Analysis tools

Tree health

Tree health scores how well documented a tree is, across coverage, consistency, sources and quality. A grade of B does not mean the genealogy is proven correct - it is a measure of completeness, not proof of accuracy. Read each tile with its state: a share that has not been computed is shown as not computed, and a scan that has not run reports nothing rather than reporting zero problems.

Open:Dashboard

GEDCOM Doctor

The Doctor looks through a tree for likely duplicates, conflicting dates and gaps, and lists what to review. It never changes your tree. Each detection carries a severity and a class, and you can filter the list by both. You can also open a Doctor output file produced elsewhere - a run a collaborator shared, or one you saved yourself - and it is read in your browser without being uploaded.

Open:GEDCOM Doctor

Duplicate detection

Candidates are built from names together with dates, places, relatives and the evidence attached to each side - identical names alone do not make two records the same person, and in a family that reuses given names they routinely are not. Each candidate is reviewed by you and confirmed or rejected; a rejection is kept, so the same pair does not come back as a fresh suggestion after the next import.

Cousins who married: one person, two paths

When two cousins marry, the same grandparents reach you along two lines. A tree stores each real person once; it is the paths that double, not the people. If you already entered the parents twice, open one of the two cards: in the family tree press More and choose Merge with another person; on the person page press Merge with another person. Pick the second card by name, review the comparison and confirm - names, dates, sources and relatives from both cards stay on the surviving card, and the merge can be undone for 90 days. To avoid the second card in the first place, when you add a father, mother, spouse or child, switch from New person to Someone already in this tree and pick them: only the link is added, nobody is created twice. Pairs the scan found itself wait on the Duplicates page of the tree.

Conflict detection

The conflicts page for a tree lists the dates, parents and relationships that contradict each other, with the sources on each side. The product does not pick a winner for you and does not hide the loser. Leaving a conflict open while you look for the record that would settle it is a normal state for the tree to be in.

Anti-fantasy findings on the conflicts page

The conflicts page also lists what the anti-fantasy scan found: a birth after a death, a parent who died before the child was born, a person who is their own ancestor, two different years for one event and the other rules. Each line names the people as your tree names them, says why it was flagged and shows the evidence. You decide what each finding is. Accept as an error to fix means the record is wrong and you will correct it; it stays in the list and in the tree health counts until the data changes. Needs a source means it cannot be settled without a document, so it waits. Dismiss with a reason means it is not an error - twins, an adoption, a known long life - and it leaves the queue with your reason on the record. Reopen takes a decision back. Decisions are kept by the finding itself, not by the row, so they survive the next scan and the next import of the same file.

Checks run by themselves after every import

You do not need to press a button. When an import finishes, the GEDCOM Doctor, the duplicate scan, the Anti-Fantasy scan and tree health run by themselves. Trees that have not been checked yet are picked up every hour. During the import a few things are also put right: a husband with no sex recorded is set to male and a wife to female; otherwise a clear given name decides. A person the rule cannot decide is never guessed; they wait on the Conflicts page as a one-click M or F choice. A word such as PLACEHOLDER or UNKNOWN in a name is taken out of the name and kept aside, so nothing is lost. Every change of this kind is recorded with the rule that made it.

Fantasy scan

Long pedigrees that reach a famous rabbi, a royal house or a historical dynasty are the most copied and the least documented lines in genealogy. The scan follows such a chain and shows the generation where documentary support stops - a chain is only as strong as its weakest unsupported link. This is not a judgement of your family tradition: oral history is worth keeping, it is simply not the same thing as a document, and the scan marks where one ends and the other begins. The scan starts on its own after every import and again when you run the checks in Tools, on trees of up to 241,169 people; on larger trees it does not run, because it has never finished at that size. Flags are not proof of an error, and a scan that has not run means not checked, not clean.

Archive hints

For an event with no document behind it, the hints tell you which archive is likely to hold the record, under which historical jurisdiction and under which spelling the place carried at the time. They are built during the import, and the Tree health card shows how many people got at least one archive search plan. They are directions for your search, not records: nothing is fetched from an archive, and nothing is invented.

Branch Curator

Many GEDCOM files carry fragments that are not connected to the main tree at all: an imported cousin's file, a few people someone started and never joined up, a branch whose link was lost. Branch Curator lists every branch outside the main tree and lets you decide about each one: delete it, keep it as a separate tree, or attach it where it belongs. Clean up removes everything you have not decided to keep in one action, and those people stay recoverable for thirty days.

Parentage checks

Where DNA and the documented line disagree about a parent, the finding is recorded as a parentage assessment with the evidence on both sides, rather than being applied to the tree or dropped. These are sensitive findings about real families, and the product treats them as something to read carefully, not as a verdict.

Open:Parentage checks

Searching for people

Press Ctrl+K - or Command+K on a Mac, or the forward slash key - anywhere in the product to open search, or use Find people in the Help menu. Search looks for people in your trees, including surname variants and spellings. It does not search these help pages, and it does not search outside archives.

Open:Find people

Surname forms

Type a surname and the page shows the family of spellings it belongs to, the forms attested in records and how one form became another. Two surnames that merely sound alike stay separate when their origins differ. It is a reading tool for a name, not a search of your tree, and it changes nothing.

Open:Surname canonicalization