What problem does Save Public Member Trees to CSV solve?
Ancestry’s Public Member Trees search shows each person once, with a count of how many members’ trees they appear in, and the View all window lists those trees ten at a time with no way to save them. Comparing what different members have recorded for the same ancestor means clicking through every page and copying dates, places and parents by hand. Save Public Member Trees to CSV adds a download button to that window which saves every tree the person appears in to a single CSV file, so you can compare all of the versions side by side and open any tree directly.
How does Save Public Member Trees to CSV work?
On the Public Member Trees search results on Ancestry, clicking a person’s tree count or View all opens a window listing every tree that person appears in, ten at a time. A new button titled Download CSV is added to the top of that window. Clicking it reads every page of that list and saves a CSV with one row per tree: the name as it appears in that tree, gender, birth, death, marriages and residences, parents, spouses and children, the tree name and size, how many records, sources and media are attached, and direct links to the person and to the tree.
Every row carries two links. The person link opens that member’s page for the ancestor, and the tree link opens the member’s tree itself, so you can go straight from the spreadsheet to any version of the person that looks worth a closer look. The name is saved exactly as that member typed it, which makes spelling variations and maiden names easy to spot when the rows are sorted.
A progress panel tracks the download and shows which page of the list it is on. Someone found in a few hundred trees takes a couple of minutes to finish. You can click Cancel Download at any point and keep whatever has been collected so far.
How do I use Save Public Member Trees to CSV?
- Ensure Save Public Member Trees to CSV is enabled in the Genealogy Assistant pop-up panel.
- Open Ancestry’s Search, choose the Public Member Trees collection, and search for the person you are researching.
- In the results, click the tree count beside the person’s name (for example 21 trees) or the View all link on the right. The window listing that person’s trees opens.
- Click Download CSV at the top of the window. Watch the progress panel and click Cancel Download if you need to stop early. The CSV file downloads automatically when the last page has been read, and a summary tells you how many trees were saved.
- Close the window and open another person’s trees to download a second file. Each download is named after the person it belongs to.
- To change how quickly the download runs, click the settings icon on the right side of the Download CSV button and set Download speed to Standard, Walk or Crawl. Choose a slower speed if Ancestry stops responding partway through. Settings save automatically.
CSV Columns
Search Result Person, Tree Person Name, Gender, Birth, Birth Year, Birth Place, Death, Death Year, Death Place, Marriages, Residences, Father, Mother, Spouses, Children, Tree Name, Tree Size, Attached Records, Attached Sources, Attached Media, Trees In Cluster, Person URL, Tree URL, Tree ID, Person ID, Cluster ID
Search Result Person is the name shown in the search results, and Tree Person Name is the name as recorded in that particular tree. Marriages, Residences, Spouses and Children can hold more than one entry, separated by semicolons. Parents, spouses and children show their birth and death years in brackets where the tree records them. Trees In Cluster is the number of public trees the person was found in, and Cluster ID is Ancestry’s own identifier for that group of trees. Only public trees are included, the same trees the window shows.
NOTICE: CSV DOWNLOAD TOOLS ARE FOR PERSONAL RESEARCH PROJECTS ONLY.
Save Public Member Trees to CSV is a feature of the software Genealogy Assistant.
Genealogy Assistant is an extension for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Apple Safari which supercharges your family history research by adding over 100 custom features to popular genealogy websites like Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilySearch, FamilyTreeDNA and more. You can watch a full video walkthrough on YouTube.
Install Genealogy Assistant for Google Chrome | Install for Mozilla Firefox | Install for Microsoft Edge | Install for Apple Safari