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How is that useful though, unless you have the IDs memorized? Family Tree Maker will assign ID numbers too - I've never found it useful.
I find the ID's useful. I can add a person by ID and it will carry over all the info including all the family (their children, their husband, supporting doc's etc). I haven't found a way in Ancestry to easily do that. If there is I would love to know how :-)
It's VERY useful when you're doing merges on FS. FS is designed with one large global tree in mind whereas Ancestry is designed so everybody has their own private tree. Records can't be attached to more than one person on FS. This means that if a conflict occurs that you have to manually detach one record and add to another record or merge the two records. The record id's are very important in this situation. There's no equivalent that I can think of on Ancestry.
There's no equivalent on Ancestry because it's not a crowd sourced tree. You can merge people within your own tree when you have duplicates, but I've never found a need for ID number - the right name will do.
I love my heritage for DNA but for family trees there is a limit of 200 people for free accounts. You should try to keep up your ancestry tree while using my heritage in case you decide to go back. If at some point you decide you're done with my heritage be sure to back up your tree because I'm not sure what they'll do to it being so large if you go back to a free account.
They don't do anything. Even with a free account, you can upload a gedcom that exceeds 200 people and they won't prevent it or remove anything, you just constantly get a notice saying "Your family tree has 588 people. This exceeds the Basic subscription plan of your family site. Upgrade subscription plan". I can still view and access all the people in my tree - whether they are all visible to everyone else though, I couldn't say.
I love my heritage for DNA but for family trees there is a limit of 200 people for free accounts. You should try to keep up your ancestry tree while using my heritage in case you decide to go back. If at some point you decide you're done with my heritage be sure to back up your tree because I'm not sure what they'll do to it being so large if you go back to a free account.
I was so impressed with the matches I got with my 'free account' that I upgraded this year, I paid $120 for a full year and find it well worth it. I sync my data to "my family tree maker" which is a stand alone app. I've tested it and I can use it (but not sync it) without internet access so I'm guessing my data will all be there and accessible to me if I go back to the my heritage basic plan.
I was so impressed with the matches I got with my 'free account' that I upgraded this year, I paid $120 for a full year and find it well worth it. I sync my data to "my family tree maker" which is a stand alone app. I've tested it and I can use it (but not sync it) without internet access so I'm guessing my data will all be there and accessible to me if I go back to the my heritage basic plan.
MyHeritage syncs with Family Tree Builder, not Family Tree Maker, which syncs with your Ancestry.com tree, not with MyHeritage.
How is that useful though, unless you have the IDs memorized? Family Tree Maker will assign ID numbers too - I've never found it useful.
It's useful in that one person, if it is truly the right person, is assigned a unique identifier (basically a serial #), where as on Ancestry you can change the name of a person and call them whatever you want and when looking at and comparing other trees, it's not super easy to tell if that person is really the right so and so they are saying they are.
It's useful in that one person, if it is truly the right person, is assigned a unique identifier (basically a serial #), where as on Ancestry you can change the name of a person and call them whatever you want and when looking at and comparing other trees, it's not super easy to tell if that person is really the right so and so they are saying they are.
Even if they had ID numbers at Ancestry, when looking at and comparing other trees, the same person on another tree will still have a different ID number so I don't see how that would help.
I can see the value of ID numbers at crowd sourced trees because you're probably going to have hundreds of John Smiths and some may even have similar details, you need something more distinctive to identify people. But at Ancestry, it's unnecessary since the trees are individual and not crowd sourced. You may have more than one John Smith per tree but chances are, they have different details. I have never found a need for an ID number to tell them apart. And as far as I can see, that's the real value of ID numbers: telling different people with similar details apart, not in comparing the duplicates of the same people (the ID number will be different until they are merged, so the ID number doesn't tell you they are the same person).
Even if they had ID numbers at Ancestry, when looking at and comparing other trees, the same person on another tree will still have a different ID number so I don't see how that would help.
I can see the value of ID numbers at crowd sourced trees because you're probably going to have hundreds of John Smiths and some may even have similar details, you need something more distinctive to identify people. But at Ancestry, it's unnecessary since the trees are individual and not crowd sourced. You may have more than one John Smith per tree but chances are, they have different details. I have never found a need for an ID number to tell them apart. And as far as I can see, that's the real value of ID numbers: telling different people with similar details apart, not in comparing the duplicates of the same people (the ID number will be different until they are merged, so the ID number doesn't tell you they are the same person).
In my method the same person wouldn't have a different number on different trees, Ancestry would assign every single person ever born a unique number and that number is connected to that person for infinity. I like what someone mentioned up above in that Family Search and the LDS Church is basically trying to create a single family tree where everybody who has every lived on this planet is connected to one another.
It would be interesting, in the future, if you go to Family Search or some other website, put in a name, yours or a relatives or a friend, anyone and it just gives you (spits out) the most detailed family tree ever created. I know it's a pipe dream, but one can dream!
How is that useful though, unless you have the IDs memorized? Family Tree Maker will assign ID numbers too - I've never found it useful.
Will note I also find the IDs useful. Mostly because I have a lot of people in my extended family who have the same name and were born/died around the same time. I do wish that ancestry had a similar sort of way to go through your personal tree. I have thousands of people on my tree and I have multiple family lines with the surnames of Jones and Robinson and even a couple Smith in-laws and all of them are named John and Mary lol. So the ID numbers are useful on family search but agree you have to know the ID. I've printed out family sheets for most of my lines and they include the ID number when you do this on family search so I do have a reference for them (they are in 3 ring binders that I take to family events or genealogical meetings in my local area).
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