I’m new and finding this program challenging. I’ve read several tutorials and watched some videos, but I still don’t understand how I keep my Rootsmagic tree insync with my Ancestry tree and couldn’t find where to read about it.
Also can someone direct me where to read about how to record birth and death dates…is the only way to create “facts”?
Birth or death (and baptism, marriage, burial, residence etc.) are the name of the event or fact and that is where you record the appropriate date. I’m not sure how (or why) you would wish to record a date if it doesn’t pertain to a fact. So I suppose “yes” is the answer to your question - you have to first enter the fact and then you can enter the date on which it happened. Approximate dates are allowed such as abt for about or bef for before.
Where do you do your main research - in RM or Ancestry? Either way, you will have to do an initial TreeShare, which may take some time, depending on the size of your database.
Thereafter, I would recommend that you run TreeShare after every work session, so that you are sharing relatively small files, which means that the process won’t take very long - look on it as a normal part of your exit routine.
For general information on Ancestry TreeShare you should read the section in the RM8 wiki (Ancestry TreeShare - RootsMagic Wiki).
A linked tree on ancestry is only needed for hints but not for record searches which may be more effective. On mac only ftm and rm offer sync. Heredis reunion and mft rely on manual record searches.
A recent scavenger hunt test showed me that manual searches on anc and fs together with follow up searches revealed hidden hits. Person’s grave record had wrong birth, middle name and mother which hid the best hit on ancestry until you also did fs and a birth year range search on first & last name and state.