AncestryDNA®: Making the Most of Your Match List | Tips & Tricks Virtual Event | Ancestry®

Your system for organizing "Groups" really resonated with me. I am applying your suggestions and it has made seeing how my tree fits together much easier. Thanks!

I am very experienced, BUT I needed to hear this. I learned I could sort my match to see their relationship to a match. I will go back to the first 2 videos you mentioned. ty

DNA has been helpful for me, even if I still have big gaps and a small number of matches. I have one maternal 1st cousin match in the UK, and a 2nd cousin match in Germany on my dad's side. I'm still trying to convince my 86 yr old mom to test. What I have learned is my parents were not the first to emigrate from Germany! Siblings of my paternal 2x great-grandfather and of my 4x great-grandfather went to America back in the 1800s. I've connected 7 matches to my tree, 4 of them are 8cM matches in the 4th cousin range. I have a floater tree connecting a bunch of other DNA matches but I haven't found the connections to me yet. I'm so close to breaking through my last set of great-grandparents. It's been a waiting game for me because of lack of documents, waiting for people to test and/or build a tree. .....my husband's side has been easy in comparison.

I wish the Add/Edit Relationship feature would allow us to manually enter a relationship (ie 6th cousin twice removed, etc) instead of the Other option. My husband has some endogamy and double cousins in his tree, so there are a number of higher centimorgan matches with connections that go further back.

Hi Crista, your videos are excellent! I’m an intermediate user and have discovered a tool that would really help me when working through my matches. You can currently filter the groups you want to look at, but there are many times that filtering “out” a group would really help as well. Especially when I’m trying to see if I’ve missed anyone. Would you consider recommending this to your programmers as an upgrade? Thank you!

Crista thanks so much, a refresher on groups, but learning how to go with the common ancestor I was able to figure out who those people are that don't use there name, I can now link them to my tree

A feature that would be a reasonable chromosomeBrowser substitute would be if for each match it lists which chromosome is associated with the largest segment, and also which shared matches are on the largest segment.... I think in many situations the vast majority of the matches in common would be on the smallest segment. So you would be able to filter out a few matches that are more relevant.

Hi Christa from Australia. Thank you for this tutorial it clarified my family tree. I did the top 10 of my matches really easily, but when looking at 2 of my great grandparents, (who were first cousins), I wondered how to make the colour coding work? Do I take it back another generation and find 15 different colours?

Almost everything was new to me, and it's fascinating. I didn't even know about Windows+. to get an emoji! Can't wait to put this into place with my Match List.

I had two NPE's at the grandparent level. Both my maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather were not the children of their fathers. So, I got a new surname. Not as devastating as my friend who discovered she was not her father's daughter. But still devastated as my sisters and I were the only male line descendants of our 2nd great grandfather and we were proud to carry the family name. I easily found my grandmother's father after a half granduncle DNA match. I know the family my grandfather belongs to, and I have it down to two sons of my new 2nd great grandfather. One never had children and he died at age 27 due to brain cancer. The other son has not had any descendants take DNA tests yet. All of the other children of this 2nd great grandfather have had DNA testers and I have ruled them out as the ancestor of my grandfather. My guess is on the one who died at age 27 due to where he lived at the time and he worked at the same rubber plant as my previous great grandfather.

On my DNA matches, out of the first TOP 10, 7 were cousins that I did not know because they were related through these two unknown great grandparents.

And yes, I am an identical twin and we have both tested. My niece has not yet tested but I know that she will also show up as my daughter because biologically she shares 50% of my DNA.

Need To Make A Marriage Name Box and Maiden Name Box For Females On Ancestry

Great, helped me see how to use the match list and its purpose.

How do I get the # of matches to show up on my All Matches? I so enjoyed the class.

I’m wanting to learn how to break down a brick wall. I enjoyed the video and the pace. I didn’t learn anything new but going over everything again to make sure I’m understanding everything is great. I look forward to the next one.

Is there a way to change the gender once already entered?

What about the brick walls that DNA has created! For example, 4 of my top ten matches (281, 247, 125, and 55cM) are unknown to me, and are unknown to anyone else researching my (our) tree. None of those matches have ANY people in their trees that match with each other, or with our tree. All we know is that they all share matches with my paternal great grandparents side! HELP...!

It takes me 2 hrs to watch your 1 hr video because I'm trying new things that you showed us and to see how I am doing things and if I need to change a few things. Thanik you Crista for what you do.

One thing that would be a huge help in using the match list would be filtering by ethnicity origins. For example, my 2x great-grandfather likely had German DNA, but he changed his name when he married, which is the earliest third I have - so he is a brick wall. If I could filter my maternal matches by only including those that have German DNA, it might help finding a common ancestor, or at least the ancestral name.

