Guides
In-depth genealogy how-tos and research walkthroughs.
Cousin Chart: How to Figure Out Any Cousin Relationship
A plain-English cousin chart: what first, second, and third cousins mean, what 'once removed' really means, and how to name any relationship in seconds.
ChatGPT for Genealogy: What It's Great At, Where It Fails, and 8 Prompts to Try
How to use ChatGPT for genealogy: what a general chatbot does well, where it invents facts, a practical prompt library, and when a purpose-built research AI wins.
How to Open a GEDCOM (.ged) File — Free, in Your Browser
How to open a GEDCOM (.ged) file for free without installing anything: view it as a family tree in your browser, and fix files that won't open or look garbled.
Ancestor Name Variants: Why the Spelling Keeps Changing
Why an ancestor's name looks different in every record — nicknames, clerk mishearing, transliteration — and how to search past the spelling to find the person.
AI Genealogy: How AI Is Changing Family History Research
What AI actually does for genealogy in 2026 (record search, handwriting transcription, tree building, narrated video) and the failures to watch for.
Family History Video: How a Documented Life Becomes a Film
What a family history video is, why AI narration beats DIY editing, what grounded narration means, and which tools can actually make one in 2026.
How to Turn Family History into a Video, Step by Step
A practical route from a shoebox of photos and records to a finished family video: what to gather, what the narration needs, and which steps to automate.
Genealogy Brick Walls: How to Restart a Stalled Line
A stalled line is usually a research problem, not a missing record. Negative searching, indexing failures, jurisdiction changes, and record substitution.
Can't Find a Birth Record? What to Search Instead
No birth record found is usually normal, not a dead end. When civil registration began, why births went unregistered, and the substitutes that carry the fact.
How to Find a Maiden Name in Old Records
Married women vanish from records by legal design. Where a maiden name survives anyway: marriage bonds, children's records, probate files, death certificates.
Two Ancestors With the Same Name: How to Tell Them Apart
Same-name ancestors get conflated one plausible record at a time. How to separate identities with timelines, geography, witnesses, and one-slot record sets.
Burned Counties and Lost Censuses: Researching Around Destroyed Records
What the 1890 census fire, burned courthouses, and the 1922 Dublin destruction actually destroyed, what survived, and the substitute records to search instead.
GEDCOM to Excel: Turn a .ged File Into a Spreadsheet
Convert a GEDCOM to Excel or CSV in your browser: the columns worth having, why accented names arrive broken, and what a spreadsheet cannot hold.
How to Export Your Family Tree from Ancestry as a GEDCOM
Export an Ancestry tree as a GEDCOM: the five steps in Tree Settings, why the file arrives zipped, what it leaves out, and what to do with the .ged next.
How to Export Your Family Tree from MyHeritage as a GEDCOM
Export a MyHeritage tree as a GEDCOM from the website or Family Tree Builder, what the photo option actually does, and how the paid Backup service differs.
How to Export Your Family Tree from FamilySearch as a GEDCOM
FamilySearch exports up to eight generations as GEDCOM 7, while its own help pages still say it cannot be done. What works, and what the file leaves out.
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