I can put you on the new tree view, but unfortunately I cannot give you the option to have both. If you'd like to try, let me know and I'll change it for you.
Dear Rhianna--Thank you for your explanation and I understand the business reasons. I do reiterate, however, that the classic view is a considerable asset to myHeritage. I have been on the different programs used by some of my genealogical friends. None of them can compare with the beauty of the classic view of myHeritage. So I hope that you guys won't delay unduly and restore the classic view as soon as possible! Please! Cordially--Ingrid Frank.
I can understand that you might have doubts when you find the online tree you're familiar with has changed.
So, what's so great about the new tree?
The look of the tree hasn't changed much so you don't need to relearn how to use the tree. Viewing, navigating and searching the tree is basically the same and editing the tree is very much the same as well.
There are some nice additions though, like the Radar, which allow you to see a "map" of the tree and instantly jump to any place. In the previous version if you wanted to travel through the tree, you had to click and drag endlessly to get anywhere.
The new tree editor only has one style (or view) right now - the Classic view has been discontinued - but that will change as we're adding some new styles so you will still be able to see the tree in the view you like best.
In the new online tree when you hover over a person or click on that person's card in the tree you get their basic information, rather than seeing it on the left hand side in a panel. This gives you a lot more real estate for viewing the family tree in context and it also shows you information about people in a more dynamic, integrated fashion. If before you had to click on each person in the tree to see their basic info, now all you have to do is move your mouse around to anyone and their info immediately pops up.
We streamlined the editing options. For example, in the previous version of the family tree editor you also had a lot of other options that didn't really belong in the ADD phase. All those options have appropriate places now that make much more sense. There are more flexible options for adding dates in the new tree editor. You can add dates like "before", "after", "from...to...", etc. Adding and editing marriages and partnerships is quicker now too as the fields are located in the instant, basic editing fields.
Birthday and anniversary notifications are bigger and brighter, add me cards show you where you need to add more ancestors, you can invite people directly from the tree by adding email addresses and more.
An important change in the new online family tree is that it is now HTML5 based. This means you can access and edit the tree from any mobile device or tablet, which was not possible before. The switch to HTML5 also made it possible for us to offer editing in the MyHeritage app, which is great for people who edit their trees online - you can now truely edit your tree anywhere, anytime.
Family Tree Builder users will also benefit from editing in the new tree as version 7.0 of the program will offer the ability to make edits online and integrate them into your tree in the program.
We're really starting to bring together all the different aspects of MyHeritage to give you a more seamless experience.
There are a lot of good things about the new online family tree. I hope you will give the new online family tree a try and come to appreciate the improvements we've made.
I can understand that you might have doubts when you find the online tree you're familiar with has changed.
So, what's so great about the new tree?
The look of the tree hasn't changed much so you don't need to relearn how to use the tree. Viewing, navigating and searching the tree is basically the same and editing the tree is very much the same as well.
There are some nice additions though, like the Radar, which allow you to see a "map" of the tree and instantly jump to any place. In the previous version if you wanted to travel through the tree, you had to click and drag endlessly to get anywhere.
The new tree editor only has one style (or view) right now - the Classic view has been discontinued - but that will change as we're adding some new styles so you will still be able to see the tree in the view you like best.
In the new online tree when you hover over a person or click on that person's card in the tree you get their basic information, rather than seeing it on the left hand side in a panel. This gives you a lot more real estate for viewing the family tree in context and it also shows you information about people in a more dynamic, integrated fashion. If before you had to click on each person in the tree to see their basic info, now all you have to do is move your mouse around to anyone and their info immediately pops up.
We streamlined the editing options. For example, in the previous version of the family tree editor you also had a lot of other options that didn't really belong in the ADD phase. All those options have appropriate places now that make much more sense. There are more flexible options for adding dates in the new tree editor. You can add dates like "before", "after", "from...to...", etc. Adding and editing marriages and partnerships is quicker now too as the fields are located in the instant, basic editing fields.
Birthday and anniversary notifications are bigger and brighter, add me cards show you where you need to add more ancestors, you can invite people directly from the tree by adding email addresses and more.
An important change in the new online family tree is that it is now HTML5 based. This means you can access and edit the tree from any mobile device or tablet, which was not possible before. The switch to HTML5 also made it possible for us to offer editing in the MyHeritage app, which is great for people who edit their trees online - you can now truely edit your tree anywhere, anytime.
Family Tree Builder users will also benefit from editing in the new tree as version 7.0 of the program will offer the ability to make edits online and integrate them into your tree in the program.
