the Sunday Soapbox | Because Sometimes You've Just Got To Get It Off Your Chest

Friends and followers, I feel the need to vent. Beats running around the Cave yelling and banging my head against the wall .... 

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are entirely my own. 

Read at your discretion.

On Thursday of this past week, I successfully completed my tree merge, bringing all my branches together into one master tree. I easily used Family Tree Maker to complete the task. I saved a bunch of back-ups along the way, and after the initial, brief moment of panic, (I'm creating a monster!) felt  pretty darned good. Time to upload to Ancestry.com!

Easy, right?

Think again. (Is anything ever really easy with Ancestry.com?)

The actual uploading went quite smoothly. Took about 6 minutes, with an additional 15 to sync all the media. Excited to feast my eyes on my creation, I began to take a look around. Almost immediately I noticed something was amiss. My 3rd great grandparent's entire family was duplicated. 

What. The. Heck?!

I quickly checked the FTM tree. All good there. Checking the list of all people in my Ancestry tree showed no duplicates. Curious. I attempted to delete the second set of the same family, only to have it delete in BOTH sets! Dang it!! I opened up the quick edit and made sure everybody was linked correctly. Looked good. So, what? 

Taking a deep breath, I visited the Ancestry.com Facebook page and posted my dilemma on their timelime. I included the screenshot of the issue. I wrote: "Are we having issues again? Tried to update a piece of my tree from Family Tree Maker - this is what happened! It's correct on FTM, they are NOT duplicate people - same family added twice. If I delete one they both get wiped out. Can't merge either, because there is only one of each in my list of people - but somehow they have replicated on this family. ??? How do I fix this? Seems like a coding issue .... (your help is down, of course ...)" 

It has long been my experience that the use of Social Media brings a response faster than any other avenue of communication.

I did get a response. Within the hour! "Hi Anne, we'd like to take a closer look at this. Can you please send us a private message with your Ancestry username?"

So I did. You can probably guess the outcome of this already if you've ever had any contact with Ancestry.com's "help", but I'll see it through ....

The suggestion was to send a more detailed email (yeah, I know) including the screenshot.

So I did.

Two days later I get a response: "Thank you for contacting Ancestry through one of our social media channels. Sorry to hear you're having issues with a family being duplicated in your family tree. That is very odd, there is likely a relationship mistake which has taken place which has caused this to happen. We've included a link below that will show you how to correct any relationship mistakes in your family tree. If the error does not show on Ancestry please focus on the steps in the second article relating to family tree maker.

Answer Link: Fixing Relationship mistakes in Ancestry Member Trees
Answer Link: Fixing relationship mistakes in Family Tree Maker

Thanks again for your email, we wish you a lovely day today! 
 If you need additional assistance, please feel free to reply to this message."

Nope. NOT a relationship mistake. That was one of the first things I checked. Plus, it's all fine on FTM. Additionally, the links that were supplied did not work ......

I responded that their links did not work, however, I knew it was not a relationship mistake - I'd already checked that. On both ends.

Ancestry.com response: "Thank you for your response. In this case, please follow this link first and follow the instructions in full to optimize your browser to function properly with our site: Optimizing your Ancestry Experience"

Well, that link didn't work either, but I already knew where it would send me.

Steam boiling out of my ears, I wanted to punch someone. It is NOT my cache and cookies!!! No!!! No, it's not!! Why, Ancestry, is that always your solution? If only it were that easy, we could solve all the world's problems by simply clearing the cache and cookies!! And not taking any responsibility ....

By this time, I had already solved my own problem. How? EASY!

I deleted the Ancestry.com tree and re-uploaded it.

Works great.


Silly me for thinking Ancestry.com just might want to know about this glitch. Or care.


Incidentally, I noticed today that others are experiencing similar issues ..... this time on already existing trees ...... oh boy.


Thanks for letting me vent. ♥

Genealogy Do-Over: The Go-Over 3.3

Month Three. Week Three. Like the time change, I feel like I'm leaping forward. In a good way. Things are starting to come together. I am getting a clearer picture, things are coming into focus.

Of course, I could be eating my words a little farther down the line. It's been known to happen.

So far I have started to sort through my "stuff". I purchased binders and have started to file things appropriately. I started to sort and label all my downloads, docs and photos - that is an ongoing process. I really liked Debra Monsive's Organizing Your Genealogical Records pdf in the File section of the FB group. I got some good ideas and spun my own version so it made sense to me. In the future I'd LOVE to get one of those big honkin' file folders, but alas I currently have no room for it. Binders will have to do.

I am still working on locating some of my "essential" documents. That goes along with my organization. It's a bit of a rat's nest in the computer - the paper stuff I'm better at keeping reasonably sorted (reasonably .... still can't always locate something immediately, I'm working on that).

