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suggested improvements to FTM2013

Greetings all from cold blustery Ontario, Canada:

I love the FTM2012 sync feature ... when it works. But given the many times I have had to repair my master data-base and re-upload my files to Ancestry, perhaps there is something else amiss? For instance in the quality of the public tree data hints provided?

How many of you have found public trees with parent birth dates well before their childrens' ... even by a couple centuries!! Or the previous generation skipping several generations back ie good old dad was 250 years old when he fathered you! Or, children's names repeated several times because of mere language spelling differences or key date differences. Is it really possible to have one couple give birth to more than 30 children with 5 "Marys"? Or, what about America birth locations (ie Pennsylvania) for Europeans born back in 700 AD ... ie before Christopher Columbus and 1492?? ... among other such data glitches.

I sent a suggestion to Ancestry to please allow subscribers to future versions of FTM the option to screen/filter or invoke stronger warnings against the above errors when syncing. They could benefit thru growing trust in Ancestry's online data and therefore demand for their services. Or, I also suggested members have an optional online button to flag faulty online data fields they find in public trees so other researchers are forewarned of possible bad data they are considering merging. Many eyes would quickly help clean up the massive amount of data online. This data field flag could also be automatically emailed to the owner of the Tree.

What answer did I receive from Ancestry? A very very polite way of saying they prefer to keep their data easy, fuzzy and unreliable. It's really up to the end-user to catch any/all obscure gitches themselves.

Naturally, I was disappointed by this answer. An optional screening tool would still allow those who prefer weak connections to build 100,000+ lists of names for their Trees, while others who like some data reliability could live with a few hundred strongly connected/well documented names. Thanks for listening.

Cheers,

Bo Renneckendorf

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Permalink Reply by Russ Worthington on January 29, 2012 at 9:49am

Bo,

FYI - No one from Ancestry.com visits this website. It is for Users helping other Users.

The Ancestry.com, Family Tree Maker Message board. There is a link on this page. It has more visibility and more Users to help support your cause.

The easiest way to avoid those trees is to NOT include them in your Hint's in your search Results. You can control that.

I think the pages you are referring to are OLD pages. From what I can tell, users who are using the Ancestry Member Trees (AMT) have more accurate data.

Remember, to download a AMT, it MUST be yours, So, anyone YOU invite to Update YOUR tree, will be the only ones who can enter 'faulty' information.

When some one DOES update your AMT, you will receive an email.

I am not disagreeing with you, but you might consider posting your issues on the Ancestry Member Tree Fan Page.

Russ

Permalink Reply by Bodo Harry Renneckendorf on January 29, 2012 at 10:37am

Thank you Russ:

I learned several useful preventive things while lurking on this site as I upgrqaded to FTM 2012, which saved me lots of grief when things froze or crashed upon syncing over the past few months. Yet I still run into hidden data glitches which do not reveal themselves until it comes time to complete my sync cycle (download, fix master data, upload). So I thought I'd try to share here. Sorry. Maybe I will use Ancestry's FTM message board, as you suggest.

Cheers,

Permalink Reply by Russ Worthington on January 29, 2012 at 11:24am

Bo,

If this group was a little more active, I might agree with you. I do try to cross post Family Tree Maker information here, as well as my Blog.

But the most visible place to post this specific topic (stuff for 2013 and the AMT issue) is on the Message Board.

I had hoped that Genealogy Wise would more become more active, but it hasn't yet.

Good luck,

Russ

Permalink Reply by John on January 29, 2012 at 2:24pm

Bo,

I agree with your earlier comments and hope you find a way to get the message through to Ancestry.

But, I am most interested right now in your comments on problems with sync. I have had ongoing problems in this area that were not corrected at the last FTM upgrade (this is the subject of another thread). The last was about three days ago which, after several tries over time, corrected itself yesterday with no overt action on my part. [Your proposition that `hidden data gliches' might affect program operation suggests to me that there are program bugs which should not exist.] One useful enhancement for Ancertry 2013 would be for some useful messages that provided some clues as to what might be causing the problem.

