The Contact form lists some of the most frequently asked questions and provides users with the opportunity to report anomalies, shortcomings and/or typos found in the indexing of registers, deeds, personal details and/or locations.
In order to ensure effective verification of reports and management of any revisions to be made, we ask you to report misprints, omissions and critical issues – which have emerged during searches on registers and names – in a clear and timely manner and without sending multiple notifications of the same error.
In order to guarantee the effectiveness of our work, we ask you not to use the form (i.e. not to send emails) to
- asking for searches on both civil status and military records. The Portal does not carry out genealogical and/or registry searches on behalf of users, nor does it provide help with this type of research, but it does make available the documentation to carry out searches independently. Please also note that in the “Tools” section you can find support information for carrying out research;
- ask for contact details of State Archives or other bodies (municipalities, dioceses, etc.);
- c- request the issue and sending of certificates and/or copies of matriculation sheets. Please note that the Ancestors Portal does not provide this service. In the page “Request for certificates” you can find indications and useful information on how to obtain the above-mentioned documents;
- ask about the planning and timing of the publication of the Archives or of specific Municipalities/Provinces. The planning is shared with FamilySearch and the State Archives on the basis of technical and scientific parameters. In order to be informed about the latest publications of registers and names and to read all the details (consistency, chronological references, number of images), users are invited to consult the dedicated sections of the Portal: “Latest published archives” and “Index of published names“;
- ask how to contribute and communicate any problems encountered with the Family Search site. To date, it is possible to contribute to the indexing of the registers by participating in the projects on the Family Search Italian Projects page. If you have any problems with the registration and indexing process, please contact Family Search directly;
- ask how to download images. It will be possible, in the future, to register and access a user area of the Portal where you will be able to download images. The availability of the user area and all instructions for accessing and using it will be indicated on the Portal;
- ask how to share their family stories. Work is underway to optimise the “Tell your story” section and to develop forms and templates for sharing stories. Requests received so far via the Contact form have been noted. We invite users, however, not to use the Contact form to forward e-mails on the subject: when the feature will be released, we will publicize it on the Portal and provide all the instructions.
- ask if and when it will be possible to recover the URLs of the old Portal, saved for personal searches, for indexing activities on FamilySearch.org and within projects such as Wikitree. In order to allow accessibility to these resources, steps have been taken to ensure that old and new URLs are linked and that bookmarking functionality is released according to the ARK specification. When the functionality is available, it will be described and publicised on the Portal.
Thank you for your cooperation.