Features Help

• You can find almost any feature in The Family History Guide by using the top menus. They are arranged in one row, from left to right.



• Hover over a menu item to see options below it. The menu titles themselves are not linked; you need to select an item in the menu list.

On most screens in The Family History Guide there is a Search bar that does a Google search within The Family History Guide for terms you enter.

1. Type a search term into the Search bar and press Enter.
2. Click a result in the list to go to the page in The Family History Guide with the content you want (the results are sorted by greatest number of hits). Once on the page, do a Find (Ctrl+F) to locate the text.
3. To close the Search results, click outside the results window.

• In addition to the top menus, there are submenus in a number of pages in The Family History Guide website. These include the Projects pages, Countries pages (described above), Activities page, the Vault, etc. See the corresponding topic in this Features page for more information on using submenus.

• When you see an item in green on the website, it's usually a clickable link. While many of these links are used to navigate inside The Family History Guide, there are also many links to articles and videos on other websites. Each of these opens in a separate browser tab.
• While The Family History Guide is advertising-free, some of the external sites we link to are not. Still, those sites should have useful, free content, without objectionable material. If you feel a website we link to does not meet those standards, or if you find a broken or outdated link, let us know at info@thefhguide.com.

• Besides the Countries page and Vault described on this page, there are several other navigation pages in The Family History Guide: Quick Start, Topics, and Site Map in the Intro menu; and the Course Catalog in the Training menu.
• Get Started—lists tasks you can get started with, and links to find them on the website
• Topics—an alphabetical list of topics in The Family History Guide, with links
• Site Map—lists all the basic features on the website, with links
• Course Catalog—provides a list of training courses using material from The Family History Guide website

• In the top menu of The Family History Guide, hover over the Activities link and select Family, Individuals, Youth, or Kids Corner.


• At the top of the page, select an activities topic from the list of links. Each Activities page has similar activities topics.
• Most activities have links to sites or pages for details on how to carry out the activities.
• The last Goal in each of the Activities categories provides activities for Latter-day Saints. The Family Activities page also has a Goal for 5-Minute Ideas for Latter-day Saints.
• There is a Home School page that has ideas and activities for those who want to include family history in their schedules, using The Family History Guide.
• The Activities Index is an alphabetical list of links you can use to quickly find activities of interest.

• Each activity has an ID number to make it easier to find and refer to.
• Some activities have "Steps" links you can click to open a set of steps for what to do in the activity.
• Although activities are divided into categories for Family, Individuals, Youth, and Children, some activities may apply well to multiple categories.
• You'll occasionally see links from the Activities pages to helpful content in The Family History Guide. For example, an activity for indexing also points to the Indexing Project for instructions on how to index. The links are designated by Partner: FS for FamilySearch, AN for Ancestry, MH for MyHeritage, and FMP for Findmypast.

• The Countries menu has links to All Countries, the United States, Canada, England, and the major regions of the world.
• Click All Countries to see an alphabetical list of country pages in The Family History Guide, then click one of interest.
• You can also click More to see resources for smaller countries that are not included as country pages in The Family History Guide. These countries are listed alphabetically with regions indicated.

• You can also click a region, such as Scandinavia, and select an entry that appears.
• To find a Canadian province page, a) Click Canada; and b) Click one the province page links (just below the large picture at the top).
• To find an English county page, a) Click England; and b) Click one the county page links (just below the large picture at the top).
• To find an Australian state page, a) Click Australia; and b) Click one the province page links (just below the large picture at the top).

• To learn more about a country, state, province, or English county, click the title link at the top of the page. That opens a Wikipedia page for the location; of special interest is the History section at the beginning of the Wikipedia article. In many cases photos and external links are also available in the articles.

• To access U.S. county information, a) Open a U.S. state page (see Choice A above); and b) Click the Counties link (such as CA counties, just below QUIKLinks).
• There is a County Resources link for each state, from Ancestry. This has information on where to find county records, as well as record types and dates of availability.




• There are several types of specific county pages to access. To access the FamilySearch page, click the county title; or A for Ancestry, or L for Linkpendium. (Linkpendium tends to have the most comprehensive lists of resources for each county.)

• When a country has a fair amount of genealogy resources but not enough to have its own country page, it becomes part of a "collector page" for a region. You can find these pages in the "Countries in Collections" section of the Countries page.
• In a collector page, there is one Goal per country, with usually three to five countries represented. The last Choice for each country is a "Get Help" Choice.
• The following collector pages are available in The Family History Guide:
  • Africa
  • Caribbean
  • Central America
  • Eastern Europe
  • Pacific Islands
  • South America
  • United Kingdom (Note : This page has no Goals or Choices; it is simply a collector page for U.K. record links.)
• Near the bottom the Countries page, there is also a section that links to each country that is part of a collector page.

In some of the Collector pages, the final Goal is "More Countries". These Goals list a number of additional countries and resources for them.

• A Google Translate button appears on almost every page of The Family History Guide.


• To translate the current page of The Family History Guide to another language, click the Google Translate button and select the language from the list.
• To return to the original language, click the "X" in the Google Translate bar (top of the browser window).
• Note : Google translations are done by software, so there are some inaccuracies and omissions. Still, this is the best option for translation in The Family History Guide, as the content changes so often that human translation would be very expensive.

• You can find links to translated versions of FamilySearch videos on the Translated Videos page. The videos are arranged by language.