Ancestry Tags, Notes and Comments

If you have a family tree on Ancestry you may find Tags, Notes and Comments features useful in planning and documenting your research.

What are Tags, Notes and Comments?

Tags, Notes and Comments are placed on the profiles of individuals in your family tree. Tags appear under the individual’s name at the top of the profile and are added by clicking on the pencil icon. Notes and Comments can be accessed under the Tools menu. If you have activated the Research Tools toolbar, you can access them from the menu that appears under the individual’s name on their profile.

Using Tags

Tags are basically labels that are placed on a profile to identify a characteristic of that person or highlight an aspect of your research into that person. Tags are useful visual indicators of information that you judge important.

For example, if you add a ‘Direct Ancestor’ tag to all the profiles on your direct line, as you navigate around your tree you can instantly see if the individual you are viewing is a direct ancestor.

You can also use a Tag as a filter when you search your tree and call up everyone in your tree with that tag. For example, I add a Custom Tag (see below) ‘Convict’, to the profiles of individuals in my tree that came to Australia as convicts.

When I want to research my convicts, I can bring up a list of all of them using that Tag. This list cannot be printed, but you can create and save an image, as I have done below.

Other Tags that I find useful

I add the ‘DNA Match’ Tag to anyone in my tree who is a DNA match. Then I add the ‘Common DNA Ancestor’ Tag to the ancestor or ancestral couple who we are both descended from.

I also add the ‘DNA Connection’ Tag to each profile along the line from that match to our shared ancestor. This helps me trace the line of our connection. It also provides information for other DNA matches if they access my tree to determine how they may be related to me.

I use my Ancestry tree as a research tool. This means that there are individuals and information in the tree for which I do not yet have sufficient evidence. If other researchers want to copy individuals or information from my tree they should verify the information themselves. However, I like to be helpful and draw their attention to anything that is not yet verified or where I have doubts.

If the questionable information is about a particular event, I can put a statement or TBC in the description field of that event. However, if the entire individual is questionable then I can add the ‘Unverified’ Tag to the profile. This also helps my own research as it reminds me where the evidence is insufficient.

Standard Tags and Custom Tags

Standard Tags are those defined by Ancestry and are available for use on all family trees. Custom Tags are those that you define for a particular tree. If you want to use them on other trees, you need to define them for each one. (Ancestry Help article)

Searching a tree by Tags

You can search your tree for everyone with a particular Tag or a combination of multiple Tags. (See above Ancestry Help article for instructions)

Using Notes and Comments

Ancestry suggests that you use Notes and Comments to record information, stories, tasks and thoughts. They could also be used to plan your research and list research questions, hypotheses and research tasks.

Privacy

Notes are private and Comments are public. Only you and anyone that you invite to your tree as Editor can see your Notes.

If your tree is public, then anyone can see the Comments (except on profiles of living people). That means you can add draft conclusions or thoughts to your Notes without worrying who might see or copy them. You might prefer to do that, rather than adding unverified information to a profile.

Printing

While you can print both Notes and Comments when you print a profile from your tree, only the Notes are included if you download your tree as a GEDCOM file.

I ran a test on one of my trees with Notes and Comments, then imported the file into Legacy family tree. The Notes were successfully incorporated into the Notes section of the individual but the Comments were not. Similarly, Tags were not included when I downloaded the tree from Ancestry.

The fact that Notes can be printed with a profile and are included when you download a copy of your tree makes them a good tool for documenting your research.

However, the downside is that Notes can only be attached to a single individual and I believe that research should be planned at the family level or higher. If you were able to compile all the Notes for a family group that would help, but unfortunately you cannot.

In my view, Notes and Comments are useful tools, but they are not a decent alternative to a research plan.

More information

For more of my articles on documenting your family history, go to the Document page.

For more of my articles about analysing sources, go to the Analyse page.

For more of my articles and information about using DNA in family history, head to my DNA in family history page.

Post last updated 11 June 2024