Merge, Split, Save and Tag

There have been a lot of people asking lately if it's possible to merge or split trees on Ancestry. The short answer is no.  

The long answer is, it can be done, sort of. 
You can merge and split your trees with programs like Family Tree Maker, but not with other people's trees (unless they send you a gedcom file) and not at all with Ancestry.

So the question is: 

I saw another tree on Ancestry with my family and they have people I don't have on mine. Can I merge their tree with mine so I don't have to add each person one by one?

Merge in Ancestry is for merging two people on the same tree. An example is you have a child named Susanna on your tree. After attaching a family census it adds a child named Susan to your tree. When researching each child you realize that Susanna and Susan are the same person. Or it may add another wife to your tree, but it is the same wife with a similar name. You go to Tools> Merge with Duplicate. Type the name of the person to merge with. Then you can choose which name and facts you want to keep. 
Sometimes the name is the same, so I add the word NOT to the first name so I know which one to choose.

But what you CAN do is Save. Save, as in save to tree and as in save a lot of time.

First check the evidence and sources the other tree has on each person. If there are no sources, forget about it. That tree manager may have copied from another tree. See if you can find a tree with real sources. Do not just save people to your tree willy-nilly. If you have to delete all these people after, that you DO have to do one by one. Believe me, we've all been down that road! Once you are convinced that branch belongs on your tree you can proceed.

There is an option on a person's profile page under Tools called “Save to Tree”. Say, for example, you have John Seale on your tree but not his family. If you don’t have John Seale, but you believe he belongs there, you add him to your tree.

Then go to John Seale on the other tree and under TOOLS choose SAVE TO TREE. 

You then choose your tree and the person you want to save it to, in this case the John Seale. 

Then it is like saving a census... you can save that persons parents, spouse and children. In the facts column it saves only their BMD info ... but! Under Sources it will only say Ancestor Family Trees, and nothing from the gallery... no documents, censuses, photos... nothing. You would have to source each person manually. You should ALWAYS do your own research anyways. Verify by searching for BMD, and other records.

Here is where Tags come in handy.
You are doing your due diligence, finding proof that each person belongs in that family, and you come to one person (say Child 3) you can't find a record for.  That does not necessarily mean it's not right, just that there may not be records for that year at the church, or something like that. You want to remind yourself, and tell others looking at your tree, that this person's info is unverified. At Child 3's profile page, under the birth and death at the top, is the Tag symbol in blue. Click on that.     

There are many tags you can choose from under four drop-down categories that open on the right, or at top of the list you can choose to create your own, depending what you want the tag to tell you.
In this case we are going to tag Unverified.

Once the person is proven yea or nay you can change the tag to Verified (or whatever), untag, or delete the person altogether if he is proven not to belong to this particular family. 

Once you have added John Seale and proven he belongs on your tree, if it is a new branch you next go to John's father and repeat the process. This will add all John's siblings and their info to your tree. Add the mother's father and repeat with him to get her siblings and his parents and spouse. You can keep adding families in this manner, climbing up the tree. 

Remember to Always Verify the information you copy by finding sources, and use the Tags if you can't verify right away.