Karla, et al I have found, so far, the best way to organize is with a spreadsheet. Almost every thing you get from a Match can go into a spreadsheet. I started with downloads to save a lot of typing. Most new info I now type in, but if it's a lot I download the new info and arrange it like my spreadsheet, and then add or insert those rows. You don't have to be into mapping to use a spreadsheet. At first I used my spreadsheet to track the info I wanted (I've always had columns for company, Match name, email, large segment(s) over 7cM - Chr, start,end, cM, SNP, side, MRCA, link to Tree, GEDmatch number, remarks/notes). I quickly added columns for sent and received. Probably over 90 percent of the emails can be deleted after this info is put into the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet can be sorted (and/or searched) on Match, email, sent, etc - in addition to sorting on Chr/start which facilitates Triangulation. And, after you've found some Common Ancestors, you can use Kitty's mapping utility to show your results. If you don't know how to manipulate a spreadsheet, take a course! It will be worth it. Jim - Sent from my iPhone - FaceTime! On Sep 22, 2013, at 11:06 AM, Karla Huebner <calypsospots@gmail.com> wrote: > What I'm hearing from everyone is that while some people do have things > better organized or can put in a little more time, everyone who tries to > really work with the data is hampered by the same things I have complained > of. It feels as though this could easily be a full-time job, yet most of us > are employed and/or have other interests (including "paper" genealogy). > > Alas. Well, here's hoping that both 23andMe and FTDNA bring forth more > tools to ease the labor. Just explaining Gedmatch and giving instructions > takes awhile in itself when I want a 23andMe match to compare with my > mother's FTDNA data. And it was nice to see that Gedmatch recently put the > matches' names and email addresses on the same page, which made life a lot > easier for those of us who retain names much more easily than kit numbers!

Personally, although I have a genealogy website, that does not always work well for this purpose. I periodically create a new set of pedigree charts for each account I manage, and I post those in the public folder of my Dropbox account. Then I add the relevant URL to my 23andMe profile, and the AncestryDNA profile. Most of the accounts I manage are at FTDNA, and I use the GEDCOM function there, but I also provide the pedigree chart URL as a convenience to the other person. At least in the beginning of trying to find a common ancestral couple, a simpler and streamlined family tree of direct ancestors is easier to view. *Katherine Benbow * * * * *

Jim is right that using one or more spreadsheets is good (although I keep thinking that surely a database would be better--perhaps because I'm more familiar with databases than spreadsheets, but also because most of the data doesn't require calculations but one does want to see different portions of it for different purposes). Countries of Ancestry may be useful for some people, but thus far it has been pretty much a waste of time for me. My ancestry is half Norwegian, so Norwegian finally crawled to the top of the list for me--at 1.1% of my genome covered by the matches. Finland is next at .6%--okay, I know that "Forest Finns" moved to Norway in the 1600s and make up part of my ancestry. Germany comes in next at .4%--I'm 1/4 German. Russia is next at .2%--apparently due to Germans going to Russia. Then there are the .1% countries of Sweden, Spain, Netherlands, Ireland, and Czech Republic. I have no known ancestry from any of those countries beyond that Sweden is not surprising for someone who's half Norwegian. The vast majority of my genome is just blank on Countries of Ancestry. If I set it to 1+ grandparent rather than 4, it gets more diverse and I start seeing that I have matches with one US grandparent, one Canadian, and two Thai. OK, we can rule out a connection via the Thai grandparents, but mostly there are no names, just "your relative's" grandfather was from Mexico or China or what-have-you and half of the ancestry is unknown, so it's mildly interesting but not very revealing. Karla On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 1:18 PM, Jim Bartlett <jim4bartletts@verizon.net>wrote: > Karla, et al > > I have found, so far, the best way to organize is with a spreadsheet. > Almost every thing you get from a Match can go into a spreadsheet. I > started with downloads to save a lot of typing. Most new info I now type > in, but if it's a lot I download the new info and arrange it like my > spreadsheet, and then add or insert those rows. > > You don't have to be into mapping to use a spreadsheet. At first I used my > spreadsheet to track the info I wanted (I've always had columns for > company, Match name, email, large segment(s) over 7cM - Chr, start,end, cM, > SNP, side, MRCA, link to Tree, GEDmatch number, remarks/notes). I quickly > added columns for sent and received. Probably over 90 percent of the emails > can be deleted after this info is put into the spreadsheet. > > The spreadsheet can be sorted (and/or searched) on Match, email, sent, etc > - in addition to sorting on Chr/start which facilitates Triangulation. And, > after you've found some Common Ancestors, you can use Kitty's mapping > utility to show your results. > > If you don't know how to manipulate a spreadsheet, take a course! It will > be worth it. > > Jim - Sent from my iPhone - FaceTime! > > On Sep 22, 2013, at 11:06 AM, Karla Huebner <calypsospots@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > What I'm hearing from everyone is that while some people do have things > > better organized or can put in a little more time, everyone who tries to > > really work with the data is hampered by the same things I have > complained > > of. It feels as though this could easily be a full-time job, yet most of > us > > are employed and/or have other interests (including "paper" genealogy). > > > > Alas. Well, here's hoping that both 23andMe and FTDNA bring forth more > > tools to ease the labor. Just explaining Gedmatch and giving instructions > > takes awhile in itself when I want a 23andMe match to compare with my > > mother's FTDNA data. And it was nice to see that Gedmatch recently put > the > > matches' names and email addresses on the same page, which made life a > lot > > easier for those of us who retain names much more easily than kit > numbers! > > > > ______________________________ > For answers to Frequently Asked Questions about mailing lists, please see: > http://dgmweb.net/MailingListFAQs.html > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > AUTOSOMAL-DNA-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >