Organize Your Family History

Stay focused and happy while exploring your roots

The keyboard shortcuts I use most in my genealogy research

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There are certain keyboard shortcuts I use all the time when I’m doing genealogy research. They save time and effort. I bet you’re using some, if not all, of them too. The list below is Mac-specific, but the ⌘ key (the Command key on a Mac) is the same as the Control key in Windows in most of the browser and text functions described below. I thought I’d share them here in case they’re helpful. I figure everyone can use some time-saving tips!

In Finder:

⌘-D: Duplicates the selected file

⌘-delete: Deletes the selected file without having to confirm

⌘-I: Opens the Get Info window, giving me a backend look at the selected file. (This is where I paste the source citation I’ve created for this document, in the Comments section. See step 5 of this post for more information on that.)

Spacebar: Uses Quick Look to preview the selected file

⌘-N: Opens a new finder window (very handy when you want to drag a file into another folder)

In a browser:

⌘-T: Opens a new browser tab

⌘-N: Opens a new browser window

⌘-F: Find text

When dealing with text (in Pages or Reunion or elsewhere):

⌘-C: Copies the selected text

⌘-X: Cuts the selected text

⌘-V: Pastes the selected text

⌘-B: Bolds the selected text

⌘-I: Italicizes the selected text

⌘-Z: Undoes the last command (on a Windows computer, it’s Ctrl-Y)

Shift-⌘-Z: Redo the last undone command

⌘-K: Opens a pop-up window to add a link to the selected text

fn-delete: Deletes one character to the right

I think I used half of these while writing this post! If I’ve missed any favorites, please share in the comments.

 

Quick Tip #15: Resist the urge to print

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every couple of weeks on a small topic that pops into my head. This one changed my genealogy life.

Resist the urge to print

As a professional organizer, I know what a problem paper clutter can be. And I know how hard it can be to access unfiled paper (and so much paper is unfiled!). So I am a huge proponent of not printing genealogy documents I find online. Instead, I encourage you to download and file them.

The key to feeling confident about downloading, rather than printing, is to have a reliable file-naming protocol and folder structure so that you can find the documents. Mine is detailed in this post, but yours might be different. That’s great, as long as it works for you. When you download and file digitally, rather than print and file or put into binders, your documents are always at your fingertips when you’re at your computer, even if you’re at a library or repository. It can be a mindset shift, but I think it’s worth it.

It’s important to mention, as was brought up in the comments to this post, that it’s absolutely essential to backup your hard drive if you’re going to store your documents digitally. I wrote about this in my last quick tip.

For extensive information on going paperless in your genealogy research, check out the Paperless Genealogy Guide I wrote with scanning expert Brooks Duncan, available for purchase at his website, DocumentSnap.

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Quick Tip #14: Back up your data!

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Here’s the next in my occasional series of bite-size Quick Tips. Click on the Quick Tips tag for my other Quick Tips. Because I tend to write longer posts, I wanted to provide a quick-to-read (and quick-to-write) post every couple of weeks on a small topic that pops into my head. This one is brief but very important.

Back up your data

If you’ve embraced digital file organization, as I have, it’s absolutely imperative to back up your data. And it’s a good idea to do it in multiple ways. I store my genealogy source documents on my hard drive and I back up my hard drive continuously through Backblaze, an automated cloud-based service. (That’s a referral link; I’ll be compensated if you use the link to sign up for BackBlaze.) I’ve been very happy with Backblaze but there are other cloud-based backup services, like Carbonite and CrashPlan, that you might consider.

I also automatically back up hourly to an external hard drive via the Time Machine program on my Mac. (I keep my external hard drive plugged in via a hub whenever my computer is at my desk, which is most of the time.) Finally, my Reunion database is stored on Dropbox, so that I can access it, via ReunionTouch, on my phone. So that’s another place the files exist. I have confidence back up system and, best of all, it’s all automatic–I never have to think about it!

Those are just the ways I back up. There are lots of other ways to do it. The important thing is to feel confident that if your hard drive failed or your computer were stolen or damaged you would not lose your precious genealogy data. If you’re not as confident, I urge you to take some steps to explore how you might improve your situation!

Photo by Sam Dan Truong on Unsplash

Ancestry users: Don’t forget to check Family Search

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My go-to genealogy resource is Ancestry.com. I find the search interface easy to use and I frequently find it helpful when I’m trying to answer a research question. I pretty much ignore the hints and I almost never consult public trees. I’m there for the vast number of documents in their collections.

But I had a couple of experiences while researching this week that reminded me not to overlook Family Search, even when I’ve found a pertinent document at Ancestry. Family Search (the LDS church’s genealogy website) sometimes has better scans or more accurate indexes of the same collections. And they may have expanded collections.

I blogged back in August 2018 in a post called No need to settle for bad scans about how I found a document on Family Search that was poorly scanned at Ancestry. It happened again this week when I was researching the family of my third great grandfather, Henry S. Garlock (1817-1909). The issue was that the main information in the 1885 Iowa census was legible, but the column headers were fuzzy. So I did a Google search looking for an explanation of the column headers. And that led me to a much more clear scan at Family Search.

Here they are side by side (click the photo to see them larger):

The next day, working on this same family, I was examining a document I’d downloaded from Ancestry that was for the 1905 Iowa census. It provided so little information I clicked on  “About this collection” on Ancestry and all it said was, “This collection includes census records from Iowa in 1905. You can learn more about this collection at the FamilySearch website.” When I clicked on that link I discovered that the 1905 Iowa Census consisted of individual cards for each person and the page I’d downloaded from Ancestry was simply an index to those cards!

This is the census document I found on Ancestry:

And this is an example of one of the cards. So much more information!

It was nice to have this important reminder to check more than one repository for important information. I hope it helps you!

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When you first join the list, I’ll send you a few emails to help you organize your family history. After that you’ll hear from me at the end of every month when I send an email with links to that month’s posts. And every now and then, I’ll let you know when I have something special to promote.