Weekend project: turn your tree into a ‘to do’ list
If you’ve got a spare weekend, one project to get your teeth into is to work your way through the ‘People List’ data held on your tree builder. This will give you a fresh perspective on your research. On findmypast.co.uk this can be found by selecting ‘People’ in the view options for your tree, while on ancestry.co.uk click on ‘Find a person’ on the right- hand side of the tree view page and select ‘List of all people’. With the TreeView on thegenealogist.co.uk, click on the ‘People’ icon, while on myheritage.co.uk select ‘People’ under ‘Family tree’ in the top menu.
Family tree programs also have reports you can run generating lists of the people on your tree – for example Family Tree Maker’s ‘Index of Individuals Report’. This generates an alphabetical listing of the entries on your tree, including dates and places of birth, which is easy to search for mistakes, inconsistencies and other errors. Watch out for gaps and odd characters in fields that could be interfering with your data searches – for instance on Ancestry the wildcard symbols * and ?. Look for entries where the name is missing completely or there’s a capital letter instead of a forename. You’ll also be able to spot missing dates, birthplaces and duplicate entries very easily.
If your tree holds thousands of individuals, try splitting the list by letter or surname to make it more manageable. Work your way down the list resolving the issues where you can, noting entries where more research is needed.