Tree Sweeper was designed to help people find and fix all the annoying errors in family trees: people dying before they’re born, parents being born after their children, and the like. FamilySearch has tools to help you with this, but Tree Sweeper is easier and faster to use.
Open Tree Sweeper Tutorial
Once you log in to Tree Sweeper, there are a lot of options you can choose to set. However, by default it’s ready to go! Just click on the “Start Tree Sweep” button and Tree Sweeper will download your family tree going 3 generations back from you, then will check that data for any of the errors we look for. There are many options you can adjust.
- Tree Sweeper can check up to 7 generations at a time—the more it checks, the longer it takes. You are generation 0, your parents are generation 1, and so on.
- You can also change who Tree Sweeper starts at by selecting “Someone Else” for the starting point, then putting in their FamilySearch PID.
- Next you can change which constraints are checked. A constraint is a rule (or genealogical standard), and Tree Sweeper checks to see if someone in your family breaks any constraint. By default, only constraints that indicate an error are checked, but there are different groups you can use that are more specific or even look for research oppor- tunities. You can even choose “Custom Constraints” and pick them yourself!
When you have the options set to your liking, click “Start Tree Sweep.”
Managing Results
Tree Sweeper can give a lot of information, and you might not be interested in all of it. You can filter out types of results you’re not interested in by using “Filter Results”.
You can also change the way the information is sorted, or even search for a specific name or FamilySearch PID.
Understanding Results
When Tree Sweeper finds a potential problem, it will add it to the list of results on the page. All of the issues associated with a person are grouped together, and a summary is displayed of the types of results Tree Sweeper has found.
Tree Sweeper has 4 types of results, indicated by different color flags. They are:
- Definite Error: Definite Errors are marked with a red flag. They indicate that something is definitely wrong. In many cases it just means that a date was entered wrong, but a lot of the time there is bad data associated with a person.
- Possible Error: Possible Errors are marked with a yellow flag. They indicate that something is unlikely, but not definitely wrong. In many cases there will be nothing wrong, but this can be a subtle indicator that something is wrong.
- Research Opportunity: Research Opportunities are marked with a purple flag. They indicate a research opportunity. They don’t indicate an error per se, but can give you somewhere to start with your own family history work.
- Okay Result: Okay Results are marked with a green flag. Tree Sweeper won’t start out with anything marked as Okay, but it’s pretty common for it to give you results that you know are all right. You can mark these as okay, and undo this decision later on if you want to.