Family history work is about finding and uniting your family, and at FamilySearch, we make it easy to share your family tree with your living family members using FamilySearch ID Numbers.
Watch the How-To Video
To learn how to find and use unique ID numbers, watch the video below that provides step-by-step instructions. Soon you’ll be expanding your tree in an easier and more accurate way!
Helpful Notes and Takeaways
Every person on FamilySearch, both living and deceased, each has an ID number associated with the profile. Knowing where to find this number and how to use it can help you easily add existing profiles and help you avoid creating duplicate family member profiles.
Easily Add Existing Profiles
As you and your living family members build out your family tree on FamilySearch, you can use ID numbers to easily share your ancestors' profile pages. For example, if your sister Amy created a profile page for your great-grandfather, instead of you creating another profile page for him, you can simply input his ID number, and the information that your sister Amy entered will automatically be added to your tree.
Not only was that easy, but any additions your sister makes to the part of the tree you added using that ID number will also be added to your tree. For example, if Amy adds the father of your great-grandfather to her tree, you will see that automatically added to your tree as well.
Avoid Creating Duplicate Family Member Profiles
Some FamilySearch users can run into the issue of finding duplicate profiles of a deceased family member. One reason for this might be that another relative using FamilySearch already created a profile for that ancestor and a unique ID number was assigned to that profile. Adding an ancestor to your tree using the unique ID number that your relative created helps reduce the number of duplicate profiles and keeps the family tree as accurate as possible.
By using FamilySearch ID numbers to link your tree to other living relatives, you can help keep your family tree as accurate as possible and avoid making extra work for yourself.
