Share your Ancestry trees via unique invite links

Allowing people to view your Ancestry tree is now easier than ever.  This will be a huge help not only for DNA testers but for sharing in general. I will be using this for most of my tree shares.  It is almost impossible to send a tree share invite to those who use their name instead of a username and who aren't able to see the tree because of a lack of a subscription.  This will take care of that.

1. While viewing the tree you wish to share, select Tree Settings.  Under Tree Settings select Sharing.
Under the Sharing section, Select Invite People.

2.  Notice there are now 3 ways to share the tree.  Select Shareable Link.

3.  You can choose the roles:  Guest, Contributor or Editor.  Also, the option to allow them to see living persons is available by share link.

4.  Once you have selected the Create Link a unique URL will appear which you can share.  Please note the blurb above the URL for more info on how the link will work.

Do you use Member Name or Username on your AncestryDNA test?

I use my Real Name(Member Name) on my account as my Display name.  I've been working with shared matches and have found that you cannot send an AncestryDNA share link to a person who has the preference set to show their Real Name rather than their username. Showing the Real Name is the recommended setting by Ancestry.  While this may help to identify the tester,  you can't use that name to send the share link.  You must find their email address or somehow figure out their username. Sure you can message them and ask for an email address or their username but then the message system seems to be sporadic at best.  Counterproductive for sure and I hope there is a workaround.  If they are identifiable at GEDmatch that isn't a problem as you can get their email address from your One To Many match list there.

Just be aware if you use your Real Name instead of username, folks who don't know your username or who don't have your email won't be able to send you a DNA share link successfully.  I suppose you could put your username in your profile.  I have my email address on my profile but I am not sure how many people browse to the profile page. Having had luck "cold" sending DNA shares when no other form of contact seemed to get the Tester's attention, anything that makes the process harder is frustrating.  Really hope that I haven't missed any invites. I also wonder if messages work the same way.  Though I have never gotten an error message while sending one,  there have been many that I have sent which didn't show up in my Sent Folder or don't accumulate on the match page.  I searched Ancestry.Support and couldn't find any mention of this but received the error only on Profiles that used Real Name.  Does this happen to you?

Perfect Example of why you should always check the image

Never in my research has there been a better example which illustrates the importance of always clicking thru to view the linked images.  If you check the image you will see this is the page on which the census taker, Lula S. Berry is adding all the people that were left out of earlier households. She has the words "Out Of Order" written at the top of the page.  It looks like the information to find the households which they were a part of is included in the Location & Household Column along with a note on one of the earlier entries before this grouping that says Information furnished by Ms? Irvine.   It is difficult to tell what her system may have been for referencing those households.  The snippet I included is of the Record which is linked to Stamped page 261 Sheet 61A.  The people ABOVE the blue line are included on the page which is linked to the record.   It looks like it was in question whether some infants should have been included or not and the census taker waited til the last to add them.  Also the persons who are shown on the record snippet BELOW the blue line and  located Two images ahead are guests at the Imperial Hotel in Monterey TN.  Always check the image and never blindly add from the record.  Additionally, It's a good idea to check at the end of a district to see if there are any persons of interest which were left out of the initial entry and are included at the end of that district.  Browsing thru this district which is in order by the stamped page number, you will see that sometimes the sheet number doesn't follow the pattern you would expect it to follow.  Always check the image and browse a few pages before and after the entry of interest especially if it doesn't appear to be a standard enumeration.  We could blame this on the census taker or the indexer.  In my opinion the blame is on us as researchers for not checking more closely.

1940 U.S. census, Putnam County, Tennessee, population schedule, Monterey Town, Enum. Dist: 71-18, p. 261 (stamped), digital image(45 of 48), Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com/ : accessed 20 April 2017); citing NARA microfilm publication T627, roll 3928.

Original data: United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1940. T627, 4,643 rolls.


Enumeration District : 71-18; Description: CIVIL DISTRICT 14, MONTEREY TOWN, DR. W. C. OFFICER´S SANITARIUM

How to send a Share link of your DNA results from your AncestryDNA test

I've found it useful to send share links to some of my closer matches so they can see who matches my test. The top question after I do that has always been "How did you do that?"

I thought it might be useful to post about the process and include some other information from that page as well.  Hope that anyone wanting to know how to do this or explain it to others will find this helpful.

In order to send a share link you need to be viewing the DNA Insight page for the kit which you want to share.

It should look something like the above image across the top.  You will want to click on the button with the Gear logo and the word Settings.  That will take you to a page which has several different options: Email Settings, Privacy, Family Tree Linking,  Research Content, Sharing DNA results and Sharing Ethnicity Results.  Below I have two images showing how how the page should look at the top and as you scroll down to the section where you can send invites to view your DNA results.  I did edit out the names of people that have a share link TO my DNA results in the example.

Scroll down to the section called Sharing DNA results

If you had sent DNA share invites prior to this there would be a listing of users that were allowed to view your results as well as their permissions/role and the REMOVE buttons which you could use to "unshare" at any time.

Once you click on the Invite Others to Access DNA Results you will have a window pop up which looks like this.  From here you can add emails or usernames of people whom you want to have access to the DNA test.  Choose Roles for that person(typically Guest unless you want them to be able to change trees to which your DNA is linked.)  Click on Send Invitation and you should get a notification when they accept your share link.

Column along the Right side of Webpage

Please note in the column along the right side of this page you will find the links to Download Your Raw Data or to Delete Your Test(This requires that you enter your password--This can not be undone)