A lot of people have asked over the years how to clean up duplicates in their Ancestry Member Tree.  If you are one of the people who discovered that your mysterious distant cousin Mary was really the same person as Uncle George’s wife Mary, then you’ll be happy to learn that we have a solution that makes it simple to merge two duplicate people without losing any of the relationships, facts, photos, or stories you’ve entered.

How does it work?

Select one of the duplicate people in your tree

Go to the person’s overview or profile page and from the “More options” menu, select “Merge with duplicate.”

Select the other duplicate person

On the left side of the page, you’ll see the person you’ve already selected. On the right side of the page, you can select the person’s duplicate in a few ways.

• Select a possible duplicate. We’ll suggest people who might be duplicates (for example if they have the same first and last names and their birth years and birthplaces are similar).
• Type the person’s name.  If you know the duplicate’s name, simply type it in the field and select the person from a list of individuals who match the name you’ve typed.
• Select from a list of people. You can browse a list of everyone in your tree and select the correct individual.

Select the facts you want to display

After you’ve chosen the duplicate individuals, they’ll be displayed side-by-side so you can compare the two and choose which facts you want to display for the merged individual.

• If facts are identical. A same label shows which facts are the same; they’ll be merged into one fact.
• If facts are different. Both facts will be included in the merge, but you can choose which fact is preferred (the default fact that displays). The other fact will be added as an alternate.
• If you’re not sure what to do. You can click the Compare button to see more details about the two individuals.

Already, I’ve been able to clean up some of the messiness that existed in my own tree by using this new feature and hope it helps those of you who have been looking for a solution for merging duplicate people in your own tree.

New research from Ancestry reveals that while ‘Elizabeth’ and ‘John’ are the most common boys and girls names in both family trees, there are several more unusual choices the young royals could opt for.

The royal family tree contains the most unusual names – with Boniface, Cyrian, Marmaduke, Slyvanus and Lancelot all featuring in the male line, while Eusebia, Honor, Thomasin, Ursula and Hyacinth appear for the females.

And while many of Kate’s female ancestors have more recognisable names, her ancestors weren’t without some interesting monikers as well. Among the boys are Garin, Lewen, Theophilus, Uriah and Elie, together with girls called Permelia, Albina, Edezer, Grissel and Jemima.

In today’s culture for celebrity baby names, Kate and William very well might decide to opt for a more unusual name themselves. With ‘Lancelot’, ‘Boniface’, and ‘Grissel’ among their forebears, they don’t need to look further than their own family tree.”

Interesting names aren’t just for those with royal blood.

What name do you think Prince William and Kate should choose? Let us know on our Facebook wall.

TreeSync is the latest innovative tool available in Family Tree Maker 2012, which gives you the ability to sync one Family Tree Maker tree and one online Ancestry tree.

Now you can make changes to your tree anytime, anywhere. Maybe you’re at the library and you find your grandma’s birth record. Record this information in your online linked tree using your laptop or mobile app; then when you get home, open Family Tree Maker, click the Sync Now button, and your desktop tree will be updated with the new information. Or, add a number of family photos to your desktop tree, sync it, and friends and family all over the world can see them in your online tree.

Why Would I Want an Online and a Desktop Tree?

If you only have an online Ancestry.com.au tree or you’ve always used Family Tree Maker, you may be wondering why you would want both. Many people enjoy online trees because they can update and edit their tree anywhere they have Internet access. And they can invite friends and family to view the tree, which makes sharing family history quick and easy. Others prefer desktop software because they can quickly build a tree without worrying about Internet connections, refreshes, and upload times. And they can create a variety of beautiful charts and reports to help with their research. With TreeSync, you can enjoy the best of both worlds. You’ll have the mobility of an online tree with the advanced features of a desktop software program.

How Does TreeSync Work?

If your main tree is in Family Tree Maker, you can upload your tree to Ancestry.com.au by clicking the Upload and Link to Ancestry button on the Plan workspace. This will create a new linked online tree. (If you’ve already uploaded this tree to Ancestry.com.au, you will now have two duplicate online trees; you can simply delete the old one.)

If your main tree is on Ancestry.com.au, you can download it into Family Tree Maker by clicking Download from Ancestry on the Plan workspace. This will create a new linked desktop tree.

Once the trees are linked together, you can access and edit it online or on your desktop. You can even use our Ancestry iPhone and iPad apps to update your tree.

