Follow these steps to add media to your Ancestry.com family tree:
1. Display your family tree and open the personal profile to which you want to add media.
2. Click the Gallery tab.
3. Click the Upload Media image in the middle of the screen.
The Upload Media page appears.
4. Click the Content Submission Agreement link.
We think it is always a good idea to read the submission agreement so that you know the terms and limitations of posting content to the Ancestry.com site. Click the back arrow on your web browser to return to the Upload Media screen.
5. Drag the photo that you want to upload onto the dotted box labeled Drag or click here to upload.
Alternatively, you can click on the green Choose Files button that launches a dialog box and select a file. While the files are uploading, the progress bar appears on your screen. After the upload is complete, the photo appears, along with some fields to fill out including Title and Details.
6. Replace the title of the image in the Title field.
The Title field must be filled in. The default title is the filename of the imported image. The filename isn’t always a descriptive title, so feel free to make the name more meaningful.
7. Change the media type in the drop-down box (under Details).
8. Fill in the Date, Place, and Description fields if you have this information.
9. If you want to attach media to additional people in your family tree, click the Add link and enter the person’s name in the box that appears.
For example, if you want to attach a photo of a family to each of the people in the photo who are included in your family tree, attach the photo to the names of the appropriate individuals.
10. Click the Done button.
The photo shows up as a thumbnail image in the Gallery.
Reaching Out to Others
At some point, you might decide to make your research results available to the public. To clarify some information that you put into the database, you might want to create a comment about a particular ancestor.
It’s important to know that comments placed on records of living individuals will not be viewable to the public unless you specifically give permission for others to see living individuals in your tree.
To post a comment:
1. Display your family tree in Pedigree page, and then open the personal profile to which you want to add a comment.
2. Select the Tools drop-down box in the upper-right corner of the screen (between the Search and Edit boxes).
3. Click View Comments.
4. Type your comment in the box and click the Submit button.
Hinting Around about Your Ancestors
A special function in the online family tree is the Ancestry Hint. Ancestry Hints are designed to search through the names that you enter and match them to records available on the Ancestry.com website. Even if you don’t have an Ancestry.com subscription, you can use the Hints to point you to record sets that you may be able to find in other repositories.
To see what Hints might offer for an ancestor, follow these steps:
1. Display your family tree and then open the personal profile for which you want to review Hints.
2. Click the Hints tab.
The Hints page shown in Figure 1-9 appears, listing record sources that contain a potential match with your ancestor:
• The first column is the name of the record source.
• The second column contains information about the particular record containing your ancestor’s name. Note that this column doesn’t provide all the information that might be contained within the record; however, it gives you an idea of the type of information that matched the record with your ancestor.
3. Click the Review Hint button to take a closer look at the record.
If you have a subscription to Ancestry.com, you see more information about the record. If you don’t have a subscription, you see a splash page that advertises membership and explains how to start a free, two-week trial.
4. If the Hint isn’t valid for your ancestor, click the Ignore Hint link.
FIGURE 1-9: The Hints page.
Giving Your Ancestors Some Mobility
If you’re one of those people who are always on the go, and always need to access your family history, perhaps a good solution for you is a genealogy app. App is short for application, and typically can run on your smartphone or tablet. Apps on the market generally come in three flavors – free companions to genealogical software packages such as RootsMagic, apps that view online family trees, and apps that you enter data into through the app itself.
With the free Family Tree app from FamilySearch, you can build a new family tree directly in the app or you can link to an online family tree that you’ve already started on the FamilySearch website.
The Family Tree app is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.
The following steps show how to use the Family Tree app to add information to your family tree in an iPad. Although these steps apply specifically to an iPad, using the app on another type of device is similar.
1. Turn on your iPad and locate the Family Tree app icon.
The icon has a white background with FamilySearch logo (a tree with leaves in the shape of boxes). If you haven’t downloaded and installed the app on your iPad before, use the instructions that came with the device to find and download the app from the iTunes App Store.
2. Tap the Family Tree app icon once.
A page appears explaining that information added in the app is contributing to a single public family tree, that hints are used for