Tools to Highlight Your Great Genealogy Finds

Snagit and Skitch can help you highlight screenshots and other digital images you capture for genealogy. Here’s how!

snagit skitch great genealogy finds

genealogy gems podcast mailboxRecently Diane from Alberta, CA sent in this question:

“I am trying to find how to highlight a portion of a document such as a birth certificate. The document has three people listed for the county and prior to adding it to my tree on Ancestry, I would like to highlight my ancestor so he will stand out. Can you offer any suggestions. I tried Evernote without success, also my family tree program.  What am I missing?”

I suggested Diane use Snagit 2019, compatible with Windows and Mac software to highlight her documents. In fact, I use it constantly for a variety of genealogical projects. The full-blown software has loads of cool features!

You can also download the free Snagit Chrome extension here. After you install Snagit, you’ll see it show up on your browser page. Here’s what it looks like on Google Chrome (the blue “s” button):
Snagit icon on browser page

 

 

Snagit Sample Thomas Hall census When you see something on your screen you want to capture, just click on the blue “S” icon. You’ll be asked at the outset to give Snagit access to various cloud storage options so it can store the image for you. Once you allow it access, then you’ll be able to name your file and add your own shapes, arrows and text. Use these to call attention to part of a record; annotate what you learned from it or even mark your ancestor’s face in a group photo.

As far as doing something similar in Evernote: Evernote only allows you to highlight typed text, not portions of an image. However, you can download Skitch and drag and drop the document from Evernote into Skitch. Then you can highlight an image to your hearts content. When you’re done you can Save to Evernote in the menu (SKITCH > SAVE TO EVERNOTE).

Share BoldThanks to Diane for a great question! I hope you’ll all share this post: Snagit is free and makes it so easy to take notes on your digital images, for your own use or to share with others!

Resources

How to Add Text to a Web Clipping in Evernote

Should Evernote Be My Digital Archive?

Annotating and Transcribing Documents in Evernote (What Evernote Can and Can’t Do for Family History)

A Tech Tool You Need: Another way to Use Dropbox for Genealogy

Now you can save the links to your favorite websites in Dropbox. It’s another great way to use Dropbox for genealogy! Here’s how….
Save URLs in Dropbox for genealogy

Big news: Dropbox recently announced that you can now save web page URLs to Dropbox on the web or on your PC. It’s as simple as drag and drop!

Here’s a link to a quick-read article all about it, and it includes a super short video showing you the feature in action:

Think how handy this would be for tracking genealogy website sources! Those bookmarks we create in our web browsers can get pretty cluttered. A Dropbox folder dedicated just to your genealogy would be a great place to store URLS for those websites you find yourself consulting a lot: a Rootsweb site, the Genealogy Gems blog, JewishGen, and even specific pages within those sites for articles you love.

If you’re a Dropbox user, why not try saving this article URL to your Dropbox? The article we link to above has a video in which they show the drag-and-drop in a web browser, but it works just as well when you click on the URL and drag it onto the Windows Explorer icon on your computer’s task bar. When Windows Explorer pops open, just “drop” onto the Dropbox folder! And if you’re on a Mac, try the equivalent.

I use Dropbox every day. Below I have some great resources for you including an article on the types of items a genealogist could use Dropbox to save and share with other researchers.

Resources

Tips for Collaborative Genealogy: Dropbox for Genealogists

Genealogists’ Guide to Dropbox, a video presentation available to Genealogy Gems Premium members

Dropbox v Backblaze: Does Cloud Storage for Genealogy Replace Computer Backup?

 

Don’t Lose Control When You Post Your Family Tree Online

Online tree out of controlWhen you post your family tree online at multiple websites, it’s easy to lose track of changes you make at each one. Maintaining a master family tree on your own computer can help solve that problem.

