Genealogy Corner… Pandora’s Hope Chest

Issue 16.14

Pandora’s Hope Chest is an amazing software extension for Family Tree and will be of interest to LDS users. The extension, which works with the Google Chrome browser, allows you to automatically search for ancestors who are ready for temple work. Once installed it becomes part of your Family Tree menu and works like it was originally designed to be part of the program. The extension has two controls; one arrow allows you to search your ancestral line and the other arrow allows you to “down search” or search for descendants of direct-line ancestors and their families. Once started the program moves over each ancestor checking to see if their temple work has been completed. If the program finds an ancestor who is needing temple work it outlines the individual with a dashed green line. It then checks to see if there are possible duplicate names. If no duplicate names are found it outlines the individual with a solid green line. All of the names with dashed and solid green lines are saved in a hope chest icon where you can follow up on the names with more research or send the names to your temple file.

Pandora’s Hope Chest is an extension file for the web browser Google Chrome and does not work with other web browsers such as Firefox or Explorer. To install the extension you can do a web search for Pandora’s Hope Chest.  I used Google and searched for “hope chest FamilySearch” and found it. 

Once you have installed Pandora’s Hope Chest, as an extension to Google Chrome, you are ready to start using it. Next, you should close out your Chrome browser and reopen it. Navigate to FamilySearch and open Family Tree. You should notice a few new icons in the menu bar. The new icons belonging to Pandora’s Hope Chest are: A little brown hope chest box, two green arrows and the word “Tutorial.” The first thing you should do is to click on tutorial and follow the directions.

The green arrow that points to the right allows you to search up, checking for ancestors needing temple work. The green arrow that points to the left allows you to search down, checking for descendants of direct-line ancestors and their families. Doing an “up search” is easy.

Running a “down search” works on a particular ancestor.  In order to do an effective down search you must open a family tree of one of your ancestors so that they are the lead person of the family tree.  Once you do that, it should effectively do a search for all of the descendants of that individual.

For more information, contact Shanna Jones at shannasjones@msn.com