Howdy, I'm Devon Noel Lee with Family History Fanatics and if
you're like me, you might be a little confused about RootsMagic
and it's ability to work with Ancestry FamilySearch and
then the third party of RootsMagic .
So, I have Arm Twisted, my buddy here from RootsMagic to tell you how to make this
happen.
So Bruce, here's the situation. I've been a RootsMagic user
for a number of years and so I have a RootsMagic Tree. When
FamilySearch allowed us to sync there, I've had my Roots
Magic Tree and it syncs with FamilySearch. Now, I also have
a tree on Ancestry and it's synced to all the links over
there but what I've seen since the new we can sync Ancestry
with RootsMagic is that if there's no easy way to sync my
RootsMagic to FamilySearch Tree with my Ancestry tree
without doing a lot of merging but if that's possible, let me
know. What do I need to do? Okay, a lot of it's going to
depend on on how you're starting. Okay, if you're
starting and you have a tree in RootsMagic and a tree up on
FamilySearch and a tree on Ancestry all three, then, it
becomes tougher. What what you really need to do is decide
which of those trees has the most complete tree. Okay. In
other words, is one of them because one of them kind of
have everything and it's the other two that you want to keep
updated. Okay. Now, once you've decided on that, then, it
kind of depends on which one of those three you decide is the
most complete as to as to how you're going to do it because
it works differently for each one so for example with Roots
Magic syncing with Ancestry what you have to do to kind of
start that is you either have to upload a new roots upload a
RootsMagic file to a new Ancestry tree okay or download
an existing Ancestry tree into RootsMagic you have to do one
of those two you can't just sit there and say I've got this
exist RootsMagic File in this existing Ancestry tree somehow
match them up and and link everybody up properly. You
can't do that. It has to go it has to start with an upload or
a download now. Okay. Okay. Okay. Going from RootsMagic to
FamilySearch. You have a couple of options. Um with
FamilySearch, you can go in and download data from family
search into a new RootsMagic File. So, you can go that way
but what you can't do is you can't upload an existing Roots
Magic File to Family family tree. They don't allow you to
to do a mass upload. Right. So. Which I like by the way. Yeah.
I like that. But but the one thing that RootsMagic and
FamilySearch do allow you to do is go in and do that manual.
Link this person in RootsMagic to that person up on family
search. You can do that kind of the one person at a time. Very
tedious but it is it is available there whereas that
starting that way with Ancestry is not an op Okay. Now, that
makes more sense than that we can't because I kept going,
well, why can't I do the same thing with FamilySearch, the
link individual. So, I can keep things the same but we can't do
that. It's what you're telling me. Right, you can't do that.
Okay. And and part of the reason for that is with family
search, we have the ability to go out to FamilySearch and
say, hey, FamilySearch, here's a person that I have in Roots
Magic, does that person exist up on FamilySearch and and
FamilySearch will come back and say, yes, that person
here's here are several matches. This one is the best
and it and it tells us how good of a match that actually is.
Okay, good. Ancestry does not give us that ability. We can't
we can't go out and say, here's a bunch of information. Here's
a person, here's a name and birth date and birthplace and
all this information. Does that person exist up in that
Ancestry tree and have Ancestry come back and say, yes, that
person exist with this amount of confidence with this
confidence level. It does not have that ability to let us do
that. So, we we can't We can't do that, do that, and ask for
that. So, we that that's why we can't automatically let you
easily say take this person in RootsMagic and this other
person up on Ancestry and connect them together. Let me
link them together. Okay. Okay. With Ancestry, an Ancestry
tree, we can kind of ask for it by name and that's about it.
Okay. So, the bottom line is down the road, we may be able
to let you do something along those lines. Okay. But what
that involves is downloading a bunch of your tree from
Ancestry and us doing all the comparisons and making the
decisions. How confident are we that this person in RootsMagic
is the same as that person okay so that's why that doesn't work
okay so that's the hurdle that's the background so that's
kind of the hurdle in the background okay okay so what am
I going to do yes so basically what you're going to do is like
I say it depends on where your more complete file is okay so
if you're let let's and let's just do the different examples
yes that'd be great if your most complete tree is on family
search that actually is the easiest okay unfortunately
That's not usually the case. Right. No. That's usually the
case and so what's going to happen is if you've got if you
got RootsMagic here and you've got FamilySearch here and
you've got Ancestry here, if your most complete tree is in
FamilySearch, what you can do is in RootsMagic, you can
download your tree from Family Search. You just go into the
what we call FamilySearch Central, choose the option to
download, select who the starting person is, how many
generations of ancestors, descendants, whatever and it
will download your tree from FamilySearch into RootsMagic.
