I’m not all that happy with this upgrade to Family Tree Maker 2012. There are many things I like about it, but the whole reason I paid for the upgrade was because I was very excited about having my Ancestry.com tree sync with the tree on my computer in my Family Tree Maker program.
More and more of my family has become involved with working on our lineage and I wanted all of our information to be on Ancestry.com so family members can keep up with progress, but have my tree in my computer, for reports and such.
Supposedly, I can sync my trees with Family Tree Maker 2012. That doesn’t seem to be the case for me.
First problem that I encountered was I couldn’t sync the tree I already had on Ancestry.com to the tree I already had on Family Tree Maker. You can only upload one and then sync it, or download your tree from Ancestry and sync it.
My dilemma with that was, I had about 350 more people on my Family Tree Maker program that I did on my Ancestry Tree. Since I have spent many hours connecting my Ancestry tree to other family members, photo’s and other information, I didn’t want to lose those connection’s by uploading a new tree.
Thinking I had no choice, because I didn’t want to have to reenter all the people and their information, I downloaded my Ancestry.com tree and I merged it to my tree in Family Tree Maker. Then I spent days cleaning up the mess that it caused. Then I uploaded that tree to Ancestry, creating tree number two on my account just so I could sync my tree.
Nightmare number two commenced. Pictures went everywhere, sources got linked to multiple people they didn’t belong to, so on and so on. So, I started working on cleaning up that mess. Then about day two, the tree stopped syncing. After countless emails to Ancestry, their solution – keep trying.
I gave up. After three days.
Ancestry.com support says “Keep Trying”. That’s what the program tells me as well. That however, is not helping me one iota.
Not to be beaten by a program, I decided to download my original tree because I really didn’t want to lose those connections anyway, and I spent another two days adding the 350 people who weren’t in this tree, and the syncing worked fine.
Until two days ago. I got the error message again, and still today, it will not sync. I’m not sure why I thought I could go to bed and it would work fine today, but it is what it is.
So, Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker people, listen up!! You better do something besides tell me to keep on trying, or I will discontinue the $30 a month I am currently sending you. I’m not wasting any more of my life trying to make your program work.
Neither of the two trees I have spent the past week and a half working on will sync at all.
Am I the only one that is having this problem?? I would really like to hear from some other Family Tree Maker users.
Russ Worthington
October 21, 2011 at 4:43 pm
Suzie,
I am sorry that you are having difficulty with FTM2012. I have it, use it daily, and think it is the best.
You said: “First problem that I encountered was I couldn’t sync the tree I already had on Ancestry.com to the tree I already had on Family Tree Maker. You can only upload one and then sync it, or download your tree from Ancestry and sync it.”
This is true. almost.
You CAN download and Sync your Ancestry Member Tree (AMT) into FTM2012
You CAN upload and Sync from FTM2012 to your AMT.
But, that defeats the purpose here. I think that you want ONE Tree in FTM2012 that is linked to ONE AMT, right?
How do you get there:
1) determine which tree is the Master Tree. It sounded like your FTM2012, as it has more people
2) you could merge the two trees. BACK UP your files, both the AMT to FTM2012 and the FTM2012 to AMT. The merge them. Before you Upload and Link the new merged file, make sure the data is the way you want it. IF the merge goes smoothly, after some clean up perhaps, you can upload and Link the merged tree to a New AMT and re-invite your helpers.
It sounds like you did that.
One thing to remember, trying to address the media issue(s), is that you need to be patient with the upload of Media Files. You WILL see a status on the Plan Workspace for the Media Complete status.
All of my Media Files, Person, Fact, or Citation are where they should be in my AMT and FTM2012.
One thing to consider BEFORE you do the Sync, do the Compact File in the Tools Menu.
I have my main file, a very active working file, and a number of test files ALL in AMT and FTM2012 and work as expected.
Russ
Susie
October 21, 2011 at 4:53 pm
Thanks for responding Russ, I really appreciate the feedback. I did try all of the above just as you suggested, and all of those sceniario’s seem to work for a while, but at some point they all stop syncing. One thing I have not done though, is compact my files. Can I try that now or is it too late since I already have my trees linked?
Hal
November 6, 2011 at 10:39 am
You’re not the only one. I must have more than 100 hours in trying to get my database to sync. I’ve tried everything I’ve seen mentioned here and elsewhere on the Web. I downloaded my family file from Ancestry and imported to FTM and it crashed. I deleted the version on Ancestry and uploaded from FTM. Crashed again. It always crashes just after the uploaded tree name appears under Ancestry Trees on the Ancestry Web Dashboard on the PC. Of course, that’s 5 or 6 hours after the process starts. Log out, log back in, compact file, cleaned PC of all traces of previous FTM versions and initial install of 2012, reinstalled 2012, crashed again same point in process. Right about now, I’d like to take the FTM 2012 disk outside and play a game of Frisbee with my dog.
Susie
November 7, 2011 at 5:39 am
I was beginning to think that I was the only one. I finally got one to work, after deleting my tree several times and re-downloading the one from Ancestry. Tired of doing all the work, only to have to delete it so I make it sync now almost every time I make a change. I’ll be dang if I do all that work again just to have to delete the tree once it stops syncing again.
Ugggh!