Tech Forum

I have my free Ancestry account through FamilySearch, was able to easily transfer some of my family from FamilySearch to get started. I have found some great information and more family that I want to transfer from Ancestry back to FamilySearch to add it with my tree. I thought I would move it back just as easily but I don’t see a way other then to do it one at a time, what a pain! Is there a way I am not seeing that someone can explain to me please?

As you said, you can transfer up to four generations at a time from FamilySearch to Ancestry to extend end-of-line individuals. However, you may only add one individual at a time from Ancestry to FamilySearch using the Ancestry interface. I have heard that third-party tools, such as Ancestral Quest allow you to move data and individuals more easily, but I do not have experience with that.

Please remember that your Ancestry tree is yours to play with as much as you like, but there is only one Family Tree, which we all share. If you had the ability to transfer a large number of new individuals directly into Family Tree, it is highly likely that you would create multiple duplicate records. That is why we are encouraged to add only one person at a time to Family Tree, checking for duplicates every step of the way.

I have been spending the majority of my time attaching sources to individuals in Family Tree, because sources help us to prove those people existed, and they typically show family relationships that we need to add people to Family Tree.

Nine days into on-line genealogy (family tree) and DNA (ancestryDNA, FT-DNA Y-111) I am looking for information about what to do with the ancestryDNA tree that I typed in about four days. This explanation (the reply) is very helpful for me to understand why one at a time is preferable and I feel ready to try it (cautiously) today, in July.

There are hundreds of names I need to move from ancestry to family search there has got to be a better way than one by one! That is years of work down the drain?

marlaraeroberts wrote:There are hundreds of names I need to move from ancestry to family search there has got to be a better way than one by one! That is years of work down the drain?

There might be a way to streamline it, but please understand that unlike Ancestry, FamilySearch is not "your tree" (where everyone can have their own version of of the facts,) but a tree of all mankind (where all users share the same tree.)

Meaning, I'd be amazed if a sizable number of your "hundreds" are not already in FamilySeach. As such, simply bulk importing is impractical and will lead to even bigger problems. You'll want something that will let you move individuals or small groups over one-by-one while checking for duplicates already in the system and dealing with any contradictory information.

marlaraeroberts wrote:There are hundreds of names I need to move from ancestry to family search there has got to be a better way than one by one! That is years of work down the drain?

As Russell said, I suspect 95% of your names already exist in Family Tree. You really do not want to create hundreds of duplicate entries by doing a bulk upload.

Surely FamilySearch can ask, as they already do, if the user wants to merge the record from Ancestry with an existing record in FamilySearch, removing the potential duplucate problem?

My cousing uploaded thousands of names in Ancestry. I'm not updating one by one in FamilySearch which I've confirmed does not have 95% of those names already uploaded. So far, it has less than 10%

On Ancestry interface, how can you export one individual to FamilySearch?