This morning, I started adding shadow records to my tree. These are records of family members that are not true records, but rather pointers to other family trees, something similar to the links that are being established automatically through the smart matches, but a bit more personal, in that I can offer information as to what type of information our family members may find on these other trees.
I added the email addresses of the persons maintaining these other trees to the shadow records as "contact information."
My Heritage then automatically (without informing me about it!) sent out a welcoming message to those "new members" of my website. What bothers me is that such a message was sent to another person living in Switzerland. Therefore, that message was sent in German ... and the message, which MyHeritage claimed came from me, was written in the familiar "Du" form, whereas I am on "Sie" terms with that individual. This is embarrassing!
When you add an email to the contact info in the family tree, the member is invited to your site.
We apologize for the inconvenience that you were not aware of this earlier.
Regarding the formality of the invitation email sent out, the emails are standard mails, and cannot be edited. What you can do is to send a mail to the user (through the MyHeritage inbox) and explain this.
Thanks, Esther! There isn't really any good answer. I just wanted you guys (and gals) to be aware of the problem.
Unfortunately, politeness forms in different languages are difficult to handle appropriately in an automated fashion. In German, there is a familiar "Du" form (like the extinct "thou" in English), and a formal "Sie" form (like the English "you"). In many languages, these different forms are disappearing or have already disappeared, but at least here in Switzerland, they are alive and well (in all four of our national languages).
If you address someone on "Du" terms whom you don't know very well and with whom you haven't previously agreed to use that form, you are insulting the person, because you express a lack of respect for him or her. On the other hand, if you address a person with whom you are on "Du" terms afterward using the formal "Sie," this is an even bigger insult, because you are telling that person that s/he is no longer your friend.
Evidently, MyHeritage has no way of knowing, which form to use in any specific situation, and therefore, the process cannot be automated without causing potential problems.
In this particular circumstance, it wasn't so bad, because all of the people who were invited to my website without my knowledge are themselves managers of MyHeritage trees, and therefore, they realized perfectly well that the email hadn't come from me.
That was a great explanation. It is ridiculous that Heritage takes it upon themselves to do all of this inviting. I think the paying customers should have more say on what is going on with their tree(s) they work so hard on. I'm glad the situation worked out well for you.
Email says: "Please be kind to the other users and provide your confirmation”
I truly appreciate your suggestion to be kind and as much as I'd love to oblige I cannot afford to go PAY any MONEY out of pocket towards this.. I love doing family genealogy and I'm sorry that I cannot contribute financially but my funds are as limited as they can get. I have asked other family members to help support but everyone wants FREE.. sorry BUT making me feel guilty by saying PLEASE BE KIND is not proper as it makes it look like we don't want to confirm when in fact it's rather the opposite it's your people and your service who has set restrictions limiting this ability only to PAYING CUSTOMERS making the rest of us who contribute a wealth of great information and photos only to be told that OUR INFORMATION is making your website worth something and getting nothing in return for it.. It's my opinion that your service should be paying us people for contributing such a wealth of information FREE so your site can profit off of US.... It's my opinion that we the Information contributors deserve some recognition for our posting.. of FREEEEEE INPUT to your profit generating site.... thanks for hearing me out....
I have been inviting guests to view my tree. Unfortunately, when they go to look at it, several of the areas are masked (grayed out), showing them no information. They are unable to verify if the info I am putting there is correct. Although I DO NOT want everybody to go and correct any info I have put down, I would like them to be able to see if the info is correct. How can I do this? Or do I need to invite them from the site directly, rather than sending them a link from another e-mail account?
u will have to invite them as members of the site, info of all living people should be masked out to the general guests. Before inviting them .>SETTING, >PRIVACY, and select prefered settings.
I have been inviting guests to view my tree. Unfortunately, when they go to look at it, several of the areas are masked (grayed out), showing them no information. They are unable to verify if the info I am putting there is correct. Although I DO NOT want everybody to go and correct any info I have put down, I would like them to be able to see if the info is correct. How can I do this? Or do I need to invite them from the site directly, rather than sending them a link from another e-mail account?
