2022 Class 4: Thoughts on Tree Naming Convention

 You may have just one tree or you  may have dozens.  I have found that it is best to keep the size of your database below 10,000 individuals.  If you can rationalize a smaller number of individuals, that is better.  

• The advantage of smaller trees is computer performance and your ability to "get your head around the tree"
• You can always split a large tree into smaller trees by cutting the branches at according to some rule.  My rule is to cut the branches of my larger trees at a specific generation; ie a date, such as around 1870. 
• Another advantage of smaller trees and cutting branches at some date is that you can turn over management of that branch to someone else, someone that is in that branch.  (You are going to have to find someone to take over your work sometime.)
• I use the "Follow Tree" icon I made as a media item to indicate that the descendants of an individual can be found in another tree.  I use the custom "Tree Name" fact to name the tree to go to. 
• The primary disadvantage of smaller trees is that, when you find someone in a document or in a search and want to add that information, you have to find the individual.  Which tree contains that individual?  In ancestry.com, if you make a tree public, then you can do a search on ancestry for the individual using the Public Tree Search and (hopefully) your tree will find any tree you own with that person in it near the top.  I have a request in to permit search of your private trees.  
• There are ways to export tree contents to Excel.  I do have a macro that will provide a standard excel spread sheet and that can be used to find all such spread sheets and create an Excel Book for search.  This is very technical and not recommended at this time.

My personal naming convention has these features:

• I mirror all my trees to ancestry, so it keeps my master list  (of course I can always go to the list of files (I have one folder per tree on my computer.)
• My hobby started with the objective of creating an electronic version of a published genealogy, published in 1934, including all the primary sources as media, and updating the result to the present.  So my trees begin with the primary root person of the book:  B0001, Gov Leete Desc, as named in ancestry.  Every other tree associated with the book has the name Bxxxx, First Name Last Name, where the xxxx is the ancestry file number defined in the 1934 book.  
• For the ancestors of Gov Leete, I named the file B0001, Gov Leete Anc
• As I find other individuals to trace, I name the tree Txxxx, First Name Last Name and then either Desc, Anc, or nothing, indicating I'm going in both directions.  The xxxx is a sequential number and has no relation to anything other than the list of my trees. 
• The reasons for the Txxxx at the beginning include more easily recognizing my trees on ancestry and ability to use the short form of the tree name when creating reports. 
• The above rules apply to trees on ancestry.  On FTM, I add the string ftm{version}, such as ftm191, to indicate the version of FTM used to manage the tree.  (When FTM changes versions, the format of the database can change and usually the "password" FTM uses to access the database changes.  So I need to know to go through a conversion process when the FTM version changes.