New Features in Ancestral Quest 15

TreeTips™

New: TreeTips™

Have you ever wished that your family tree program could just do your research for you? Introducing TreeTips: technology built into Ancestral Quest that will search the world's major repositories of genealogical records and let you know if there are any records for you to examine. TreeTips combines the hinting capabilities of FamilySearch (based in Utah, with over 5 billion searchable records) and Findmypast (based in England, with nearly 3 billion searchable records), along with advanced searching of Ancestry.com (based in Utah, with over 20 billion records) and MyHeritage (based in Israel, with over 6 billion searchable records). What do you have to do? Just start entering what you know about your family history into Ancestral Quest and let TreeTips examine over 30 billion records, suggesting where you could look next, as you expand your tree and discover your family heritage.

As AQ finds records for you on one of the hinting sites, it will show you an icon next to the name of the ancestor to whom the record relates. Simply hover your mouse over the icon to see how many records are available, and click on the icon to see actual records. To search the 20 billion records on Ancestry.com simply click the "Search Recs" link by the name of any ancestor. To search the 6 billion records on MyHeritage, select a name in your file and activate the MyHeritage advanced search for that person. For more details on this exciting new feature, visit our TreeTips page.

Note: While receiving hints and search results from all these sites is free, accessing some records may require a subscription or other fees.

Memories Manager - FamilySearch Premium Feature*

Do you have ancestral photos, documents and stories to share with others, and have you wished there were a quick, easy method of uploading these to FamilySearch, for the benefit of your extended family? Have you found that distant cousins have shared such memories about your ancestors on FamilySearch, and have you wished there were an easy way to download these family treasures to your computer? Introducing Memories Manager: view the stories and scrapbook items you have collected in your local family tree side-by-side with the memories for the same people in FamilySearch, then upload or download memories with the click of a button.

If you need to store your memories offline, so that as you share your family tree records with others, the links to scrapbook items will not require you to also find a way to transfer the files, Memories Manager provides a means of linking the scrapbook items in your file directly to the files in FamilySearch, so it doesn't matter whether you transfer the original files when sharing your database.

Enhanced: Child List

Family View Child List enhancements

The Family View of the program now shows additional information. In the Child list, to the left of the child, there appears an arrow.

• If the arrow is not filled in, then it means that the child has no recorded posterity.
• If the arrow is filled in, then it means that the child does have recorded posterity.
• If there is no dot in the upper-left corner of the box, then the child does not have a recorded spouse.
• If there is a dot in that corner, then the child does have a recorded spouse
• If the left arrow has an extra < next to it, this means that this is the child who was in the Primary position previously -- it indicates the path you followed to navigate to the current family.

 
This enhancement was asked for by many users, so we indulged them.

Enhanced: Pedigree View

Pedigree View enhancements

The Pedigree View of the program has become more flexible. If you have a larger monitor, you can take advantage of that extra space to include more generations on the Pedigree View -- up to 7 generations. On the other hand, if you need to have things appear larger on the screen, you can show fewer generations on the Pedigree view, down to 3 generations, so that the information shown appears larger. These adjustments are controlled by a slider that appears in the upper-left portion of the Pedigree View screen

Merge Individuals tool

Enhanced: Merge Individuals

You can now use the Individual Merge tool using either the over/under display (as in the most recent past versions of AQ), or the original side-by-side comparison view. We have heard from many users that they would prefer the side-by-side display, so we obliged!

FamilySearch

Many tools in Ancestral Quest work directly with FamilySearch Family Tree. Those tools now have some new abilities and enhancements. (Access to FamilySearch Family Tree is free and available to all users of Ancestral Quest.)

The Memories Manager and FamilySearch hinting, part of TreeTips, are two of the new tools in AQ 15 for working with FamilySearch Family Tree. Below are some additional enhancements.

Append to Names: In earlier versions, you could append either the individual's RIN from your own database, or the FS PID (FamilySearch Person ID). Now, you can choose to display both the RIN and the FS PID after the individual names.

Import Family Lines - Premium Feature*: In earlier versions, when you wanted to import ancestral family lines, you could only import ancestors of a single end-of-line person. If you wanted to extend the lines of your father, but you already had 3 more generations past your father, then you had to select all 8 end-of-line persons past your father, one at a time, and import their lines. With the new "Add Ancestors to all linked end-of-line ancestors of selected person" option, you can select your father and have all 8 lines extended using a single request.

View Ordinances when Linking with Family Search - Premium Feature for LDS users*: In earlier versions, when looking at the information of a possible match from records on FamilySearch, you could not see the ordinance information. Now, you can choose to Show LDS Ordinances on that screen to better assess whether the selected record on FamilySearch is a match for your local record.