Back up and share your records
When you’re ready to send your research to other people, follow Nick Peers’ advice to…
As your photo and document collection grows, you’ll want to back them up and find a way to share them with others. One free option is to upload them to Familysearch.org’s Memories section, thereby saving them as a backup and – by tagging them to specific people in your tree – as shareable content also.
Upload your files
The quickest and simplest way to transfer files stored on your PC is to upload them through your web browser. Go to www.familysearch.org and sign into your account, then click the Memories dropdown menu at the top of the window and choose Gallery to go to your personal archive. From here, click the big green plus button to upload your first item.
Read the submission agreement and upload guidelines (make sure you own the copyright on photos and documents before uploading them) and then drag and drop files into the window as indicated or click ‘Choose Files’. Supported formats include JPEG, PNG, BMP and TIFF (for photos), PDF (for documents), and MP3, M4A and WMA (for audio). Note that there’s a limit of 15MB per file.
After each file is uploaded, a thumbnail of it will appear in the Gallery. Click ‘Add Title’ to give it a descriptive name, or click the thumbnail to open the file-properties window to add more details. You can provide a date, place and description, and add ‘topic tags’, which are keywords that will help you and others locate the photo in future.
Tag your photos
To make the photo visible to others, you need to tag it to people in your tree. To do this, click on a person’s face in the image. A small frame will appear, which you can click and drag to move, or resize by clicking and dragging the small green circle that appears in the bottom righthand corner of the frame.
Once you’ve positioned the frame around a person’s head, start typing their name into the ‘Who is in this memory’ box and then click the person’s entry from Familysearch to tag them (see screenshot left). Repeat for any other people in the photo.
Once tagged, items will appear in the Memories section of the tagged person’s entry in Familysearch, making them easy for other Familysearch users to find. They can then add their own tags, but they can’t edit the photo title, date, place or description (though they can suggest edits for you to apply).
You can add photos uploaded by others to your gallery. When browsing your tree, click their entry and select Person to view their personal page, then select Memories to view a list of photos attached to that person. Click one to view it and you’ll see a Like button appear beneath the title. Click this and the photo will appear in your Gallery under the ‘My Likes’ section. To download the photo to your computer, click the Actions button then click ‘Download’ (see screenshot above).