FTM2012 Update to 21.0.0.506

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Al Grosser on February 1, 2012 at 4:50am

Hi Russ,

Not so fast. I updated earlier today. Compacted and tried to sync, but it failed. Tried it a second time, same thing. I called Ancestry Technical Support and was told that they added a few things that would address some of the problems, but not all.

However, one thing they did finally add are some diagnostics for sync failures. If run the SyncErrorReporter.exe program located in the \Program Files\Family Tree Maker 2012 folder, it will generate a Zip archive file on your desktop that contains a number of files related the sync attempts that you've made. Attach the Zip archive file to an e-mail and send it to support@ancestry.com from the e-mail account that you used when you registered FTM. Add any other information about your problem, including screen shots. They now have similar diagnostics on the Ancestry.com side. It would be helpful to follow up with a phone call to ensure they received the e-mail and could review the information that you sent.

Unfortunately, my sync failure this time was unrecoverable. I had to unlink and delete my AMT and upload it again from FTM. This time I'm not inviting anyone back to my AMT until I've gone a number of times without a sync failure. It's too much work and way too frustrating to have to re-invite everyone back to the tree and hopefully they will accept the invitation.

While talking to Ancestry Tech Support, I also stated that they must come up with a way to be able to re-upload a tree and maintain everyone that was invited to it, along with their e-mail addresses, editing status, nickname, Ancestry ID, and which person they are mapped to in the tree, without having to go through the entire invitation process. I've had to do that 5 times now and won't do it again until the tree sync stabilizes.

Hopefully, now that they have some real diagnostics they will be able to figure out what the problem is and fix it.

Good luck,

Al

Permalink Reply by Russ Worthington on February 1, 2012 at 6:09am

Al,

Thanks for the update.

Russ

Permalink Reply by Sarah Coles on February 1, 2012 at 8:39am

Thanks for the update, Al.  I'm totally frustrated with FTM2012 and rather than doing this latest update, I will go back to using FTM2011 until all these issues are resolved once and for all.  I don't really have the time nor patience to be a troubleshooter for an unstable product.  I totally agree with you about how frustrating it is to have to re-invite people to your tree on Ancestry as well, not to mention all the work involved in unlinking, deleting and uploading a new tree onto Ancestry. 

Sarah

Permalink Reply by Russ Worthington on February 1, 2012 at 9:17am

Sarah,

Have you tried the patch? Perhaps it has resolved the issues that you have had.

I have not had the issues that you have had. From what I can tell, these issues are almost user specific / file specific problems.

Russ

Permalink Reply by Al Grosser on February 1, 2012 at 10:35am

Hi Sarah,

Actually, FTM2012 works great except for the tree sync problem. I wouldn't go back to FTM2011 for only that reason, since FTM2011 didn't even have the ability to sync the tree, just upload it.

I'm sticking with FTM2012 for now, and providing all of the diagnostic information that I can to them. So far I've isolated one bug relating to the PC date format, where the PC date format had to match the Ancestry.com server date format. I've provided extensive operating system testing, particularly around the .NET Framework, including discovering a .NET Framework verification tool from one of the Microsoft developers that he had posted in his blog. I also completed a packet capture and analyzed it looking for any network or file transfer protocol or packet errors.

I'm a Network Security Engineer and do this type of analysis all the time for corporate applications, working with developers to try to resolve network and security issues. It's very hard to develop a brand new communications method in an application when working with consumer PCs, because there are an unlimited number of possible hardware, software and configuration options that could exist on a PC that the software developer has no control over, and can't foresee every possible problem or issue.

The biggest problem that I saw was that they didn't have any logging of a tree sync session to be able to isolate the problem. Now they do, so I'm hoping they can determine what the cause of the problems are. That's why it's so important to contact Ancestry's Tech Support at the moment you have a tree sync failure, and work with them to capture the Sync Error Report on your PC as well as on the AMT servers.

