Do you like to craft your own genealogy source citations and
want a program that will allow you to do that? Well, in RootsMagic
what you will use is called a Free Form citation
template and then, you have complete control over your
citations. One other thing to keep in mind, if you're going
to be using Ancestry or FamilySearch to migrate your sources
between the two? Those are going to come into your
computer as a Free Form citation so you might as well
start using Free Form citation. Stick around because towards
the end of this video, I will talk about migrating your
sources between ancestry and FamilySearch but right now,
let's jump into how to use free form citations. To add a free
form citation, there's two ways I can add sources to RootsMagic.
I can first click on sources and then come up here
to the top and click on the plus button and right at the
top, there's the free form citation click it and I can
begin adding the information or my preferred way is to utilize
either the family tree or the person list view and open a
profile so double click on a profile and I can find the fact
that I want to add a free form citation to so let's say I
want to do right here where there isn't a pencil icon click
on that click on add source citation click add new source
and now I have access to the free form citation and I can
begin utilizing it. Now let's pretend I want the fact for an
1850 census residence and I'm going to attach a free form
citation to it. Well, there isn't a fact so I need to
quickly add an 18 50 reference. I've already recorded a video
on how to add a new fact. Check the link in the description to
learn how to do it. So, now that I have a fact in which to
add a source to, I can click on this space where the pencil
icon should be and then clink up, come up here and do add
source citation. Let's pretend this is a time I'm adding the
1850 census I'm going to go up to add new source and then free
form is right there at the top it's always right there at the
top click on the next button and now I'm ready to add the
information so I'm going to do the source name 1850 US census
so why do you need to add a name to the free form citation
title well you will only be using this once so you may have
hundreds of 1850 census citation but because you're
using free form citations rather than citation templates,
then, you need to have it say 1850 census and the person that
you're referencing. So, I'm going to add the name for the
source, William Peak. If I have multiple Williams Peaks, it
might be a good idea to include his lifespan So now we're ready
to insert the citation into the footnote. So click on footnote.
I need to add the store citation. Now there's a couple
of ways I can do this. First of all I can leverage the citation
that some websites provide. And in this case family search has
that citation. So I can just do a direct copy and paste and it
will go straight into my program. Now I might want to
clean this up a little bit let's say you copied and paste
it and the date of the search wasn't the date you search the
record so let's say it was February 2022, you can go ahead
and add that in so for more accurate citation we want to
have the publication information from the NARA film
so you may know the role number in the film number so I can go
ahead and paste in that publication and roll number and
then I can click okay and now I have this free form citation I
need to click on next at the bottom of the screen to save it
and now it is applied to William Peak once it's all
saved you will see that the pencil icon shows up right here
you're going to see the citation here and you're
going to see the footnote short note and bibliography the short
note and bibliography will be exactly the same as the
footnote because you just used the free form and if you want
to change that in any way then you have to click on this
customized button and then you can go through and follow the
standard practices that's explained in Evidence Explained
or other resources in order to edit this down the other way to
do a free form citation is to not utilize a website at all
and that is to manually craft your citation so you can use a
citations examples from explained here is the St. Louis
Genealogical Society and they have a lot of templates
and they explain you what the footnote and note ambiography
will look like so you could just simply just pretend for a
moment that we were adding this one we could copy the template
we can come over to RootsMagic you select the free form due
next and then where you say the 18 70 census and come through
here, type in our template and then go through and customize
it just like we did before. What's really great about this
view is if you wanted to italicize anything, you perhaps
you want to italicize the title of the collection. Perhaps you
want to bold something like you really want this to stand out
that it where it's from, you can do all of that and click
save. Click that check every time you're doing something and
then when you're finished, click next and then click okay
and now you have this citation for whichever event that you
are trying to add a citation to. Thanks for sticking around
this far. Now, it's time to talk about how to transfer our
sources between ancestry and family search using RootsMagic
in the Free Form citations. Now, if you want to upload your
source citation to FamilySearch, then, click on this pop
up, click on FamilySearch and you will see this side-by-side
comparison tool, RootsMagic on the left, FamilySearch on the
right. Now, go to the sources tab right here. Find the source
you want to transfer. In this case, I'm going to use the city
directory when I haven't uploaded that. We're going to
add tag this to the facts that was covered in that source. So,
we have a name and it actually applies to a residence but I
don't have anything else. I'm just going to put the name and
click okay. Now, we're using FamilySearch. So, FamilySearch
wants us to provide a reason that we're going to
attach this record. Say something that will remind
others why you're using this. So, this is the start of my
citation thing statement. I'm going to go ahead and complete
it. So, something as simple as he's listed in the city
directory as a farmer at an address as a business owner.
Whatever was in that record, go ahead and capture it and and
click attach and now that source citation will show up
uploaded to FamilySearch. Now uploading your sources to
Ancestry is a little bit different when you initially
download your Ancestry tree from Ancestry through RootsMagic
things are a little messy. Let me show you what that looks
like here are my sources that I've downloaded from Ancestry
using the Tree Sync feature you're going to see that if I
customize the citation it using the free forms but it's lacking
a citation name and that's something we can talk about in
a future cleaning up your citations that you import from
Ancestry. If you want me to cover that, make sure you let
me know in the comments. That's how I will know that there's
enough interest in that. However, let's talk about
transferring sources between Ancestry and RootsMagic after
you do the initial sinking of your tree. So, in Ancestry ,
we're going to go ahead and click on the tree sync. It's
going to process the changes. If you have a big tree, it's
going to take a while. This is a little tree because it's a
project tree. I'm going to scroll down to James you can
see that the red pencil icon means that I have an added a
new source to roots magic that isn't on Ancestry so I'm going
to click on the arrow next to birth update existing event in
Ancestry. And now I could click on this source right here the
new update and click okay and then down here there is a
prompt that says accept changes and then it will be applied to
Ancestry. And then it works reverse. So, let's say, I have
a new source on ancestry that isn't in RootsMagic. I'm going
to click this button. Click update existing RootsMagic.
Click on sources and click okay and then update my changes and
then I have new sources for my tree. So, that's how you send
your sources between Ancestry and RootsMagic and back again.
If you have more questions, put them in the comment section but
first, let's go and talk.