Recently Gems podcast listener Louis wrote in with a question many of us face. He recently purchased RootsMagic 7 software to keep track of his family tree, but he’s still finding it difficult to corral all his data in one place. Here’s the problem, he says:

“I have my family tree splattered everywhere: FamilySearch, MyHeritage, and Ancestry. I’m afraid of losing control of my tree and would like some advice on keeping things straight. Each of the sites I go on seem to offer different information, so I started posting tree information on different sites. Can you offer any suggestions that I can use to centralize my data across different sites?”

I can fully appreciate Louis’ situation. Here’s a quick summary of how I keep my family tree organized all in one place.

Websites come and go, as we know, so I look at my RootsMagic database on my computer as my MASTER database and tree. This kind of approach lets you post your family tree online but not lose control of it!

When I post GEDCOM files of my family tree on other websites (what’s a GEDCOM?), I do so to try and connect with cousins and gain research leads. With that in mind, I upload only the portion of the tree for which I want to generate those connections and leads. In other words, I don’t put my entire GEDCOM on each site (MyHeritage, Ancestry, etc.) because I don’t want to get bogged down with requests and alerts for far flung branches that I’m not focused on researching right now. To do this I make a copy of my database, edit it to fit my research, and then upload it.

As I find documents and data on these websites, I may “attach” them to the tree on that site, but I always download a copy and retain that on my computer and make note of it in RootsMagic. That way I retain control of my tree and my sources.

backblaze online cloud backup for genealogyAnd of course the final step is to back up my computer so everything is safe and secure. I do that with Backblaze (the official backup of The Genealogy Gems Podcast) and you can click here to learn more about their service for my listeners.

In the end, it is my family tree and history. I want to keep ownership of it on my own computer, even when I share parts of it online.

Resources

RootsMagic the Master GenealogistBest Genealogy Software: Which You Should Choose and Why

RootsMagic Update for FamilySearch Compatibility

Free RootsMagic Guides

Family Tree Builder for Mac

Thank you for sharing this post with others who may have the same question! Email it, share it on Facebook, pin it, Tweet it–just use our handy social media icons on this page.

(Full Disclosure: Some of the websites mentioned and links provided in our articles are for sponsors of The Genealogy Gems Podcast. They are sponsors because we think they are terrific and use the products ourselves. We include affiliate links for your convenience and appreciate when you use them because they help keep The Genealogy Gems Podcast available for free. Thank you!) 

How to Add Text to a Web Clipping in Evernote

Here’s a simple solution for making additions to an existing web clipping in Evernote.

By CBS Television (eBay item photo front press release) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo: [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Have you ever clipped something with Evernote and realized after the fact that you would like to copy and paste additional information (such as a genealogical source citation) to the clipping?

Carolyn wrote me recently when she ran into this problem of how to add text to a web clipping in Evernote: “I clipped a wedding document from FamilySearch to Evernote Notebook [and] added URL to dropdown menu. But where can I add the citation that is given on FS document page?

I tried copy/paste but…back at Evernote, nowhere to paste citation.  I like to document everything I use in my family records, so this is important to me…I enjoy using Evernote and following your tutorials that came with my (Genealogy Gems Premium website) membership. I have been using Evernote for just two weeks.”

Carolyn, I’m thrilled to hear that source citation is important to you, because it is the backbone of solid genealogical research! Here’s a simple solution.

How to Add Text to a Web Clipping in Evernote:

1. In Evernote, click once on the web clipping in the existing note

2. Press the right arrow key on your keyboard (you will see that now there is a big flashing cursor to the right of the clipped image)

3. Press the Enter key on your keyboard (just like a Return on a typewriter, your cursor has now moved one line below your clipping.)

4. Type or paste copied source citation as desired.

5. Use the formatting options at the top of the note to change the font size, type, and color, etc.

6. Click the INFO icon to see and add more data as desired (such as the original URL of the webpage where you clipped the item.)

How to add text to a web clipping in Evernote

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Click here to learn more about using Evernote for genealogy.

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