I've created a nice little Personal Fact List that I can print or fill out on the computer. It will help me determine what I have and what I am missing.

Still can't embrace the spreadsheet. I try at least once a week. But, my distaste for it has led me to create other things that I WILL use.

I have decided to redo/update my family group sheets. I can get OCD when I start to organize.

I feel like I am still preparing to research and setting research goals. And some days I find myself hyperventilating at the ginormity of the task at hand. Hopefully I will look back and laugh when it all falls smoothly into place.

Today threw me a curveball. I was sitting down to do some more organizing and all my family trees have disappeared from FTM!! All of them!! I had to just walk away. They are gone from Legacy too. The FTM trees were half linked to Ancestry (so I can easily restore them) and half non-online trees (not so easily restored). I'm not crying yet, but perhaps the computer gnomes who took my files decided I really did need to do a complete Do-Over!

Made me realize I still need paper "back ups" as much as computer "back ups".

The work continues ........

Field Notes: Over Cite To Avoid Oversight

While researching my 2nd great grandmother for my 52 Ancestors piece on her, I needed to reference my 2nd great grandfather's life. I noticed I had included the note that he had gone to Australia mining for gold in 1851. Now, I remember finding a document on it about 8 years ago, but wouldn't you know it I did not reference it!! Nope. Just wrote the note that he went.

I spent the better part of a day attempting to re-locate that bit of information.

I would suspect I got it from a passenger list. But WHERE???

That is now the 6 million dollar question.

I can't tell you what possessed me to note this without citing where I'd found the information. I remember being excited and intrigued upon discovering it and had planned on returning to it at some point to investigate further.

I am a bit of a scattered note taker, but I combed through all my research notes. I found some other things I had discovered around the same time, but not the gold mining in Australia bit.

Two things come to mind. Right around that time my genealogy computer crashed. We were able to recover almost everything, but not all of it. There was also a glitch in my old FTM16 when I tried to convert/upgrade to FTM2010.

Perhaps the information I spent the weekend hunting for was lost to the crash? Or the software conversion?

These days I make copious notes right in the fact box on Ancestry and add additional notes in the note section. Taking every effort to keep my Ancestry and FTM trees synced after any bit of work I do on either end.

And, I back up to several different locations.

Live and learn.

Takeaway: Back-up. Early and often. And always cite your sources. Always, always, always.

FTM Is The Devil (sorry RW): Genealogy Do-Over Week Seven

Week Seven.

The week I have been waiting for!

The week you all are going to tell me which genealogy software I'm going to love AND use.

No. No, I can't decide. I want you to do it for me. Please??

I began my journey with Family Tree Maker back in the early 90's. I never really used it. It didn't make sense to me. When Ancestry first showed up I embraced it's ease of use and dove in.  I LOVED it!! I built my entire empire in Ancestry.com. I loved that I could access it anywhere, any time. I loved it's visual appeal. I loved the design of it - it made sense to me. Then I started hearing about the foolishness of having all your work stored off site - in someone else's database. What if Ancestry should go belly-up? Then what?

I purchased an updated, 21st century version of FTM thinking it would simulate the ease of use that Ancestry provided. It still didn't make sense. I never used it.

FTM - the devil

Then Ancestry came out with Tree-Sync and I began to get 'visions of sugarplums' dancing 'round my head. I liked the idea of Tree Sync! I could do all my work on Ancestry.com and then sync it to FTM - saved on my home computer.

I purchased the upgrade.

Seemed like a good idea at the time.

In reality, what has transpired is one big fat mess. One GIANT mess that I don't even want to THINK about, as it will require mindboggling hours of tediously deleting the triplicate records that have crossed over. TRIPLICATE! In ALL my synced trees (of course I synced them all!!)

And even with the new upgrade, I still hated FTM. It still didn't make any sense. It still seemed hard to use. (I know you are asking yourself right this very second, why Anne, why did you continue down this path of  perpetual error?) I don't know. FTM would not even work correctly on my brand new Win8.1 laptop (which I also detest - but that's a rant for another time).  I was forced to uninstall it and reinstall it on my desktop (this is where the triple records problem originated). Either I didn't have a clue or there is no good way to remove all the synced trees from one computer and re-sync them to another computer. I am so angry with it now I doubt I will ever agree to use it again.

And all the money I wasted! All the time! All the frustration!

FTM is the devil.

And I STILL don't have an off-line program.

Afraid of recreating my previous experience I have refrained from pursuing that activity.

Until now.

Now it is a topic point, now it is something to look at, study, compare and pursue.

So, here's where you all come to my rescue, right?

footnote: I see this same problem over and over again on synced trees on Ancestry.com. Duplicate, triplicate, quadruple records. I am the first to admit that I am just slightly above clueless when it comes to many aspects of the whole computer "thing", but there has got to be a better way! Dang it!