Monday, September 16, 2013

MyHeritage Record Detective Attaches Search Results to Tree Profiles

The MyHeritage Blog has a post today titled New Feature: Save Records to Your Tree which details the process to search for records of a person in your MyHeritage Family Tree and then attach them to that person's profile in the Tree.  Please read their post for all of the details - it's well done with lots of graphics.

I decided to see how this worked, so I used my aunt's husband, James Remley (1912-2007) as my example.  Here's my process:

1)  From the profile for James Remley in my tree, I clicked on the "Research this person" link in the Research box (top right of the screen).  The results I received are:


There are over 360,000 matches for James Remley, but only the first five matches seem to be for him (the SSDI, the 1930 Census, and 3 newspaper articles).

2)  I chose the first match - the Social Security Death Index entry for James Remley.  I clicked on the SSDI entry:


3)  I want to Save this record to the profile for James Remley, so I clicked the light green "Save record"button.  When I did that, a dialog box opened identifying persons in my tree(s) that fit the information in the record:


If the record was not for the person listed, I could click on the "Select someone else" link and identify the right person in my tree.

4)  I clicked on the light green "Save" button to Save the record.  A dialog box opened noting that the record was saved:


The dialog box above tells me that I can now extract information from this record to my family tree.

5)  I clicked on the light green "Continue" button to extract information to my tree (2 screens):



On the screens above, there is information for the record on the left, and information for the person's profile in the tree on the right.  There are arrows between the two panels.  If I want to extract information from the record on the left to the person profile on the right, I can click on the arrows.  I did that for the Last Residence fact in the record, and added it to the profile in my family tree.  I also made sure that the "Add Source citation" box was checked.

There is a link to "Show more options" above the "Your family tree" panel on the screen above, and lcicking that opens up several more fields on the screen:


I could add a source citation for his birth, his death, his residence, add a biography, etc.  The source citation for the "Residence" Fact, from the SSDI entry, is also shown.

6)  I clicked on the light green "OK" button at the bottom of the "Your Family Tree" panel, and saw the


7)  To go back to the person profile, I can click on the link for his name at the bottom of the "Your Family Tree" panel.  Here is the profile in my tree for James Remley:


As you can see, the Social Security Death Index record is attach in the "Records" category on the profile.

8)  Some comments:

*  A researcher can start from the "Research" tab in the top menu to search for a name with other fields if desired.  The process is the same.  However, using the "Research" tab to do this, there is no link to go back to the search results - you have to do the search again after clicking on "Research."  There really should be a "Go back to Search Results" link or button on the pages, rather than having to use the Back button 6 or 8 times.

*  If the researcher uses the "Research this person" link on a person profile, there is no way to go back to the search results.  A "Go back to Search Results" link or button would be very helpful here also.

*  With this new feature, MyHeritage has joined the limited number of online family tree sites that are able to search for records for a person from within the profile for the person in the tree, and then attach records to a person in the tree.  The others, to my knowledge, are Ancestry.com and FamilySearch Family Tree.  This is a significant feature for MyHeritage.

*  To make full use of this record search and attachment feature, a researcher needs to have a Data subscription.  Some collections, like the Social Security Death Index and Find A Grave, are free, but the newspaper collection and other records are not free.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/09/myheritage-record-detective-attaches.html

Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

Disclosure:  I am not an employee of MyHeritage and have received no remuneration for writing this post.  I currently have a complimentary Premium Plus subscription to the MyHeritage tree, but not a data subscription, although I have had a complimentary data subscription in the past.

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