add the parents, so I can’t add them. Also, I was working on a line last week and the computer kept trying to add a child when the record didn’t include the child. Any fixing would be a great help. Thank you.

On census 2nd wife with name of husband vs maiden name in record appears as a “new” person and cannot be successfully reconciled to capture source

Death index requesting a parent when non is listed. It lists a sibling and would like to connect record to sibling even if parents are not listed. Should be able to add parents if none or not.

Really like the new programs

The record merge feature is really really cool and useful. It could be made even better if more information were shown for the person on the right. I have several people in my tree with the same name and it is hard to determine if I have the right person.

I really love this facility. It’s so much easier than the old way. One thing I’d like though; since we know the actual dates of the censuses, any chance that could be automatic in the Residence box? Or am I just being greedy?

On this particular census the entry for Carson is incorrectly followed by entries for Sislies instead of the wife and children for Carson.
Thanks for all the new features. I try my best not to use them “blindly” and go back and recheck. Thanks again,
Linda

I, too, love this feature. (And I’m glad I didn’t find out about it until the initial kinks were worked out.)

One “logic error” that should be pretty easy to solve: if the “new” person is being merged as a WIFE or MOTHER of the initially linked person, the new record for the woman should have the last name blank (because the data record has her married, not maiden, name).

The problem of ending up with duplicate events/sources is that the merge feature apparently does NOT ACTUALLY IDENTIFY whether the event/source (e.g. 1930 residence coming from 1930 census) has already been linked to the person. When doing the linking, it shows ALL the current source/event (e.g. 1930 residence) information as NEW, even when that’s not the case.

My work-around for avoiding the creation of duplicate family members due to spelling differences is to keep multiple browse tabs (or windows) open, and when I see that a person, who I know is already in the family, is not matching, I go to that person’s profile and change the name, e.g. from “Anne” to “Anne or Ann” – so then it will link to the new record that has “ann. This works most of the time.

This feature still has some bugs, but it’s a wonderful labor and time saver!

I have been working on my tree for years you have helped with the hints you look read and add on, Sure bets typing in each person
Thankss
Showmestate67

I’m afraid to point out that something weird is happening with this feature. When I go to attach a record the surname & forename fields switch places and are causing me loads of extra work i.e. going back into the person page and swapping the names back. Also I have noticed it swapping mother and father deails around.

Why are all the names backwards?
norman Susan not Susan Norman?

I have had some trouble lately with the merge feature switching surnames with given names. I also would like to know what to do when the merge program doesn’t merge obvious matches?

Thanks
Russel

MY FATHER IS FROM FALL RIVER MA.DURING THE EARLY 1930′S. HE WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHERE AND WHEN IF ALL POSSIBLE TO LEARN INFO ON THE DEATH OF 1:DR.JOSEPH A. BARRE .

The mothers still aren’t showing up on the census, so any children new on the that years census don’t get attached to the mother!?!

One of the problems I have seen with the new merge family members is that when you go to a record for a person, such as the social security death Index, it will list a child. First, I did not know the acutal record included such things so I believe it to be a “bug” to be worked out. second, if you were to try to add the child, it does not allow you to because you must first select one of the parents. Since the original person is the parent, they are already selected. I am not able to add the child from the record.

The ‘relative merge’ is a wonderful feature, and I use it regularly.

I have found the new merging of family members confusing,as it duplicates people in my tree and when i try to delete them it takes out a whole branch of that family and it takes a lot of work to imput everything back.

I to find the site is slower, but I am keen for it to progress, I have found also that ancestors are duplicated and removing them is fraught, as you find deleting one (for example) Lizzy Ellerbeck has deleted her completely from her position in the tree but she still comes up independently on the list. This is rather confusing as you can imagine. So I vote to keep the new and we will just have to wait for everything involved to catch up.

It would be good if the record merge also worked when adding a marriage and only one party is already in the tree. I have noted that when a marriage is added and both parties are in the tree, the record is now added to both. However, sometimes the name of the second party is not know until the record is found.