Can I download and sync my Ancestry tree to more than one computer?
You may download your Ancestry tree to any computer that has Family Tree Maker. However, you can only download and sync your tree to one computer—even if you have installed Family Tree Maker 2012 on two computers. Be aware that you cannot synchronize a tree between two computers either.

Can I exclude people when I upload my tree using TreeSync?
No. You must upload your entire tree if you want it to sync between Family Tree Maker and Ancestry. However, you can upload only part of your tree to Ancestry if you simply want to put your tree online and not sync it.

How long does it take to upload and sync a tree?
The first time you upload a tree to Ancestry.com.au it may take a while, especially if you have a lot of media items. However, after the initial upload, the syncing process takes much less time because only your changes are synced and not your entire tree. Due to the different Internet connection speeds that are available and various tree sizes we cannot estimate the length of your syncing time precisely.

What if I already have an online tree and a Family Tree Maker tree? How do I link them together?
You cannot simply link the two trees together. You would need to download your online tree and merge it with your Family Tree Maker tree. (Remember; make a backup of your tree before making any large changes like this.) Then, you’d re-upload the new “complete” tree back to Ancestry.com.au using the “upload and link” option.

Are there parts of my tree that won’t sync?
Although most tree content transfers easily, there are a few exceptions. For more information on potential differences between linked trees on Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker, please read this article.

What About Privacy?

Whenever I mention online trees, I am generally met with one concern. Privacy. Some people feel like their tree is a work in progress and isn’t ready to be shared yet. Others have accumulated a lot of confidential information that they don’t want to share publicly. Fortunately, TreeSync provides with you several privacy options so you don’t have to sacrifice security for mobility.

When you upload your tree to Ancestry, you can make your tree public, which means that other Ancestry subscribers can view your tree (except information about living individuals and private notes), and your tree will be shown in search results on Ancestry.com.au. Or, you can make your tree private, which means that limited information about individuals in your tree (name, birth year, birthplace) will appear in Ancestry search results, but no one can view the contents of your tree unless you invite them to. Additionally, you can choose to exclude your tree from appearing even in search indexes on Ancestry. And, you can change your preference at any time, and as often as you like.

What If I Need Help?

I get an error message when I try to sync my desktop and online trees. What do I do?
Occasionally you may get an error message when you try to sync your linked trees. This can occur when your Internet connection is interrupted during the synchronization process. First, make sure your Internet access is enabled in Family Tree Maker. (Go to the File menu and select Go Online. If the menu option “Go Offline” appears, Internet access is already enabled.) Second, check your Internet connection. If you have a dial-up Internet connection, or you have disabled your broadband connection, establish your Internet connection before you open Family Tree Maker. Make sure you are able to get to other websites.

I cannot edit my online Ancestry tree. What happened?
If you cannot edit your synced online tree, it may be because the online tree is temporarily unavailable while the desktop and online trees are being synced. Please wait a few minutes and try again.

Can I delete my tree if I decide I don’t want it online?
Yes, you can delete your online tree at any time. Be aware that once it’s deleted or unlinked, it can’t be re-linked to your Family Tree Maker tree.

If you have questions about TreeSync that haven’t been answered in this post or you are having issues syncing your tree, please contact our Member Services team on 1800 251 838 (toll free from Australia) or 0800 442 100 (toll free from New Zealand), Monday to Friday from 9am to  8pm and Saturdays and Sundays from 9am to 4pm  (AEDT).

We are pleased to announce the release of Family Tree Maker™ 2012, an improved and expanded version of the world’s No. 1-selling family history software. With its new TreeSync™ capabilities, Family Tree Maker 2012 enables family history enthusiasts to sync their desktop family trees and their online trees at Ancestry.com.au.

With TreeSync you can access and update your tree wherever you are whether it’s through Family Tree Maker, Ancestry.com.au, or using the Ancestry iPhone or iPad apps. And sharing your tree is easier than ever. Simply email invitations to family and friends and they can view your online tree or collaborate with you.

