Geni User Tips

Here is a visual walkthrough on how to tag a photo on Geni using the profile ID from any person. If you have any further questions, feel free to leave them in the comment section below this post.

If you’re a Geni Pro Member, you have the ability to view relationship paths. Put simply, this features shows you how any two people are most closely related on the World Family Tree. Here’s how to view the relationship between two people without your profile being one of them. First, search for the profile you’d like to start with. In this example, I’m starting with Prince William. Once you find the profile, go to the… Read the full story

Geni Projects is a great feature for genealogists. It allows you to make a dedicated section to keep track of a specific aspect of your research. For example, today’s highlighted Project is the US Presidents and Vice Presidents. If you want to make a cool new Project, here’s how: First, go to the More drop-down menu, and then select “Projects” Next, click the “Start a new Project” button. Now, a lightbox will pop up with… Read the full story

We love that Geni is used the whole world over. It’s very important to us to bridge the language gap. Thanks to Tr8n, we now have many translation options. Here’s how to switch which language Geni displays in: 1) Go to the language drop-down menu in the upper right-hand corner. 2) Scroll down, and then select the language you’d like to read Geni in. 3) Now you can use Geni in your native language. If… Read the full story

We want you to know how cool being a Geni Pro Member is, so we have a 14-day free trial of our service. To set it up, scroll down to the bottom of the Geni homepage and click the red “Try Geni Pro for Free” link. You’ll then be directed to our Pro Member sign-up page. If you’re just interested in trying out the trial, don’t worry too much about which plan you pick. Now… Read the full story

Oral history and interviews are a huge part of genealogy. We here at Geni feel it’s important to share this with your whole tree, so we have a video sharing feature built right into our site. Here’s how to use it. First of all, go to the “More” menu and select “Videos.” In the right hand side, click the green “Add Video” button. Click the “Choose File” button, and then select the video file you’d… Read the full story

Sometimes you lose interest in a particular discussion. Getting updates from that topic can be very annoying. As fortune would have it, it’s easy to unfollow any discussion taking place on Geni. First, go to the Discussion page from the “More” menu. Now, make sure that you’re viewing discussions that you’re currently following. You can change that with the drop-down menu on the right. Now go into the discussion you’re no longer interested in and… Read the full story

So, now that you’ve made your documents useful, you can add facts and sources to your profiles. First, go to the profile you’d like to work on. Go to the Sources tab, and then click on “Add Source.” Pick the document you’d like to cite, and then click “Continue.” From there, you can add the citations for the relevant facts of the profile in question. Make sure to add clear notes to avoid confusion when… Read the full story

So, you uploaded a document to Geni. Now what do you do? It’s not doing any good just sitting there without being linked to the relevant data. First off, go to the documents page on Geni. Next, click on the document in which you’d like to add your data. Now click on the edit button in the upper righthand corner. Now, you’ll want to provide as much information as possible about your document. Give it… Read the full story

Earlier this month we announced that we were giving all users access to enhanced relationship paths for the month of August. Last week we showed you how to find famous relatives in three easy steps. But what if you want to see if two notable figures, such as Barack Obama and James Madison, are related to each other? Here’s how to find the relationship between two profiles: Click the green thumbtack on the top right… Read the full story

August is free relationship path month here at Geni. This means that you can find relationship paths to very distant relatives. If you are part of our big tree, there is a good chance that you have some famous relatives. Here’s three easy steps to find your famous relatives:   Go to our list of popular profiles Click on the name of a profile you find interesting (I’m going to see if I’m related to… Read the full story

Today is Saint Patrick’s Day – do you know where your Irish ancestors are? Geni makes it easy to discover them – if you do have ancestors born in Ireland you’ll find them here: Your Irish ancestors list The statistics feature is another great way to view this and to fill in missing data. View your country of birth chart If you have a lot of Irish ancestry, they’ll show up right in this chart…. Read the full story

The accuracy of the data on Geni is obviously very important. Sometimes bad data is added to a profile by mistake, for example missing a digit when entering a year of birth. Sometimes the bad data comes from a bad gedcom file. In any case, we've taken steps in the past to improve our error correction to prevent or eliminate bad data. For example, when you upload a gedcom, we automatically mark as deceased anyone… Read the full story

On Geni the objective is to create a collaborative environment where multiple family members can work together to build, share, and preserve a rich family history. With each additional family member getting involved, the workload decreases that much more and/or the amount of shared content increases that much more. Therefore, over the next three days we will be posting a 3 part guide that will help you activate your tree in becoming a truly collaborative… Read the full story

Step Three: Engage Family Members as They Join As family members start to accept the invitations make sure that you welcome them to the Tree. You can do this by simply sending them a quick message to their GuestBook, which is located at the bottom of their Profile. You may also want to tell them about Geni and that you are trying to create a place for your family to build and preserve family history… Read the full story

Step Five: Send Reminders It is possible that family members overlooked your initial invitation and accidentally deleted it. Therefore, if a few weeks go by and they did not yet join, you may want to send them a reminder invitation. To do this, go to the Invite page, by clicking on the Invite link in the upper right hand corner of any page within Geni. Then click the Invitation History link. This will direct you… Read the full story