I want to change the person to merge. It came up under the wrong son of my grandfather, and I can’t change the infor to the other son, so had to hand write it all down, and add it by hand. thanks

I love the new merge feature. As the kids say: it rocks!

I do believe that this record says “Huggins”, not “Haggins”. Thanks…

I love this feature. I used to hand write all the names listed on the census reord and then enter them one at a time onto my tree.

Why can’t I just add the census to my tree without it wanting me to add information that I don’t need. I cannot see any way to just add the document to my tree…help..I am not happy with the new format.

Printed Document says head of household is 5 years old, but original document says age is 57 for George Potemko

CAN SOMEONE HELP ME? I HAVE BEEN UPDATING MY FAMILY TREE AND HAVE DISCOVERED THAT 10 GENERATIONS BACK MY ANCESTOR IS ALSO MY WIFE’S, YET I CANT FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE THE TREE REALIZE THAT THIS ONE PERSON IS THE SAME PERSON, AND I DONT WANT TO MAKE DUPLICATE SETS OF ANCESTORS. WHAT DO I DO??

I Love It!!!!! Thanks it has been so helpful.

Why will none of the Census Records or any of the other images come up on the screen? I hope you realize you are waisting a lot of time for many people, with having to come back to the sites sometime in the future (if we remember which ones) most of the time it takes forever for anything to load. It used to load in a reasonable length of time. Merging the CR’s puts the people in each time. FIX THAT!!!!!! It takes precious time to go back & remove people that get put in multiple times.

I like the merge feature very much. It greatly reduces time spent revisiting a source and saving for other members of the family also mentioned. I have noticed that occasionally a few of my family members are not shown as possible matches, expecially those I have left with un-Anglicized names or unusual names, and they are in the record. It would be of great assistance if there was some way to make the link between the record person and the family member without having to re-locate the record and then attach it to the family member. For example, my ggg-grandmother was born Stina Cajsa Nilsdotter in Sweden but shows up in various American and Canadian records as Christian, Caroline and Cora so when I found the 1860 US Census for her husband, the program showed Caroline but did not provide Stina Cajsa as the possible match.

I find this feature helpful; however, I sometimes end up adding the same record/event to a person that already had the record/event added. An improvement for the “family merge” feature would be to recognize if the record is already attached to a family member.

Thanks!

This new feature is great but is lacking one major option.

If some detail, like spelling, is slightly different for a family member that is already in the tree it is assumed the person is a new addition. Simply add the option to link to person already in the tree and the issue is solved.

Kenny,
I agree with 564 & 565 on the failure of the merge to recognize someone already in my tree which of course will double that person.
Otherwise I love the new feature and would love to see it on all searches. Adding the same record to more than one person at a time is fantastic!

Larry

When listing other relatives at a census residence, the system should provide an option to attached that document to the others. As it is, you have to attach each individually. Thanks for the opportunity for input and please know that this is a great feature. This is just a suggestion that would most likely be helpful to all users.

I am having problems merging the information I have found on the 1861 census for James Henry Boon. His name is indexed as James Wm. instead of James Hy. and it is being treated as a second individual.
As a result I am also getting two fathers and mothers recorded. How do I merge these details.

family merge did not include children by another spouse… and seemed to expect a merge of all different information instead of desired information. would like the family member merge to work the same as individual merge.

Hi! Absolutely love the feature!! I don’t know if this is the appropriate venue for this particular item of feedback. The pages are out of order on the census. A page got inserted between the Baileys – it makes it look like Ruthie is the daughter of Minnie Tincher. That is not correct.

Great feature BUT– today it’s not giving me the correct list of relatives. A relative from a DIFFERENT Census keeps showing up and NOT the list of relatives on the census I’m adding! Weird! I’ve tried redoing it several times and nothing changes.

Also, the other day the feature was missing….maybe you were working on it?

Really like the merge record feature but warn people not hit the “back” button at anytime to go back for more records, like other family members on the same Census. This is only explanation I have for duplicating people.

