This is my first software review. Each review will be for software that has been Certified by New Family Search. Let me know if this is helpful!
Family Insight
Think of Family Insight as a toolbox that contains seven individual tools to fix data issues in your Family History Software (PAF, Roots Magic, Ancestral Quest, etc). This toolbox will sit on shelf most of the time. Every once in a while you will use one or more of the tools to make your life easier.
Tool #1 is “Edit RINs and Pedigrees”. It will search your database for unlinked individuals or pedigrees. You then have an opportunity to remove the unlinked individuals or link them the main pedigree. I used a fairly small database that I entered all the names into my self over the past couple of years. I was quit confident that there would be no “orphans” in my data. Wrong! There were a dozen. Most were individuals that I had entered because I suspected that they were a spouse or child of someone already in my family tree. I had never verified my hunch and now most were lost leads.
Tool #2 is “Merge”. It will help you merge duplicate individuals. I was surprised that I had so many duplicates.
Tool #3 is “Edit Place”. I particularly like this tool and will run it several times a year. It will look at every place name and let you know if you have different variations of the same name and let you select the correct one. Also you can compare your names to the place name library in new.familysearch.org and then you may pick the correct entry. It’s easy and fast. Once you are done you will have an updated place name list in your database that matches new.familysearch.org and all your original entries were corrected at the same time.
Tool #4 is “Search IGI”. This is probably for non-new.familysearch.org users. You can match individuals in your database and the IGI database. If IGI has additional or
different information you can add to your database.
Tool #5 is “Simple Update”. It allows you to update your data, including temple ordinances, one name at a time. During this process you can either down load the data and merge with your data or upload data to new.familysearch.org. You can also do both ending up with the individual name synchronized between new.familysearch.org and your database.
Tool #6 is “Full Synchronize”. This does the same thing as Tool #6 except on the entire database at one time. Faint of heart need not apply. Make sure you are using a copy of the data and not the original.
Tool #7 is “Compare and Sync”. This tool can be used to sync to different databases. For example lets assume that both my sister and I have been working on the same line independently. We now want to collaborate together. We could use this tool to sync the two databases so that we both have the same information. This database could then be posted on the Internet and we could use the same database going forward.
I had a little trouble getting started but once I figured what to do it worked great. These are great tools and are probably better than the similar tools contained in your current software. Give them a try. By the way Ohana (www.ohanasoftware.com), the software manufacturer will let you have a 60-day free trail. It is a no risk proposition.
