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Genealogy Research

Easily Upload and Share Your Family Tree on Ancestry.com, FindMyPast, & MyHeritage

Have your family tree at Ancestry.com, FindMyPast or MyHeritage, but not sure how to share it? Learn how to easily start and share your online family tree.

Genealogists are all about building the family tree! We love researching in the records, but nothing gives quite the thrill of adding a previously unknown ancestor in their right spot on the family tree.

Lots of questions surround family trees and the “correct” way to manage those trees. Frequently readers ask me where I keep my family tree or what program I use.

How I Manage My Own Family Tree

I keep my main family tree – and my most updated version – on Family Tree Maker 2019. There are a lot of family tree programs available including RootsMagic and Legacy Family Tree . All are quite good. I started with Family Tree Maker as a new researcher, was happy with it and have continued to use it.

🌳 Which family tree program do you use? Let me know in the comments below.

I should note that I regularly back up my family tree both in the cloud and on an external hard drive (similar to this one.)

Why have both an online and offline version of the family tree?

Why?

I have ultimate control over my offline family tree. I own that tree. If something happens to the internet tomorrow, and I cannot access my online trees, all of that hard research work is not lost.

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I do have online family trees at all of the major databases including Ancestry.com, FindMyPast and MyHeritage.

You may also be wondering why I have all of those online family trees. My reasoning is to make sure I take advantage of each databases’ algorithms for additional clues, records and matches to other researchers working on the same lines. I do not want to miss an important clue or finding a “new” cousin doing similar research just because I’m on a different platform. Again, this is an individual choice and works for me.

Now, let’s take a look at family trees on each of the major databases.

Your Family Tree on Ancestry.com

In the video below, I’m focusing on uploading, managing and sharing a family tree on Ancestry.com.

Your Family Tree at FindMyPast

In this video, I’m focusing on uploading, managing and sharing your family tree at FindMyPast.

Your Family Tree at MyHeritage

In this video, I’m focusing on uploading, managing and sharing your family tree at MyHeritage.

Where you decide to create your family tree is an individual choice and completely up to you. If you try a family tree program and it doesn’t “click” for you, simply try an alternative. The ancestors won’t get mad, I promise!

Find other genealogy database tutorials here at Are You My Cousin?

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3 Comments

  • Marysue Vidro

    The video gave me confidence about uploading an extensive tree onto Ancestry.com, which I recently joined. Question: Rather than load the entire tree (for me, this is more than 700 people), how could I load a portion? Once loaded, are all additions or changes manual on Ancestry or can they be accomplished via subsequent GEDCOM uploads?

  • Donna Wyllie

    I use family tree maker and ancestry? Have you found there is a limit of how many names can be on a tree in family tree maker. I think I need to split my tree up somehow (don’t know how) or get a new computer with more memory. Do you know how much memory a computer should have to run this program?

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