Okay. Then, you can turn around and you can upload from Roots
Magic to Ancestry. You run the root the the Ancestry tree
share feature and when you do that, it will say, do you
want to upload this to Ancestry and you say yes and so you
upload that to a new Ancestry tree. Okay. That works great.
You know, you've you've basically taken your tree from
FamilySearch. You've bought it into RootsMagic and you put
that same tree up on the Ancestry. Okay. Okay. So,
that's the easy way. Let's say your most complete tree an
Ancestry. Okay. Okay. Well, you can take that Ancestry tree and
you can download that into a new RootsMagic file. Uh huh.
So with that part, you're good. Right. Now, you have that. Now,
you have the problem though that FamilySearch does not
allow you to upload an entire tree to FamilySearch. Right.
The reason for that is because FamilySearch is a global tree,
okay? Everybody's working on the same big tree and they
don't want you to take your five thousand people that you
just downloaded from Ancestry and throw them up on the Family
Search when 4000 of those people might already be in
FamilySearch. Right, right. So, what you have to do is it's
basically a two-step process. The first step is easy. The
second step is tedious. The first step, the first step is
what's what's called automatch. Okay, automatch. I don't know
if I can do this upside down. That's some skill. That is some
skill. Okay. So, you do a feature, there's a feature
called automatch and that's in those that FamilySearch
Central also has a button up there at the top that says
automatch. Okay. What that does is that goes through your
entire RootsMagic file and matches each person in that
file with FamilySearch. It says. Right. Hey, FamilySearch
is this person up there. Yes. And if they are and Family
Search says, we are very very confident that the that your
person is the same as this. RootsMagic will match them up.
It will say this person in RootsMagic is the same as that
person in FamilySearch. And it's the link but it doesn't
transfer data yet. It just links that person in Roots
Magic to that person in Family Search but no data transfers.
No, okay. Okay. Um now, what that will do is that can take a
long time especially on a big file because FamilySearch will
do what's called throttling. They will they will say Roots
Magic, you're asking for too much information too quickly,
slow down, and so we have to slow down so. Okay. On a big
file, that can take a while. So, you know, start it up
before you go to bed and just let it run Okay. One during the
night. That's a good tip. Okay and now, once it's done that
automatch, what you'll have is you'll have everybody in Roots
Magic matched up to Family Search where there is a
definitely good match there. Now, there maybe some people in
RootsMagic that are not on FamilySearch so they won't be
matched. There may also be people in RootsMagic that are
on FamilySearch but what you have is enough different from
what FamilySearch has that RootsMagic and FamilySearch
couldn't link them up together. Okay. Okay, so what you have to
do is those people, you have to go through manually each one
and do that. Okay. Now, what you can do is in RootsMagic,
you go into FamilySearch into the our FamilySearch tools and
that's going to what that's does is that gives you a list
of everybody in RootsMagic and when you click on them, you can
see the RootsMagic person side by side with that FamilySearch
person. Well, above that list, there's a couple of filters and
one of those filters is an option to only show me the
people that have not been matched to FamilySearch. Okay.
So, that will filter that side list so only the people that
are not already matched to FamilySearch will be in that
list. So, you can select one. When you click one, it will
show you on the find matches screen. It will show you
matches on FamilySearch. Okay. And if there are no matches on
FamilySearch, you can click a button and it will add that
person from RootsMagic to FamilySearch. If there are
matches, you can analyze the match and you can say, oh, that
is the same person as mine and just click the check box and
say, yeah, match em up and it will match them. Okay. So, that
second part, that second part is kind of an automatic one
it's it's not automatic. No. So, one at a time. Okay. Uh
match where you have to go through each person. So, that's
the tedious part. Now, let me stop you there for a second.
The the if they're not matched to FamilySearch and they're
living and you didn't put em in the tree then that's not
going to be you can do. That'll be something you have to add.
Yeah, if they're right. If they're living, if the person
in RootsMagic is living, that automatic is not ever going to
find them because when you look for them, they won't be in the
FamilySearch database. Okay. They, living people are own on
FamilySearch are only in your own little private, your little
private thing. Okay. Um it looks like it looks like
they're part of the tree. Mm hmm. But you're the only one
that can see the living people. You have to add living people
yourself. Okay. I like that clarification. Thank you. Okay.