Anyway, in my comment in the other thread I was looking for ideas on best practice to avoid syncing problems and Rus kindly offered some but you are suggesting that there may be other `useful preventative things' that could help. I would be very greatful if you would share those.

Regards

John

Permalink Reply by Russ Worthington on January 29, 2012 at 2:28pm

John,

As the Ancestry Family Tree Maker message board clearly shows, there are issues with FTM2012.

HOWEVER, and I think this is important. DON'T use the Sync feature until a Patch has been released.

I haven't have any problems with the Sync Feature and I use it on 5 files on a daily bases, without issue. BUT the message board has a number of replies from TechSupport that they are working on the problem(s) and hope to have a patch out soon.

Russ

Permalink Reply by John on January 29, 2012 at 4:01pm

Thanks Russ,

I hadn't seen that message board and it is obvious from that that I'm far from being alone. I wish I'd seen it before - I would have felt less like the problems were my fault and have spent far less time attempting to find solutions that I could apply.

I won't use the sync feature, let alone FTM until after the new patch.

John

Permalink Reply by Bodo Harry Renneckendorf on January 29, 2012 at 2:50pm

Hi John and Russ:

Here's what I've learned both from Russ's blog and from my own mistakes:

Never have FTM and Ancestry open at the same time when syncing.

Search online at Ancestry rather than thru FTM because the interface and utility are better for checking data before accepting/merging them. Try not to go over 100 new names per search session.

Close Ancestry when done the online searches.

Open FTM. Do a download sync.

Then use FTM and maybe the Data Error Report under Persons, to get rid of invalid dates, etc. In each of these steps I make a backup (yes, maybe 4 separate backups). I then find duplicate people and if duplicates cannot be merged I then look up and fix data fields as appropriate. Then I use the FTM tools to both clean up names written in Caps as well as "crunch" the file to improve efficiency. Then I sync/upload these fixes. Lastly I close my FTM files properly.

Lately, my syncs have been going better (did a couple today) and when they are rejected, Ancestry seems to accept them later when their servers are less busy. So it's just alot of patience and prevention. I'm retired, so that helps.

Cheers,

Permalink Reply by Russ Worthington on January 29, 2012 at 3:33pm

Bo,

I very, very rarely search on Ancestry. I maintain ALL of my files in FTM2012.

Not sure what you are doing when you say "Close Ancestry when done the online searches". That doesn't may any difference. If it works for you, fine, but I have yet to see the connection nor anyone who has proposed that as a solution. Oh, I have read ALL of the message boards.

The Data Error Report is always a good tool to use.

IF you were to do use the Web Search feature with FTM2012, you won't get "invalid dates". I have yet to see one, and I have been using that feature for a long time.

I do NOT have TreeSync™ issues. I Compact my file, accept the Back Up, and then SyncNow.

I don't have any clean up to do and my data is clean.

It does not matter, the time of day, that I do the SyncNow. I do it when ever I want to.

I can only tell you my experience.

One final comment, I do NOT use ANY Ancestry Member Tree information as a source of my data. I EXCLUDE them from ALL of my searches.

Russ

Permalink Reply by John on January 29, 2012 at 4:11pm

Thanks Bo,

I hope that when the new patch comes out these things wont be necessary. Meantime, as I said above I'll stop using FTM meantime.

I would dearly like to use FTM for most of my work but the sync failures have prevented that because the process of recovery after a failure means loss of data. In my case the consequence of loss is greater if FTM is the main research tool.

John

Permalink Reply by Russ Worthington on January 29, 2012 at 4:19pm

John,

I suggest that you USE FTM2012, just don't use the Sync feature until the patch is available.

As the the "recovery" just, on a regular basis, do a Compact File, and use the Back Up feature that is offered.

suggested improvements to FTM2013

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