We're really starting to bring together all the different aspects of MyHeritage to give you a more seamless experience.
There are a lot of good things about the new online family tree. I hope you will give the new online family tree a try and come to appreciate the improvements we've made.
Kind regards,
Lior
MyHeritage team
Let me be contrarian and say that I actually prefer the new look for the reasons stated above - the radar and the increased screen real estate. So Lior, please switch me over to the new format.
To Lior Shaked--I am one of the lucky folks who still have the option of viewing the classic rather than the modern view. I also heartily DISLIKE the modern view and use it only occasionally when absolutely necessary, because I use FTB to work on the tree. Please restore the classic view option for those who vastly prefer it and DO NOT take it away from those of us who still have it. For me the beauty of the classic view was a very important reason for choosing myHeritage in the first place!
I have been a premium member since 2009 in the USA. I publish my tree from FTB. So far I still have the option of classic and modern view of the on-line published tree, but dread losing the classic option! Over the years I have begged the development team to at least do a minimal upgrade to the classic view by making profiles directly accessible in the left-hand panel. But even without ever getting that, I would be a very unhappy and angry lady if and when the classic view is denied to me. I have never liked the modern view--it's not aesthetically pleasing and very unpleasant to navigate and work with. I HEARTILY AND UNRESERVEDLY JOIN YOU IN DEMANDING THAT THE CLASSIC VIEW REMAIN AN OPTION FOR ME AND BE RESTORED FOR YOU!!
HELP! I just received a document that shows my Great Great Great Grandmother is someone else and now I need to remove several generations of ancestors. Is there anyway to do this without having to remove each person individually?
You can move people in the family tree using the Attach / Detach feature. You're working with Family Tree Builder, so here are instructions for doing that:
No there are not!!! In almost EVERY database-program you can mark one record (with Ctrl), go to another record and press Shift and all records between theese records will be marked and possible to delete, but NOT in this program. It is totally unaccetable, I have had to delete over 15 000 records one by one because of that.
I am curious to know how does your search engine work and what can I do to better improve my search.
As it stands now, when I place a search for a particular person in the City, County and State where they were born and may have resided the search takes me everywhere outside of the City, County and State but not in City, County and State which I ask it the search to be made.
All search engines I am familiar with exhausts the closest search range that is ask of it before going out of the search area that is initially asked for.
Example: I ask to search for Johnny doe in Waycross Georgia. Your search may give the name Jonny Doe but the initial location is nowhere in Georgia.
When I use another search engine such as (family Search or Ancestry) the search engine goes as close as possible to the person in the City, County and State first, exhausts all possibilities before going to some far off place outside of the range.
This means that one has to use valuable un-necessary time in his research to find what he is looking
The best resource for learning how to utilize SuperSearch is the blog post we did about it when we released the feature. There is a TON of detailed information in the blog post. After reading, you'll pretty much be an expert!
I'm a brand new member, and I agree with Richard. And it's not just "location" that gives unusable, superfluous results...I can search for a very specific individual, one with an unusual name, and with a specific birth date, birth location, etc, and receive thousands of "possible" matches, including people who lived decades earlier (or later) than the individual I'm looking for. The name I want isn't at the top of the list, and I have to assume that it's buried deep in the file--if it's there at all, and if I have the patience to search thousands of entries to find it. Previously I used Ancestry.com, and easily found ancestors whom I can't locate (so far) with this search engine.
Following your advice, I tried the Advanced Search, inputting exact first and last names (LUSK, an uncommon one!) exact date of birth (May 2, 1827) and death (July 18, 1907), and location of birth (Pennsylvania) and death (Allamakee county Iowa).
I got back 167,000 pages of data, consisting of 3,334,401 possible matches. The search engine failed to sort in any logical fashion (i.e. by year of birth, birth location, date of death, etc), so I was forced to plow through entries for men who were born decades after my ancestor died, and lived in states a thousand miles from Pennsylvania.
After going through several pages of this dreck I did the only sensible thing and gave up. Sorry, but this is impossible...you positively must find a way to sort the data so the most promising matches appear first.
I have seen census records for my ancestor, so I know he existed (Ancestry.com has no trouble finding them). I'm a new user at My Heritage, and so far I'm disappointed. This is not what I paid for.
1) You can refine the searches by using the filters on the bottom left of the screen (including the First name and Last name filters which can do a lot of work!)
2) You can search only by specific collections (such as the U.S. census) by choosing them from the main screen of the "Reseach Page" under the "Categories" title.
3) Try viewing the results by pressing the "Summary" view, it gives a much clearer understanding of what you have received from our search engine and gives an opportunity to refine even more.
