Compare Match Trees draws the trees of several DNA matches as one tree. At the centre is an ancestor they share; below, each match's line of descent from that ancestor; above, the ancestor's own parents and grandparents as far as the trees go.
The same people appear in many matches' trees, spelled a little differently each time. The Client combines entries it can tell are the same person, and asks you about the ones it cannot. What you decide is remembered and used every time the tree is built.
Compare Match Trees is a Gold feature. It has no tile of its own; you reach it from other pages:
| Card | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Purple | The ancestor the view is centred on. |
| Pale yellow | That ancestor's own ancestors, drawn above. |
| Grey | People on the lines down to the matches. |
| Solid colour, white text | A DNA match, with the cM they share with the kit. Each match has its own colour. |
A card shows the person's name, years, and birth or death place when a tree gives one. ↓ 3 matches below counts the matches descending through that person. A pink ♥ line names a spouse; click it to move to the spouse when they are in the tree too.
Along the bottom is a coloured button for each match in the view. Click one to bring that match's card into sight. A faded button marked (scan) is a match the scan connected to this ancestor whose own tree does not reach it exactly, so no card is drawn for them.
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ✦ also a common ancestor | The scan found this person to be a shared ancestor in their own right. Click the card to see who descends from them. |
| ❓ candidate match | Another entry may be this same person. See below. |
| in tree: name | The person is also in a tree you attached to the kit, named so you can check the line there. |
| user-added | A person you added yourself from this page. |
| WT: id | The WikiTree ID you gave this person. |
| ≈2C branch · 34% | A WATO result. See Where does the tester fit? |
Right-click a card for these. Your decisions are kept in your GDAT database with your People, so they apply to every kit and survive gathering again.
When two entries have the same name and close dates but the trees give no shared parent or spouse to confirm it, the Client does not guess. It marks the card ❓ candidate match. Click the badge to see the two side by side, with the parents, spouses and children each tree records and which trees they came from, then choose:
After a decision made from the badge, go back to Common Ancestors and open the comparison again to see the tree redrawn.
When you can see that two cards are one person and the Client has not suggested it, right-click one, choose Same person as…, and pick the other from the list. The card you picked keeps its name and years. The tree is rebuilt straight away.
Use this when a DNA match is someone already drawn in the tree: your match “J. T.” is the Jonas Tarrow on a grey card. Right-click the card, choose Identify match as this person…, and pick the match. The match is then placed at that spot, with their cM, the next time the comparison is opened. Clear match identification takes it away again.
Once a card is identified as a match, Find relatives from shared matches… looks through that match's shared matches for people who share enough DNA to be their children, and offers to add them beneath.
Adds someone the trees are missing: a parent, child, spouse or sibling of the card. Fill in what you know and click Save. The person is added to People and linked to the card. They show in the tree, marked user-added, where the view covers that part of it; a parent added to the card at the top of a view is not drawn.
Search WikiTree looks for the person on WikiTree by surname and birth year. Click a result to open the profile in your browser, or Assign to record that it is this person. You can also type a WikiTree ID or paste a profile address. When you assign one, the Client fetches that profile's ancestors and descendants from WikiTree, which can take up to a minute, and uses them to fill in the tree around the card.
When you know a group of matches descend from an ancestor but not how the tester does, the Client can estimate it. It works in the manner of the “What Are the Odds?” tool: for each place the tester could sit in the tree, it asks how likely the shared cM with every match would be, using the Shared cM Project figures.
Clear WATO results removes the badges. Export to DNA Painter WATO… saves the tree and the matches' cM as a file and opens DNA Painter, where you load it with Load > Import text file to continue there. Choose WATO (classic); WATO 3 / WATO plus is experimental and opens DNA Painter's newer tool with the same file.