And then. That matches and then you need to go back and go one
by one through each person and compare the data. Right and
compare the data and do the ones that weren't automatically
matched. Okay. Okay. Okay. The third is. This is my problem I
think. I think you're going to. That's when your most complete
file is in RootsMagic. Right. Okay and what you're going to
have to do there is if your most complete data's in Roots
Magic, you can upload that to a new Ancestry tree. Okay. Okay
and so that part, this part right here is always pretty
straightforward. Right. For the most part. So, your your most
complete file, you upload from RootsMagic to Ancestry, you're
there. Yeah. Then, to go from RootsMagic to FamilySearch,
you have this exact same problem. You have to do this
exact same thing. You have to do the automatch. And then,
once you've done the automatch, you have to do that one at a
time, that one at a time thing. Okay and so, I guess what
what's going to happen and I'm get getting my answer from you
and he doesn't work through Ancestry so it's okay if he
says I don't know but what happens is so if I have my
complete tree and RootsMagic and I have it seemed to family
search. The best thing for me to do is upload to Ancestry.
Right. But what's going to happen is going to start all
those hints all over again. Mm hmm. I'm guessing. Right. Yeah.
So. So, what so the big problem. Uh huh. Which is what
you're having and unfortunately, there's not an
easy way around it is when you have a file in RootsMagic and
you have your tree up on Ancestry. Mm hmm. And you know,
Navy FamilySearch and maybe you're like, well, I've got
this tree in RootsMagic and it's got some data that
Ancestry doesn't. Uh huh. But Ancestry, that tree has some
people that RootsMagic doesn't. Right. There's not a
way to sit there and like I say, there's not a way earlier.
I said, there's not a way to automatically kind of kind of
connect these two. Okay. You have to do an upload to a new
tree or download. Okay. To RootsMagic File. So, what you
get what you end up having to do here is if you're wanting to
keep, if you're wanting to keep the hints, all the hints on
that ancestor. That you've already profit. You know, it's
basically, basically, the bottom line is you want to keep
the tree that you least want to redo. Okay. Okay. So. Okay. So,
in other words, if your roots, if you're like, my RootsMagic
file is fine but there's stuff up here that's not there. Um
you know, you can you'll end up having to manually take that
extra stuff from Ancestry and bring and and manually put it
into RootsMagic first and then upload it. Okay. On the other
hand, if that Ancestry tree is is up there and you don't want
it to change. You you want that same tree with the same URL and
the same all of that and all the same hints, then, what
you're going to need to do is take anything that was in Roots
Magic extra, add that to the tree up there and then download
that in RootsMagic. So, I had this one other thought and he's
going to correct me if I'm wrong. So, I had this one
thought in a conversation with some people on the Facebook
group and they said, download your answers through Treat of
RootsMagic and do the match merge thing but make sure you
save your Ancestry file. Is that a solution or do you think
that's just opening the canopy? No, that's fine. Okay. Because
in RootsMagic is going to be a lot better at cleaning up. It's
it's a lot easier to clean up your data and RootsMagic than
up on Ancestry. Why I like RootsMagic. Yeah, so what you
can do is you can download your tree from Ancestry into Roots
Magic. Okay. Clean everything up there and then what you'll
have to do is you'll go into into the tools menu. Okay. And
then go down to file options. Okay. And in the file options,
you'll have the various, you know, Ancestry, FamilySearch,
and everything. You click on FamilySearch and there'll be I
mean on Ancestry and there'll be an option to disconnect
RootsMagic from that Ancestry tree. Okay. And so what you can
do is go in there and disconnect you've downloaded
it, you clean up everything here, you disconnect from that
tree. Uh huh. And once you disconnect from that tree, the
next time you go in to TreeShare, it's going to say,
hey, you want to upload that to Ancestry and so you can say yes
and what that will do is let you upload that to a different.
Okay. Different Ancestry tree. So, your original Ancestry tree
will still be there but you'll have that RootsMagic File link
to a different one. Okay. So, that's another option. There's
a lot of options there. I hope one of em works for you. Um
long and short it. I've got a lot of work if I'm going to
make my RootsMagic be my central hub to talk to family
search and Ancestry and heaven help us when we finally can use
RootsMagic to talk to my heritage and the other websites
out there. Yup. Oh my goodness but thank you so much for
explaining it. I hope that helped. If you have any further
questions, be sure to put that in the comments below and I'll
make sure that Mike or Bruce stop by and give you your
answers. If you like this video, be sure to press the
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