Have you ever looked at a family reunion photo with 15 or more people accompanied by a list of names beneath the photo? If so, you probably know how hard it is to determine which name matches with the approprite face. Geni now offers a solution to this problem. You can now tag and identify people within your Geni photos which will allow anyone viewing the photo to associate the name with the face. To… Read the full story

One of the biggest advantages of using the Internet for genealogy research is the ability to exchange information with other researchers or interested parties. To share genealogical information, genealogists often transfer electronic documents containing genealogical information. The most common way to do this is to send that information as a GEDCOM file. What does GEDCOM stand for?GEDCOM is an acronym for GEnealogical Data COMmunication. When saved, transferred or shared, this data usually takes the form… Read the full story

To help you navigate around your tree we have introduced some new terms. This page will help you understand. Tree Your Tree is all of your blood relatives and their partners. Forest Forest page Where Trees and the Forest is Used Map Search List View Privacy Currently, anyone connected to you on Geni, whether a blood relative, an in-law, an in-law of an in-law, and so on, can navigate to your part of the tree…. Read the full story

Did you know that when you add a new profile to Geni, you are the ‘Profile Manager’ of that profile? This means that you have additional control over who can edit and search for these profiles. Here are the default settings for Managed Profiles: What do these settings mean? Who can edit? Choose ‘Only Me’ if you don’t want to grant anyone else access to edit these profiles. Choose ‘Entire Tree’ to allow others in… Read the full story

For much of North American and Europe, today is Valentine’s Day. Geni is the easiest way to share your Valentine’s thoughts with those you love. Here are some ideas to help make this day special for your family. Post News Let your family know that you are thinking about them by posting a quick “Happy Valentine’s Everyone!” as your Latest News. Next time your Family logs in to Geni they will see your message on… Read the full story

Because we enable our users to connect with their family through marriage as well as blood relations, our users have discovered and connected with relatives far beyond the traditional genealogical limitation of blood relatives. However, as trees continue to grow in size, the relationships between distant people become less and less relevant. In the next few weeks, we will make some changes to enhance the privacy and performance of your tree, while preserving your ability… Read the full story

Did you know that your Family group determines whose stories you see in your Family News? Adding additional people to your Family group is a great way to stay in touch with them. Let’s see how to easily view who is in your Family group and add the people you want. View your Family group You can view who is currently in your Family group by selecting the ‘My Family’ list view. Click the My… Read the full story

The response to the new Timeline and Events features on Geni has been tremendous. You may have noticed stories about your family creating new events in your Family News; perhaps you have added some events to your own Timeline. Here are a few quick tips to help you get the most out of this feature: 1. Add yourself to events: Wherever you see an event click on the name of the event to view the… Read the full story

One of the goals of Geni is to make it easier to stay in touch with your family. The new Latest News feature is a quick and easy way to keep your family updated. Your Latest News will appear as an update on your Family’s News page. You can post your Latest News in two places: Home: Just enter your update into the text box (shown below) and click the ‘post news’ button. Profile: You… Read the full story

We have created a new Video FAQ. This one covers our new Profile Privacy features. You can view all of our Video FAQs here. Feel free to share this or any of our videos with your family and friends. Discuss this story

We are always looking for ways to help our users communicate with us and with each other. As part of this effort we have joined together with Netvibes to create a Geni Universe. Netvibes is free service which allows you to create a ‘personal start page’ on the internet. By adding the Geni Universe to your Netvibes page, you can track our Forum, Wiki, Blog, Press, Del.icio.us, and YouTube community pages all from one page…. Read the full story

We have created a third Video FAQ. This one covers the features of our Advanced Photo Uploader. You can view all of our Video FAQs here. Discuss this story

Last week we posted our first video How to Get Started on Geni.com. Here is our second video, How to Upload Photos on Geni.com. If you ‘subscribe’ to our videos on our YouTube page you will be notified of new videos as we post them. Let us know what you think!

We are creating a series of videos to help walk our users through some of the Geni’s features. The first video, ‘How To Get Started on Geni.com’, is posted below. This video is hosted on YouTube so you can easily share it with your friends who are looking for a little extra help starting their Geni tree. If you ‘subscribe’ to our videos on our YouTube page you will be notified of new videos as… Read the full story

One of our users has created a frappr map for Geni users.  Take a look at where some of your fellow Geni users are from and add yourself to the map!     Discuss this story

. . . and they have great things to say in our Forums.  If you haven’t stopped by our Forums lately you may want to visit.  There are some great discussions going on over there.  Here are some great discussions happening right now if you want to join in or just read some helpful information. Guide to Social Data Mining – Finding that long last family member using the Internet Famous People – Do you… Read the full story

Here’s a tip from a highly active member, Philip L. who has over 2,000 family members on his tree  “I find that an easy way to locate younger family members is to use social networking sites like Myspace.  I take tidbits about someone in my genealogy and I find matches. I then shoot them email messages informing them that I’d like to give them access to our family site.  I’ve been able to re-connect with… Read the full story