We are constantly adding new information, and we do take into account the feedback you write. We understand that Ancestry is giving us a hard time competing but what they don't have is the collection of our family trees which is the main source for information. You can find so much useful information just by searching the collection of MyHeritage family trees!
It's been 4 days since my last post. Is anyone at "My Heritage" going to address my question/complaint? Is anyone going to do something to make the searches usable?
I thought you would be interested to know that we are in the midst of some very important changes in the way SuperSearch returns results that will be to your advantage.
Currently SuperSearch works kind of like Google in the sense that it gives you ALL possible results and then ranks them according to relevancy. That's why if you search for a specific name and you might expect to get a few results, you actually end up with thousands or hundreds of thousands of results.
The best results are supposed to be at the top, so even if you get back a huge number of results you might only need to look at the first page. Just like in Google.
We leave the seemingly irrelevant results in the list because its possible that mistakes were made in spelling or with dates. This means results which at first glance might look wrong could actually be good results upon further investigation. We want to give you the opportunity to review those matches and make the decision whether or not they are good or bad rather than automatically filtering those out.
I hope this helps to give you an understanding behind the reason why you receive so many matches when you search a name.
Now to the changes we're making.
1. We're adding a check box to automatically make all search fields exact. Checking this box will greatly reduce the number of results without having to go to the Advanced search and set the exactness of many different fields.
2. Improved ranking. We're doing a lot to increase the relevancy of the results you get at the top of the list. This should greatly increase the chances you will get good results at the top of the list, regardless of the number of hits you get back.
I'm posting this on the other forum thread you posted on as well, for the benefit of anyone who may read this post later.
My family tree no longer displays the number of "steps" there are between me and the family member about whom I'm entering data.
Is there any plan to reinstate this information? I use this information whenever I'm entering data to ensure that I'm not drifting too any "steps" away from me. I don't want to be capturing data on someone who's 30 "steps" away from me!
I should hate to have to terminate my MyHeritage membership and move to Ancestry (where such information is displayed).
Thank you for writing to us.Let me explain why you can no longer see certain relationships in your tree:For trees with less than or equal to 5000 people, you can see all relationships.For trees with over 5000 people and less than 17,000 individuals it is limited:* for direct ancestors/descendants you can see relationships of up to 20 degrees* for non-direct relatives, you can only see the relationships for people that are 2 steps away.We do apologize for the inconvenience, but this is so that your tree loads quickly, and does not get stuck.
The expansion and changes to the MyHeritage site has certainly reduced my satisfaction with the product. While the Family Tree Builder software suits my research method, I find my tree and smartmatches on the MyHeritage site are less and less user friendly.
MyHeritage must do some genuine upgrades for me to continue my Premium membership. I have no particular love for Ancestry.com but MyHeritage is quickly losing my loyalty.
I'm sorry to hear you are unhappy with your experience here at MyHeritage. And we appreciate your taking the time to give feedback. It is important to us.
It might be a little daunting to get back so many SmartMatches for the name, but there is a reason behind showing you so many results.
Whether or not a SmartMatch is relevant to your maternal or paternal side is not a simple question to answer.
For one person a SmartMatch may match even if the name spelling is off by two letters.
For another, it might be okay if the birth date is off by a day or two.
No amount of programming will be able to anticipate your personal needs in that way.
So we leave the answer to the relevance question up to you.
In order to do that, we give you the full list of results.
They aren't just random though - we rank the results and give you the most relevant matches at the top of the list (just like a Google search) according to percentages.
So the reults with the most matching information are listed towards the top and the ones with the least further down the list.
You decide how far into the list you want to go as the web master.
By giving you the full list of SmartMatches you get to choose whether or not the information received in the SmartMatches is relevant to you.
Thank you, and yes, there is logic in what you say.
BUT; (I use mainly FBT but also check the matches in the web site because they are not yet fully synchronised, right?)
I can confirm matches, and I can reject matches. And detail of my action is forwarded to the other party. Fine.
What I can NOT do is simply delete the matches that I do not want to know about.. Or even give them a fourth designation, say 'Ignored' that would bring them to the bottom of the page, below 'rejected'. Without contact with the other party (or with contact if you can tell them I 'ignored' the match).
Especially in FBT (and probably in the web site) if I neither confirm nor reject a match it is STILL sitting there, still marked 'Undetermined', next time I look at the matches for that person. So what do I do? Check all those entries AGAIN; certainly I have no idea whether I have checked them previously and there is no provision for a note to that effect to go on the 'match'.
