17 July 2024

A Small But Useful Change to Custom Facts on Ancestry

Ancestry Custom Event
I'm a big fan of custom facts/custom events in my Ancestry tree. I use them for marriages (when I'm not researching the spouse), obits, draft card, interesting facts, newspaper articles, stories and the list goes on. I probably have around a dozen or so custom labels I routinely use. One of my pet peeves was when I was attaching facts to a source, the fact itself was in the list of available items to attach, and the date, locations and description would show, but the label wasn't displayed. 

It seems like a small thing, but when I'm attaching facts, I often have a checklist to be sure I've added every type of fact saved for the particular record. It was slightly annoying, as when I had multiple custom facts, I had to be careful to make sure I was selecting the proper one. I had no labels to help me. I've long wished the title/label on the fact would be displayed.

Last night, I added an Obituary custom fact to one of the people in my tree. When I went to attach the facts to the source, imagine my surprise! I could see the title - Obituary! I was so surprised, I thought perhaps my eyes deceived me! So I added a custom "test" fact (shown below):


Then, I randomly went to a source and clicked on Associated Facts. When I scrolled down, I was SO happy to see this!

I truly hope this is a permanent change and not just a limited beta test! It makes using custom facts a bit easier for those of us who use them regularly, and perhaps the algorithms will eventually learn the common types of custom facts we're using. Maybe one day, some of them will become standard options. In any case, I know I sometimes complain about Ancestry, but in this case, it's a small change they got very right! Thank you Ancestry!

2 comments:

  1. This is a useful change and I'm so glad you called attention to it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm having a hard time visualizing the before and after...but it's cool Ancestry is adding extra useability to its profile page UI...

    ReplyDelete

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