RootsMagic 7 runs on many, but not all, Mac operating systems. Mac users don’t get every RootsMagic 7 feature available in Windows, but the missing few may be of no interest to you. This article describes these features, and some simple workarounds to get the same benefits on a Mac. Both Windows and Mac users … Read more
Ancestry used to have a smartphone App to find possible famous relatives. Many people enjoyed the We’re Related App as speculative fun with the occasional correct suggestion. Ancestry disabled the App in 2019, and hasn’t released anything similar yet. Finding a famous relative or ancestor can be a great advantage to your genealogy research. There … Read more
A half-sibling relationship cannot be added to an Ancestry tree without first creating their common parent. Sometimes you have the details of the siblings but don’t know anything about their parents. You may also encounter scenarios where two siblings have been incorrectly assigned both parents in your Ancestry tree – and you want to fix … Read more
The default relationships in an Ancestry tree are biological father, mother, brother, and sister. But families are more complicated than that! You can add step-parents, foster parents, and adoptive parents to your Ancestry tree. There are also some other less common relationships available. It’s not obvious how to do this, so we’ll give you a … Read more
I tested the merge of two Ancestry trees with RootsMagic 7. There were plenty of issues with the merged tree. However, it was easier to fix the issues than to create a merged tree manually. This article has a step-by-step guide to the process. But before I give you the steps, I go through the … Read more
It would be nice to have a one-click process to add an unrelated person to your Ancestry tree. Unfortunately, the steps are a little convoluted. One way is to add a “fake” relative to any person, and then remove the connection. This article starts with a step-by-step illustrated walkthrough. We’ll touch on another couple of … Read more
When will RootsMagic 8 be available? You may get irritated responses if you pose this question in several genealogy forums. I spotted one old hand complaining that the question had popped up three times in 45 minutes. I purchased RootsMagic 7 in 2020. The company included a free license key for RootsMagic 8 with this … Read more
GEDmatch Superkits are part of the paid tier on the GEDmatch website. You can combine up to four uploaded kits in your account into one GEDmatch Superkit – all representing DNA of one person. A GEDmatch Superkit won’t give you a sudden increase in DNA matches. You’re more likely to lose some distant matches at … Read more
When you upload your raw DNA results to GEDmatch, you’ll get a unique Kit Number. You’ll be constantly copying or keying it into the GEDmatch comparison reports. Other people may send you their GEDmatch Kit Numbers or ask for yours for collaborating on genealogy research. GEDmatch has changed the format of Kit Numbers several times … Read more
If you’ve noticed the Overlap column in the One-To-Many Report on GEDmatch, it’s probably because you have DNA matches with varying shades of pink. GEDmatch is warning you to treat these matches with some caution. In general, you don’t need to worry about overlap with your higher (closer) matches. The overlap value is more important … Read more