The other issue that they are working on is a capacity problem. The Tree Sync feature has been very heavily used, and based on Michelle Pfister's update announcement (http://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2012/01/31/family-tree-maker-fre...) I can surmise that they are working to add capacity to their server farm to better handle the load demand.

I can sympathize with them. It's very hard to model that kind of traffic without ever having that functionality before. I expected that they were going to have issues, and I knew it was going to take them longer to figure out the problems without diagnostics, because up until then, they were guessing as to what could be causing the problems on the PC end. Hopefully now that they have that in place, they will resolve the issues sooner.

I hope this helps. The more information that we can provide to them about the problem, the faster they will be able to resolve it.

Thanks,

Al

Permalink Reply by John on February 1, 2012 at 5:01pm

I too have had a sync failure after yesterday's patch. But a later attempt succeeded.

Another problem I've been having for some time and not corrected with this latest patch is duplications of citations for marriages - sometimes literally dozens for a single citation. Not only that but some (not all) of the duplications have, over time, changed. Changes include loss of formatting (line feed), apostrophies converted to &pos; and deletion of data. The problem appears to worsen with each sync. The problem seems impossible for me to correct because it seems that, no sooner do I correct a problem than another duplication appears during sync.

I have discused this with support and they are working on it.

When all this is sorted out I will have to go through all of my marriage citations and remove duplications and check with my source data for errors and omissions. Since I have hundreds of marriages this will keep me unproductively employed for many unhappy hours.

Meantime I dare not use sync as that is just worsening the situation.

John

Permalink Reply by Sarah Coles on February 1, 2012 at 9:19pm

I have installed the patch.  My tree on FTM2012 right now is a total disaster.  People have dropped out of sight and connections are not being made anymore that once were there.  Also, I do compress my file as it is quite large at this point.  What can I say other than I've spent the last three hours fooling around with this and I'm fed up to here with it.  I downloaded my tree into Legacy and do not have any issues at all with that program whatsoever.  This sync feature is a good idea but it does not work correctly as it is.  Most of the time I can't even connect to the server or I wait forever only to get a message that the sync failed and to try later.  The program then hangs and time to call up task manager so I can shut down the computer and go to bed.

Sarah

Permalink Reply by Russ Worthington on February 2, 2012 at 12:06am

Sarah,

Are these missing people in BOTH your AMT and FTM2012?

Do you have a Back Up?

Have you reported this to TechSupport (Feed Back in the Help, Online Help menu)?

If you have a back up, and have reported this directly, I suggest go restore from that back up and hold off on doing any my Sync's until Support gets back to you.

Russ

Permalink Reply by Sarah Coles on February 2, 2012 at 9:40am

Russ,

This gets worse by the minute.  On my AMT I find many duplications of photos under one person and also special characters inserted in the wording, punctuation dropped and I'm afraid to think what has happened to my citations and sources I had within my tree.  I have a backup but have to wonder how good that is. 

I haven't had time to report this yet as it was 10:30 last night when I finally was able to sign off the computer from hangups with FTM.  Believe you me I sure will contact them today as this is just not acceptable.  I have some 3100 people in my tree and everything has been sourced; not to mention all the genealogical notes, etc. I have made and photos with descriptions.  I am almost afraid to look at my tree depth.  All I want is my AMT put back to its original condition.  I'm sick over it.

Sarah

Permalink Reply by Sarah Coles on February 2, 2012 at 10:07am

Russ,

Addition to the above...I just submitted my complaint to tech support and they are experiencing an unusually high volume of email right now.  I can guess why that is the case.  I'll keep you informed when I hear from them.  In the meantime I think I'll go drown in my sorrows here for the day.

Permalink Reply by Russ Worthington on February 2, 2012 at 2:32pm

Sarah,

Thank you for the update.

Russ

Permalink Reply by Russ Worthington on February 2, 2012 at 12:04am

John,

Thank you for getting in touch directly with TechSupport.

I agree with you about the sync until you hear back from them.

Russ