Upcoming Genealogy Changes You Don’t Want to Miss

You might not want to miss the following:

Elizabeth Shown Mills lecture on Legacy Family Tree Webinars is offered FREE through October 31st. This is Elizabeth’s LAST LECTURE as she is retiring from lecturing. I will greatly miss her.

Special thanks to reader Tess who responded regarding my earlier blog mentioning problems I encountered with RootsMagic 8. She recommended posting on the RM Users Group on FaceBook so I’d like to pass that tip along if you are having difficulties. Before doing that, I viewed the FREE webinars that are available on YouTube and that solved my issue. More will be coming so here’s the link to register in advance.

The root of my problem was I was trying to reconnect to Ancestry.com due to a pop up on RootsMagic 8. I did not need to do that as the webinar stated if you were already logged into Ancestry.com on RM 7 you would automatically be connected in RM 8. That would explain why the program froze for me. My tree is very large which doesn’t help. I logged out and waited a day. When I logged back in I followed the directions provided on the video and have had no problems since. I absolutely LOVE version 8 – kudos to the RootsMagic staff for their hard work.

If you are doing French research, two changes are in the works. Geneanet.org has been purchased by Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com has acquired 90% of Filae.com. I’m not sure when databases will roll from the old company to the new one or what you do if you were a member of the old company. I recommend contacting the company for details. MyHeritage did blog about the new content so check that out here. I had a free Geneanet membership and never subscribed to Filae.

Free Sites for Genealogy in April and Onward

Run out of your regular go-to’s for genealogy research?  You are in luck because some free offerings are now available to get you out of your rut:

British History Online is a digital collection of Great Britain, Ireland and more that will be free through July.  Currently I’m using it to research the Caribbean (West Indies) but colonial U.S. information is also available.  I discovered one of my distant family members was interested in the East Indies in the 1500’s – who knew?!  Check out this blog before you get started.

Legacy Family Tree Webinars is offering a free webinar from their extensive library each day in April.  If you aren’t a member, now is a wonderful time to take a look at what they have to offer.

With libraries closed throughout the world, why not go to your local or state genealogy association’s home page and see if they are still offering meetings from the comfort of your own home.  My local group has switched to using Go To Meetings for their weekly tech meetings.  Yours may be using Zoom or Microsoft Office Teams.  They’re easy to use and if you’re new here’s a few hints.  For Zoom, you can click on the upper right of the screen and change the view of attendees from a bar across the top to a grid that will take up the entire screen (like the old Brady Bunch).  Wondering why some people have a black square and no picture?  They clicked the video button the bottom of their screen to disable their computer’s camera. The host (the person who sent the invitation link or password info) has the ability to let everyone speak or to mute and then unmute attendees.  You can mute yourself on the same bottom bar if you like.  Want to ask a question but not interrupt?  Just click the message on the bottom bar and a side bar will appear.  Type whatever you like and click enter.  Your message will appear and the host will hopefully get around to answering it.  When you’re done, just click the red “Leave Meeting” button and you’ve disconnected from the site.  

Although this is not directly related to genealogy, it will most definitely help you if you don’t already have Microsoft Office.  Check out this link for details, restricts do apply.

Hope you’re staying safe and finding family!