Other improvements in Family Tree Maker 2012 include:

• Easy-to-understand combined family view. The family group view has a new “blended families” option that lets you display all of a couple’s children in one location, including step-children and adoptees. An icon next to a child’s name lets you see at a glance whether he or she is the child of the father, the mother, or both parents.
• Simplified interface for new users. When you install Family Tree Maker 2012, the software detects whether you are upgrading from a previous version of Family Tree Maker (version 16 or earlier). If you are, Family Tree Maker will display a simplified user interface that looks more like the older versions of Family Tree Maker.
• Improved Smart Stories. More content-generation and editing options help you create engaging stories about family members.
• New and improved reports. The Notes Report has been enhanced so you can display person, research, relationship, or fact notes you’ve entered for individuals. A new Index of Individuals Report lists every individual in your tree and their birth, marriage, and death dates in an easy-to-understand format. In addition, you can customize the descriptive sentences used in genealogy reports and Smart Stories.
• More chart options. The Descendant Chart has a new option that lets you show the relationship between two people you select. You can also display generation labels (such as parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents) in charts to highlight the relationship between the primary person in the chart and other family members. And you can now personalize charts by adding your own free-form text boxes.
• New and updated Help and tutorials. Learn how to do more—like creating trees and using Ancestry.com.au features—with new and improved tutorials accessible in the software and on the Ancestry.com.au shop.

To learn more about the 2012 release, please click here.

If you are in Australia, you can purchase Family Tree Maker 2012 online or you can buy the software at Harvey Norman, Big W, Officeworks, Estore and Clive Peters. In New Zealand, you can purchase Family Tree Maker 2012 at Beehive Books and Harvey Norman.

For those of you interested in Family Tree Maker for Mac, a new version with TreeSync capability is slated to be released by in early 2012.

In upcoming weeks I’ll be writing more about the new 2012 release. Be sure to come back to the blog to learn more about some of its new and exciting features.

Family merge is a great feature that we’ve had on the site for a number of years. This feature makes it easy to save family trees and certain census records to multiple people in your tree—without having to save the record separately for each person. However, the merge has had one particular limitation that we have now corrected.  In the past, the merge hasn’t let you control who the record gets saved to. If you were saving a record and someone was suggested as a “new person,” and you knew the person wasn’t new, there was no way to correctly match up the person in the record to the person in your tree. Now, the family merge has been upgraded to give you some control over who the record gets saved to.  

If the merge incorrectly suggests that a person is new or matches the record to the wrong person in your tree, you can choose the person that the record should be merged to.  

To try out this feature, I looked for my grandfather’s 1930 census record because I knew it would likely have additional family members.  When I got to the merge page, sure enough, I saw his parents and siblings included in the family portion of the page. As I scrolled down, I noticed a sibling named Wilber, who was listed as a “New person”.  I looked at the mini-tree at the top of the page to make sure Wilber was really a new person.  There wasn’t a Wilber, but I did have a William, who was born the same year.  Since my grandfather only had one brother, I knew Wilber was really William (who was known as Bill, which is apparently short for Wilber, not William. Oops.) 

I clicked the “Not a new person?” link to fix the merge.   

Once I clicked the “Not a new person?” link a window appeared. Wilber’s information was on the left and a list of all the children in my grandfather’s family were on the right.    

After selecting William from the list of individuals, I was able to select which individual facts I wanted to save from the record, such as the name Wilber.    

Another scenario you may come across is when two people with very similar names are incorrectly matched in the family record merge. If that happens, you can also select the “Not a match?” link and correctly match the right individual to the record.

In the 1930 census below, Jean Curry is listed as a match to Jen Curry. I knew that Jean is really Jeanette, who is already in my tree, so I selected the “Not a match?” link.

By selecting the link I was shown the same window as before that allowed me to choose the right Jean in my tree.   

After selecting Jeanette as the match for Jean, I was reassured that the record was now being saved to the correct person in my tree.  

I love that I now have some control over how people in records are matched to people in my family tree It’s been really great being able to merge a record to people that I previously would have had to skip over because they were either mismatched or incorrectly listed as “new.”  I hope this new addition to the record merging feature helps you as much as it has helped me.

During this time, Ancestry Member Trees, OneWorldTree, and the sections of the home page that are related to Member Trees will be unavailable.

We apologise for any inconvenience but rest assured the information in your family tree is safe and will be available again when the maintenance is completed.

You can check out the new tree viewer by going to your Ancestry.com.au member tree and by clicking on a link in a blue banner at the top of the tree viewer or you can access it here. The first thing you’ll notice is the “What’s new” feature. You can move your cursor over the headings to see pop-up boxes highlighting some of the new changes. You can dismiss this at any time by clicking the ‘x’ to the right. Here’s a list of some of the other new things we’ve done to make it easier to view more of your tree.

More Generations in the Pedigree View – When there are more than 5 generations visible in any branch of your tree, you can click the arrow icon next to your 5^th generation ancestor to expand another group of 4 generations. You can keep expanding until you run into that pesky brick wall.

