Some people eat, sleep and chew gum, I do genealogy and write...

Thursday, June 1, 2017

Update on MyHeritage

MyHeritage.com is evolving rapidly. New features are being added regularly. Some of these changes are refinements to existing features but some add completely new features. I will try to highlight the changes and new features as they occur.

At the forefront of these changes is their DNA Testing and Reporting. For example, in the view of my own DNA report, there are several additions and changes. One important feature is the little gear icon.


In this popup menu, you can choose which of the views, based on the version of the Beta test, that you want to view. Here are my more refined results after applying the latest Beta test.

You can see more specific details than the original report that was displayed at the beginning of this post. I will be writing more about these changes in the very near future. Also, for the present, if you subscribe to MyHeritage.com, you can upload another company's DNA test and have the results included in your ethnicity estimate.

Another new feature of the program is the Tree Consistency Checker.



This is a valuable addition to your family tree on MyHeritage.com. However, it may precipitate a domino effect with your existing data, especially if you compare what you have with what is on the FamilySearch.org Family Tree, just to mention one possibility. For example, the first entry in my list of problems raises some extensive issues with some traditional information that has been put into the Family Tree by other users. This one problem raises hours of research and review.

Photo Discovery

The new Photo Discovery section is in the Discoveries tab and then in the Instant Discoveries option.


If you have any Photo Discoveries, they will show up when you click on the link.


One of the issues with the family tree view on MyHeritage.com is the way female names are shown. Previously, changing the view was difficult to find. Now there is a shortcut to change the way female names are presented in your family tree. When you are in the family tree view, there is a gear icon in the upper right-hand corner that gives you a number of formatting options, including customizing the way female names are displayed.


You have several choices and can decide how you want other options to be displayed also.

Stay tuned for more DNA comments and other changes on the website.

3 comments:

  1. I have been working in My Heritage some and have never been fond of their vertical pedigree. In playing around with family DNA results, I find that I detest it. In a horizontal pedigree view, you have a nice compact columns of direct ancestors with a large number of names visible at once. In My Heritage’s vertical view, in order to read the names, you nave to zoom in so far that only a couple of ancestors names show at once and it is nearly impossible to follow direct ancestral lines which are all one is really interested in when trying to view possible DNA connections.

    Despite searching through the site including as many help screens as I can find, I have not been able to find a way to change the view. I am just missing something? Do they have plans to fix this?

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    1. I am afraid that a change is unlikely. Nearly all of the 90 million users of the program are only familiar with the view used by MyHeritage. Those of us who are familiar with other views are a very small minority. But I would like a landscape view also.

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    2. I would also MUCH prefer a landscape view. It's the way I've been drawing my own charts for 30 years.

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