Ancestry.com has recently made changes to the way customers search their site. These changes have effected Legacy's ability to automatically search for a person in their databases. Continue reading for the workaround....

For example, click on the Search menu from within Legacy, then click on Search Internet for Current Person. You can now choose which genealogy web site to search. If Ancestry.com is selected, click on the Search button. Normally Legacy would then search Ancestry for the currently-highlighted individual and display the results. Because of the changes made by Ancestry, you will now receive an error message.

Fortunately, Legacy has the ability to create and modify the "search strings" that are used to perform these automated searches. The "Ancestry.com" search can easily be modified by following these steps:

• Once you are on the "Search the Internet" screen, click on the Customize Searches button.
• Click on the Select button next to Ancestry.com
• Click once on Ancestry.com, and click on the Edit button.
• In the field the currently begins with http://service.bfast.com..., replace all of the text in this field with this new link: http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?rank=0&tips=0&gsfn=[GivenNames]&gsln=[Surname]&sx=&gs1co=1%2cAll+Countries&gs1pl=1%2c+&year=[BirthYear]&yearend=[DeathYear]&sbo=0&sbor=&ufr=0&wp=4%3b_80000002%3b_80000003&srchb=r&prox=1&db=&ti=0&ti.si=0&gl=allgs&gss=ansmp&so=1&o_iid=21416&o_lid=21416
• Click Save, click Select, click Close, now click Search.

Legacy's Research Guidance section also has links to individual databases at Ancestry.com. For example, on the Preliminary Survey tab, clicking on the Local Histories tab provides an automated listing of local/county histories of the areas in which your ancestor lived. Some of these books are available online. If you click on the Online button for books that are available at Ancestry, you will still be presented with Ancestry's error message. Currently, there is not a way to update the link. However, the book is still available at Ancestry, you will just have to temporarily manually look it up on their site.

If you have any questions about performing automated searches, please don't hesitate to contact our support team. We will continue to work hard to provide a future update that will correct these links, but for those who want the immediate fix, please follow the steps above.