If you have ever found a family tree record on Ancestry that you wanted to save for later, you might have saved it to your Shoebox. In this post, learn how to find your Shoebox on Ancestry, as well as how to save and delete records.
Plus, find out whether you’ll still be able to see records in your Shoebox without an Ancestry subscription.
For years, the Shoebox has been a good way to save records that you aren’t sure you need, or that you think might belong to your ancestor. You don’t necessarily want to attach them to a person in your tree because you aren’t positive that they are relevant.
Of course, the name “Shoebox” is perfect for this feature. Most of us have a folder, drawer, or “shoebox”, where we put things that might be useful to us later on in our family tree research, so the Ancestry tool is a digital version of this.
Where is your Shoebox on Ancestry?
Your Shoebox is usually located on the Ancestry home screen after you have logged in. In other words, you can find your Shoebox by scrolling down on the screen that you see after you log in to Ancestry, under the “Tools and resources” section.
The image below shows where you might be able to find your Shoebox. It is on the part of the page that is also known as a “sidebar” in web design.
Once you click on the link to the Shoebox, you will be taken to a new page where you will see the list of records that you have saved to your Shoebox.
Alternatively, your dashboard might include a link that looks like this, though it seems like Ancestry has moved away from displaying the Shoebox like this:
How to use your Ancestry Shoebox
Have you ever spent hours searching for records pertaining to a specific ancestor? I know that I have!
What should you do if you find an interesting record, but you aren’t 100% sure that it pertains to your ancestor? The last thing you want to do is save it to your tree if you aren’t sure about it.
Imagine if there was a way to save the record in a digital box, of sorts. A “shoebox”, even?
The Shoebox on Ancestry comes in handy in this situation. If you save it to your Shoebox, you don’t have to worry about trying to find it again later on.
You can just go to your Shoebox and see the records that you have saved there and decide whether you should save it to your tree at a later date.
I love using this feature because I don’t have to commit to a record and add it to my tree. Adding incorrect information and records to a tree, even when they are part of a working hypothesis, can cause errors to be added to other people’s family trees.
Errors in the family trees of other people can spiral out of control, and leave a lot of others wondering how to handle these mistakes.
Plus, it can be really confusing to look back through your tree and try to figure out what you know to be true and what might only possibly be true. The Shoebox can potentially save us lots of frustration!
How to save a record to your Ancestry Shoebox?
It’s very easy to add a record to your Shoebox. First, of course, you should be logged in to your Ancestry account.
Once you are on the page where the record information has been indexed (seen below) you can click on the “Save” button to access the drop-down menu. Then, choose “Save to your Shoebox” to add the record to your Shoebox for later:
If you are actively viewing a record, you can also save the record to view it later without adding to your tree by clicking on the “Save” button at the top right of the screen right from the viewer:
How to delete records from your Ancestry Shoebox?
Sometimes we want to delete a record or document from our Ancestry Shoebox. This usually happens when we have determined that a record.
You might be interested to know that a record is automatically removed from the Shoebox when we save or attach it to a person in our tree.
As some readers of this blog may know, I have been trying to learn about my Polish-born great-great grandmother. She has a very, very Polish maiden name.
On my great-grandfather‘s death certificate, his mother’s name is listed as Mary Brown. Even though the whole family says that she died before my grandmother was born in the 1930’s, I did briefly entertain the idea that she didn’t pass away.
Maybe she remarried and went off to live somewhere else? This led me to search for people named “Mary Brown” living in nearby areas, possibly born in Poland or Austria, as she is sometimes listed in census records.
A few years back, I did find a record that could back-up my theory. The only problem is that the record lists her as a “widowed”, and I now know that my great-great grandfather was still very much alive for the 1940 US Federal Census.
So, maybe it’s time to delete my record.
All I have to do is click on the little trashcan icon next to the record from within my Shoebox list of records. The image below shows you exactly where the delete icon is located with the red arrow:
Alternatively, you can click on the record to inspect it and remove it from your Shoebox from the next screen:
Can you see your Ancestry Shoebox without a subscription?
If you no longer have an Ancestry subscription, you can still access your Ancestry Shoebox. You will be able to see a list of all the records that you have already saved to your Shoebox.
You won’t be able to actually click through to access the record to view the image, however. In other words, you can see a list of the records that you have added to your Shoebox, but you won’t be able to read the records.
If you decide to get an Ancestry subscription again at a later date, you will be able to view the images again.
Conclusion
I hope that this post has helped you understand exactly how to find your Ancestry Shoebox, as well as how to adjust which records are in the Shoebox. It’s a great tool that can help us save time and keep our research organized.
If you have any questions about something that you have read in this post, or if you would like to share your own tips for using the Ancestry Shoebox, I would love to hear from you in the discussion below.
Thanks for stopping by today!