I am not a newbie; this is my second free trial and have been using the limited features outside of free trials to keep adding to my trees from local obituaries, physically viewing local birth and marriage records at the City Clerk’s offices, so I am quite familiar with having to check for the presence of someone from my tree before adding them as new to prevent duplicating the person.

I found one Census record I reported for not having all 3 parts (name, birth year, residence) follow for one individual.

Absolutely wonderful! Getting records onto the tree is so much faster, leaves more time for research! Sometimes it doesn’t show what I have already recorded, but hopefully these bugs will be worked out and eliminated.

Re: duplication of individuals

I noted tonight the duplication occurs if you check on any of the faded family members below the person you are in the process of merging. If they are already in your tree, they are added the second time. I only noted tonight, after doing this for 9 days, that this how the duplication occurs. I wish I had the chance to attach (or create a person) only after checking, like with the original merged person. Only tonight did I notice the “new person” notation on faded ones I had checked to add.

I find the merge to be helpful — however, it needs to have the ability to select someone already in the family (as you do with adding children) because I am ending up with duplicates of people rather than one file with many things in it for an individual. It’s completely maddening.

Also in the lists of people–it would be helpful to be able to merge two people that you know are identical.

There is only one problem. If the spouse is not listed in the record, then the system automatically attaches the child to a different, unknown spouse. It is impossible to merge the record with the existing spouse (who is the other parent of the child). As a result a great deal of editing has to be done manually. Its a real pain.

is there any way to make merging of information of a single individual when the programs make duplicate persons, like in the FTM 16….this would be a great feature and would make soooo many of your customers happy….it is very frustrating to have to re-attach info that we have found….just because we have duplicates that should be one person.

Overall this is very good. Sometimes, the routine does not match the census record or a relative to someone you already have in you tree, and wants to create a new person in the tree. In this case, the program should have an option to allow the user to choose someone from his tree to match with the census data that the program could not match.

I am not going to enter this information without further resurech because of the difference in date of birth, I must say it is a joy to receive more imformation on our family.

Thanks so much.
Helen Hiner

On three british census merges today I have had the sibling of the person I was trying to merge [with his wife and children] show up at the bottom. This sibling is NOT in the census record I am merging. Where does he come from?

Parents are not listed but won’t let me merge siblings. I love the merge feature. Your web site is cooking.

Thanks,

Sabrina

when merging – the census data is sometimes off by a couple of years on births, which I have clear documentation for – so instead of providing a possible merge for you to decide if it is right or not, the merge on these census documents wants to add totally new people who are really not new – they are the same people not new ones and this is very frustrating as you have to go back for each person to upload that census documentation. If you could correct this it would be very helpful as it has happened tons of time! thanks!

I like the feature that allows merging of additional family members from one source, but when I wanted to merge to a different spouse than the one who came up as an option, I was unable to find a way other than closing out and going to that person directly. Therefore, I was unable to merge the five children who were connected to that other spouse.

I love this ability to add all the people on a Federal U.S. Census that are in that specific family. The old way took so much time! Occasionally, I will have something put with my part of the tree that is not the same person I am working on. One just has to be careful before clicking. Thanks to you! There are sluggish days and I do have duplicates showing up on a person even though I do not click for that record to be put on that person. It takes so much time to delete the same names that wind up being listed several times on the family side of a person, when I have not clicked to add them.

I appreciate & love the new things you have for us. The leafs are great.
Thank you very much.
Leona

Unfortunately, I was not able to add to my tree.
Too many technical difficulties at times of high usage.
I am not happy about this. I pay for this service and am not receiving what I pay for.
I have been having problems accessing documents too.
This has been going on for months and I have called several times and asked for help and no one seems to be able to correct the problem or offer any compensation.

I worked on several family trees and now want to merge three of them together without dupication.
It sure would be niceif your IT folks can make this happen sooner rather than later.

Thanks for the good work so far.