Genealogy from the perspective of a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon, LDS)

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Free Access to Ancesty.com, MyHeritage.com and findmypast.com begins

Various notifications have gone out from FamilySearch.org about the impending free access to Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com and findmypast.com. There now seems to be a schedule for FamilySearch to send out email notifications granting access to the three programs. As a Church Service Missionary, I got a notification today. Within a very few minutes, I was able to get complete access to all three websites. From the schedule I have seen, this process will go on for a few months before all the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have access to the programs.

There is no way to speed up the process. Because I had accounts with Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com, the existing accounts will all of the links and documents were carried over to the new free accounts. I could even use the same login and password to access the accounts. Both entities suggested that a connection between the programs and FamilySearch Family Tree would be possible in the future.

There seem to be a lot of rumors going around and some misinformation. As a long time user of all three programs, I am extremely impressed with the ease of getting access. Of course, I know all about logins and passwords and all that. I expect that there will be a significant number of people who will not be able to follow the directions and will need help logging into the three websites. I predict this because we are still working out problems in getting Church members into FamilySearch.org.

Just be patient, the email will come. I will report about my experience using all three programs once I get a chance to use them with the LDS Access.


6 comments:

  1. Glad it worked smoothly for you!

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    1. Yes, thanks to all you folks at FamilySearch and the other three websites.

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  2. Do you have an idea of how the roll out will work? Will it be by calling, region, or name?

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    1. It is initially by calling and then by region. That's all I know.

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  3. I thought of another question. My ancestry account also gives me access to newspapers.com and fold3.com do you know this will effect my subscriptions to those services? Do you have access to those sites?

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    1. Hmm. A very good question. I don't know the answer. I understand that the other two are not included in the free access to Ancestry.com. But I don't know what will happen when you try to sign up. Let me know if you find out. Thanks.

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