Drag Your Tree Around the Screen – Now that you have so much more of your tree to look at, we’ve made it possible to simply hold down your mouse button and drag the background of your tree to move it around the screen without scrolling.

Larger Display Area – if you’re one of the lucky people with a larger monitor, we’ve made it so the tree view can expand the full width and height of your monitor.

Header changes

• Tree Pages – We’ve consolidated all the links to other tree pages to make them easier to find and give you more room to view your tree. Just hover over “Tree pages” in the header for quick access to these pages.

• Find a person in this tree – we’ve consolidated some other features to make more room. Hover over the “Find a person in this tree” search area to see the “Last person viewed” and the “List of all people” links.

Tool Bar

• Home person link – We’ve moved the home person link to the tool bar for quick access
• Re-centre the root person – Click the curved arrow icon to position the current root person in the vertical center of the screen and reset the zoom level
• Zoom – you can zoom in or out by clicking the plus or minus icons or by dragging the side bar.
• Print – We’ve moved the print button and made it possible to print more of your tree. If you have expanded branches of your tree in the pedigree view, you’ll be able to print all the viewable generations at once.

Mini Person Card – When you hover over a person in your tree, a mini-tree card appears. When you click the name of your person, you’ll be taken to that person’s overview page. If you want to see this person’s tree, click the link that says “View his/her family tree” and this will redraw the tree with the selected person in the root position of the tree.

New Family View – Now you can see your relatives in what we’re calling the family view. This view allows you to see up to 2 generations of descendants, up to 3 generations of ancestors and all the siblings of a selected person. It’s a great way to see your family grow when adding siblings, children, cousins, aunts and uncles.

We’re really excited to offer you these great new changes and hope to hear what you think about the new viewer. Once you’ve seen the new tree viewer and explored the changes, you can give us feedback by clicking the “Provide feedback” link in the new tree viewer.

Click here to see your tree in the new tree viewer.

Tina suffered from racism as a child and felt confused about her identity. She has always wanted to find out more about where her Italian-born parents came from, a subject rarely talked about in her family. With her parents, Franca and Joe, having spent so much of their lives working hard, Tina feels that she and her sisters missed out on a lot of their time when they were growing up and for this she harbours some resentment.

Maternal grandmother Filippa Giulivo intrigues Tina because she knows nothing at all about her. Tina talks to her mother for the first time about Filippa’s origins and discovers that she was an orphan whose parents died when she was young. Travelling to Sicily, Tina visits the town where her grandmother was raised in the hope of getting some answers.

Tina also wants to find out about the family Filippa married into, the Catalfamos. She has a family crest which claims that the family has connections to Sicilian nobility going back to 1398 but she needs to find out its authenticity. The story of Tina’s great grandmother, Carmela, reveals she had more children than Tina had been aware of. But it’s the circumstances surrounding these children that leaves Tina with a lasting impact.

Tune in to SBS ONE at 7.30pm on Sunday to find out what Tina discovers…

Tina will also be online after the show for a live web chat.

If you can’t catch the show on tv, you can watch it online after the episode has aired and the live web chat will also be available to replay on the SBS website.

Don’t forget to check out the Extras section for additional interviews and exclusive scenes that weren’t shown in the tv broadcast!

During this time, Ancestry Member Trees, OneWorldTree, and the sections of the home page that are related to Member Trees will be unavailable.

We apologise for any inconvenience but rest assured the information in your family tree is safe and will be available again when the maintenance is completed.

Students will explore their own personal family history, creating family trees online, whilst learning about the key drivers of change within society during the lives of their ancestors – wherever they came from – and how these changes impacted their own identity, as well as that of their family and society more generally. It’s fun and interesting and it’s completely free!

At Ancestry.com.au, we believe that family history provides an interesting and effective way for children to understand the various ways in which the world has changed in a short period of time and where and how they fit into that world and their own family structure.

The program teaches children that everyone’s background is vastly different, that they each come from a unique set of circumstances and that difference and uniqueness is to be treasured.

Designed for teachers by teachers, My Place in History is tailored to each state’s individual curriculum. A collection of specially designed online resources and activities have been developed to make learning about history, and their family’s role within this, both educational and engaging.

We know from our many members that looking at family history provides a greater understanding and appreciation of where we all fit into the world and are confident that you and your family will benefit from your child beginning the journey to knowing more about their own family and its history.

Take a look at My Place in History

Check out some FAQs