Thank you for your reply. It does clearify many things.
Only members (whom you can always dis-invite) have full access unless you specify otherwise under Settings. For non-members/guests living persons are grayed out as (private). Personally, I like it that way.
I am aged 75 and have been researching my familt tree for many years,the old way[ Pen and Paper] camera .buying Birth ,Death and Mariage certificates,having taught myself the computerONE person with the help of SMART MATCHES downloaded 61Photos ,212 Family Members from my G/G/G/Grand Father downTO MY Mother,without my knowledge untill they appeared on my smart matches.Believe me it hurts to see all your data even my private comments replicated on another persons site .
Only members (whom you can always dis-invite) have full access unless you specify otherwise under Settings. For non-members/guests living persons are grayed out as (private). Personally, I like it that way.
Dear Mavis Ling--Somehow our correspondence got mixed up, probably because I appear as 'Ing'. The way you are most likely to prevent downloads is to make your site completely private, although a determined person could probably still do it. I, however, have found that being generous with my (enormous) research and information has paid me back many times over. Of course I appreciate it when people ask if it is okay and thank me, but I am old enough (70) not to expect but always be delighted by good manners. I myself always ask if it is okay and thank people when I download something. I, too, started with one little sheet of paper containing 6 generations put together by my grandmother in the 1930's and preserved through the WWII Japanese concentration camp years in Indonesia and was generously helped along by several people researching the same ancestors. I hope you don't let your hurt feelings interfere with the enjoyment of your genealogical work, which, after all, is a labor of love and will surely contribute to your spot in heaven by rescuing a whole lot of people from total oblivion. I wish you all the best--Ingrid Frank.
It seems that pictures can only be deleted in tree mode, not from the photo album. If the picture you wish to delete from the photo album is not associated with any record in the tree, "add" yourself to that picture. Now that picture shows up as a picture of yourself in tree mode. Once in tree more, you can "view all pictures" associated to your record ... and there you'll see the delete button to get rid of the picture altogether.
If both people are on the same tree then you can connect them by clicking on the sign o the person's name card. If they aren't in the same tree, I don't think there is anything you can do. I could be wrong on the last part, but I don't think so.
What you can do is work with shadow records. On your tree, you create a new person by the name "continuation cf. such-and-such website." Then you add a fact to that record that contains the link to that webpage. The manager of the other tree can do the same, pointing to your website.
This is evidently not the same as merging the two trees, because you cannot search across tree borders, but it is better than nothing.
The primary stumbling block with merging trees are the record numbers. Each tree has record numbers starting with #1. By merging the trees, you would need to renumber all of the records. Otherwise the software will get confused.
There are certainly tools available outside MyHeritage / Family Tree Builder that will allow you to merge two separate GED files, but using any of those opens another can of worms, because you will at least lose all of your photographs, since MyHeritage / Family Tree Builder will not reimport them together with the merged tree.
I had ended up with duplicate records when I imported GEDCOM files to my family tree. I've since deleted the duplicates but now I need to renumber the records as there are huge gaps in the numbering. Is there any way I can do this?
I have imported an old GEDCOM file, changed the "Home Person" (to me...) but exporting data the "Home Person" (#1 record) of the old GEDCOM file still is #1.
I have a problem with fun charts. When I create such diagrams the language is automatically russian. I have danish as the main language and it would be nice to be able to change language while creating diagrams. How do i change language from russian to danish (or norwegian or english) in diagrams?
If you change your display language on your site (by clicking on the small flag in the bottom corner of the site), then you can then create a chart in the language that you are viewing the site in.
Has anyone had trouble getting a resonse from the support team? I have emailed them twice and received a promise that they would get back to me, but haven't received anything in four days. Maybe one of you has an answer for my problem. I purchased the premium upgrade, but when I try to upgrade from within the Family Building program, I get the message "The software is unable to communicate with Myheritage.com. My Internet is working fine, so I don't know what the problem is. I am ready to cancel. Thank you.
