Whether you’re planning a trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City or ordering films from the FHL to your local Family History Centre, the Roots Magic To-Do list is an excellent tool to use to organize your film search.
- To create a To-Do List item, highlight the person you need to search for and click on the yellow sticky pad icon at the top left hand corner of your screen, just under the task bar.
- Click on the Add Task Button.
- Choose to add a task for the individual or the family.
- For the task title, begin with “FHL #######” where ####### is the film number that you plan to search for the missing information. This will ensure that all tasks for the same film number will sort together.
- Type a description such as “Find burial record for Thomas Bulmer c1890”.
- In the task details, add your notes or even paste the film description from the Family Search Catalogue.
- Select the repository. In my case it is “Family History Library”.
- Set the priority of the search.
Before you set off to view your films, print a to-do list report from RootsMagic.
- From the top of the To-Do list screen, choose print.
- From the “Tasks to Print” drop down list, choose “All tasks at a single repository” and select “Family History Library”.
- Choose the priority of task to print. To print all tasks, choose priority of ‘9’ or more.
- Sort by description.
- Click “Generate Report”
The resulting report will include everything you need to search for, listed in order by film number with all the details.
This same strategy can be adopted for any repository that you might be planning to visit.