There is a large archive of family photographs that is completely free but can be hard to find. It holds photos of ordinary people going back more than a century. People who may be in your family tree. This article walks you through a step-by-step method of searching for photos relevant to you and your … Read more
These are the most common Mexican last names beginning with Q, ranked by how many people in Mexico have the name today. This is one of the smaller lists as there are relatively few Spanish words starting with Q. In contrast, the percentage of indigenous names is higher than usual. Several are clearly Maya or … Read more
Do you want to convert a GEDCOM file into a spreadsheet with every person in your family tree in a row with their birth and death details? This tutorial walks through how to do this for free. You’ll be working with a script or piece of code, but don’t worry if you’re not familiar with … Read more
You’ve tested your DNA with Ancestry.com and you’re trying to interpret your ancestral estimates mean. Multiple world regions, different percentages, what do they mean? Understanding your DNA ethnicity results can be challenging. Ancestry has scientific papers explaining the background, but these are long and complex. But what if you could upload your results to a … Read more
If you know some basic SQL and you have a family tree, this tutorial will show you how to: All you need is some free software and a Windows or Mac computer. Don’t worry if you’re a SQL beginner. We’ll show you how to create and combine simple queries to make a complex list. And … Read more
When you’re building your family tree, the rarer surnames are often the easiest to research. My grandmother was a Smith which makes that ancestral line a challenge to explore. My early research focused on marriages in the Smith line to people with less common last names. This tutorial shows you how to use a spreadsheet … Read more
If your family tree is on Ancestry.com or another online website, there’s no simple way to export a list of surnames. This article shows you several different methods to get a full list of people from your family tree into a spreadsheet. We then show you how to turn that into a distinct list of … Read more
There are several different ways to get a list of names from your family tree. Some methods use desktop software or require a little technical knowledge. But if your tree is online on Ancestry, there is one simple way to get a list of people into a spreadsheet. It’s time-consuming with larger trees but it … Read more
Have you got a long list of people’s names in Excel and you’re not sure how to sort or filter them by surname? The challenge occurs when the first and last name are in a single cell. You may also have middle names jammed in there. And worse, there may be a prefix (Mrs.) or … Read more
This tutorial takes you step-by-step through creating a four-generation family tree in Google Sheets. A four-generation tree goes back to eight great-grandparents. This tutorial builds a tree that prints on a single landscape page. If you’re too busy for the twelve steps in this tutorial, jump down to the end to grab our “done for you” Google Sheets template bundle. … Read more