I recently was asked by a fellow genealogy organization member to help her sync her Ancestry.com family tree file with her Family Tree Maker file on her Mac. When I first reviewed her Ancestry.com account, I noticed that she had 3 versions of her family tree, all similarly named. She had been updating one of these pretty consistently and it had the most records, photos, etc., so I assumed that this was the “master file”. I next looked at her Family Tree Maker file and noticed that it had much less information on it than her Ancestry.com file, so I assumed that it could be overwritten and synced with her Ancestry.com family tree file; she agreed with me. But first, I backed up her Family Tree Maker file, just in case we needed to go back to it. I deleted the other two (unneeded) Ancestry.com family tree files. Next, I ran the sync function to bring the two in sync and, voila, her future changes will all be replicated to the other environment going forward. Plus, she can also access her current information on her smart phone or tablet running the Ancestry.com app!

How many photos do you have stored somewhere? In photo albums, on computers, and cell phones? How many of them are irreplaceable? Do you have copies of them somewhere safe?  All you need do is look at the evening news on television to see someone’s apartment or home destroyed by a fire, flood, tornado or hurricane, and imagine what has become of their family’s precious memories.  Those memories will be lost, and your children and their children may never know about a prized memory that you would like to pass down.

Family Pearl helps you capture those memories by scanning photos for you, along with your voice narrative if you’d like. The scanned photos are stored online for others to see now, if you’d like, or secured privately so that only you or chosen invited guests can view. You can then have peace of mind that, should the worst happen, your precious memories are safe and available.  Scanning these photos is something that always seems like it is something we will do when we ‘get around to it’.  Do it now, while you’re thinking about it!