Not every DNA submission has an attached tree and many attached trees contain very few names. But there are those that contain a significant number of names.
For those matches you cannot figure out with relatively extensive attached trees, search for step-ancestors, adopted relatives and other non-biological relatives. It may seem counter-intuitive, but there’s a reason why it may be helpful.
The submitter of the tree may, without evening knowing it, have attached a step-parent as a parent or a set of adoptive parents as the biological ones. That can make finding the connection hard. An ancestor of one of my DNA kits was adopted and it took me some time to find the names of her biological parents–which I have in my tree. Another descendant of that person may have only the adopted parents and their earlier generations in their tree. I may easily miss how that match is related.
An ancestor may be incorrectly tied to a step-parent in the attached tree. Finding the step-parent can be the first step to determining the connection I share with the match.
Maybe.
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