MyHeritage and RootsMagic Integration - My Experience

With today's announcement of the integration between MyHeritage network and the new release of RootsMagic Version 7, I took the opportunity to test drive the process - and I like it!!

This is a great opportunity for everyone, especially for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who recently were provided access to MyHeritage and it's great Smart-Matching research tools and, for all RootsMagic users around the world.

I have had a family tree(s) on MyHeritage for several years and have found many, many of my ancestors located in other family trees on MyHeritage. As more and more sources are being added (or linked) into MyHeritage I have been letting MyHeritage find the records and sources for me - while I sleep as it searches my tree for matches to other trees and to record set sources!

So many of us in the United States and other countries, including myself, have ancestors from Europe. MyHeritage came into existence in 2003 and began acquiring small genealogy family tree companies throughout Europe. Since then they also acquired Geni.com which includes family trees from around the world. The great benefit I have found is that many of my ancestor's descendants still live in Europe and have created trees (and some are very well documented)! Now, as I link to these trees I am finding "cousins" and their trees that are helping me extent my tree in a fantastic way.

I am also a dedicated user of RootsMagic software. Today's new version 7 provides me a direct link to those "source hints" that are located in both MyHeritage and also in FamilySearch sources.

By selecting the "light bulb" icon next to a person's name as seen here, 

If you don't use FamilySearch LDS features, you won't see the other two icons. You can create a free FamilySearch account and the gray/blue tree icon will display.

you will then see this pop-up.

As I click on the pending "number" of possible sources or matches, the applicable web page opens and displays the source/match. When I confirm or reject them the numbers will change and be added to the confirmed or rejected columns. If I want to save the MyHeritage source to RootsMagic I have to create a source for each fact/event. Yes, it would be great if it automatically saved to my file! But, hopefully, that may be a feature in the future. However, the link to those hints stay in my database behind the little "light bulb" icon on each person in my database.

One thing to keep in mind that is very important....  If the person in your RootsMagic tree is also in MyHeritage or FamilySearch (entered by anyone) then those source hints will display. So you can still compare and match with records in either one. Also, not every data set in FamilySearch is searched by this process, so you will eventually want to search deeper for more sources that the hinting feature does not find. (this paragraph has been edited based on comments below)

So if you have any questions or find something that is incorrect as listed above, post a comment and I will try to answer you.