This has been a great tutorial for setting up groups. I recently got my DNA results and the match page has been daunting in many ways but this will give me a better understanding of who goes where and why. Thanks!

I learned how to make groups!

OMG thank you for this information. It was absolutely awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I sooooo needed this information.

Helped me to make groups that make sense.... Can't wait to learn the advanced beginner / next steps video when you make it!!!

Pls help me connect the dots on how to break down my brick wall 😢

How do I use cm?

Hello, I have a question. Why? Would USA replace a name and a location 🤔

I've been researching for 20+ years, and have identified & verified quite a few of my DNA matches... but my Groups were a random mess! I've used this excellent tutorial to restructure my Groups based on my 8 great grandparents, which looks like it is going to be a great help with the many DNA matches who don't have trees, don't have any common ancestors on their trees, and/or are 'unnassigned'. Specifically, apart from overlaying DNA evidence to my research, I'm looking to break down a brickwall with my 3 x paternal GGF... I am hopeful that this will help!

It's been at least 40 years since my parents, aunts and uncles died, both parents are NPE's as is one grandparent, I'm lucky to get three matches a year above 20cM. The biggest problem I have is Ancestry users who test an older relative who isn't a registered user and attach the result as their own. Often the only clue is the username is one gender and the icon/relationships show as the other gender.

Thank you for this webinar and great information to navigate DNA on Ancestry.

Hi Crista, who can I talk to so they will make it possible to sort matches by number of segments? With those of us doing “Leeds Method,” or trying other ways to compare matches, I would like the ability to look at matches with only one segment (without having to click on each one). Thanks!

Ancestry removed half of cM that I share with my 4th cousin. Why would you do it? We used gedmatch to see where we match and the total cMs we match and it was twice as much as Ancestry showed

Please explain more about unknown grandparents, because my father was adopted. I checked all second and third generations, but it still doesn't make sense . Thanks

Very informative again Crista! Time for me to start customising the groups. Thank you 😍ps I learnt how to do the emojis too!! 😁

If my biological father is the older brother of the man ,Who is in my birth certificate 😢.

I have been working on my adopted cousin’s tree for a while now. I found his bio mom the year after she passed unfortunately but he has a sister and a big family but she never said who his father was.

I am having trouble finding his father because it looks like his father is illegitimate and born around ww2. I have worked out the 2 families but I just can’t condense down to his father.
Maybe I’m afraid of making a mistake. I’m very close.

I have been working on my adopted cousin’s tree for a while now. I found his bio mom the year after she passed unfortunately but he has a sister and a big family but she never said who his father was.

I am having trouble finding his father because it looks like his father is illegitimate and born around ww2. I have worked out the 2 families but I just can’t condense down to his father.
Maybe I’m afraid of making a mistake. I’m very close.

you mentioned that you don’t typically use your DNA test because you can use your parents' matches instead. I would suggest you take a look at your own matches too. I found an 11cM paternal match on my list that doesn’t show up on my father's dna matches list. This match has shared matches all across my father‘s family tree, yet for some reason the person doesn’t match my dad‘s DNA matches. I’m guessing it's some kind of bug on the website. So don't ignore your test results 😊

Thanks so much for sharing your tree. I do color coded to my tree too. On the thruline relationship with white boxs and white - - line now I know what it means. I watching Connie Knox on Genealogy TV, Aimee Cross and you and I learn a lot each time I watch Connie, Aimee and you thanks again

Great video I wish I'd had available when I started DNA two & a half years ago. I've done Leeds Method to sort matches but I found your explanation great and liked your colour coded hearts and using the suffix box. Think I'm going to do that. Thank you

Hey, I learned that I can add notes for people with cryptic names, and that I can sort the ProTools right-hand column.

Thank you Crista, I love your heart color coding idea and am going through my tree setting it up now!

What happened to the Ancestor Birth Locations feature? I was using it before, no it doesn't seem to work on my account. What must I do in order to restore it? I loved that feature!

Thank you Crista! A very informative video! Think I will delete (ouch!) my current "match" system and start over using what you do as a guideline. Previously I had "coupled" great grandparents together. I am hoping to discover who my mystery maternal 2xgt grandparents are in Ireland and I am struggling as my parents and grandparents are all deceased and not DNA tested.

Is there a reason the color/number assigned are not in order on your siblings?

Both of my parents & their siblings and grandparents are deceased, I have hit a wall at my 4th G grandfather Wallis. What do I do?
Thanks
Randy

When endogamy upon endogamy comes into play... Oh boy does that need some patience & figuring out!

Crista--what's your e-mail address at work? I have and want to show you some things.

How to make well thought out groups on Ancestry. Very useful. Thank you!

I have a cousin who is not showing up as a match on Ancestry even when I lover the centimorgans; yet , he is showing up as a cousin on GEDMatch. Wonder why that happens?