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Alternate "share to" database - LDS Family Search Family Tree - Handling of burial location field as of Aug. 2017

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"Of course you can do whatever you want to do."

very true.

Also, thanks for work around for using "Places" tool. Never have explored that tool after many years tinkering with FTM. Others, like us, dropping in here (FTM threads) for first time might also see value in that option.

Another consideration for those sharing to LDS at some point:

As of this date, cemetery names added at front of location sequence are flagged by LDS "Data Problems" tool. Their flags highlight, but don't prevent entry of content of burial fact field with cemetery names added at front. Right or wrong...another consideration. Our guess, likely a "problem" for their massive legacy system of church member data of some sort... hard to say.

If we could rewrite their (LDS) rules, we'ld go with the 2010 National Gen suggestions you've so kindly shared via blog jpeg attachment; sure does "read" better with cemetery name up front. But...we are still cognizant that standardization of genealogy data doesn't seem to be a settled matter, per se...so trudge along at our pace and needs....and tweak our content based on what we enjoy and where, or to who, we are sharing .

In regards to our own data in FTM we've come to the assumption that gen software life span "years" in general, are "numbered". Anything that we can do to prepare for an eventual easy migration or jump to another platform is a safe tack for us; that includes for us:
- Vitals Standardization
- Media workflow outside of FTM
- Tasks managed outside of FTM

cheers!

Re: Alternate "share to" database - LDS Family Search Family Tree - Handling of burial location field as of Aug. 2017

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Sorry, perhaps I didn't explain it well (or maybe I'm doing it incorrectly!). Yes, address amendments in FTM do sync to Ancestry and vice versa, including the whole of an address split into detail+resolved in FTM. The problem is:

If I take an unresolved address such as "Cemetery, Town, County, England" in FTM and go into Places and move the "Cemetery" into the detail, it becomes resolved and I get "Cemetery" listed under "Town, County, England", as I expect. After re-syncing, the entry looks just the same in Ancestry, but as far as I'm aware Ancestry has no concept of that detail+resolved split. So, if I delete the FTM tree and download it again from Ancestry, the addresses in FTM would all become unresolved and I'd have to go through them all splitting the detail off again to resolve them. Of course I'm unlikely to need to recreate my entire FTM tree this way, but the problem is that it also happens whenever an address is amended in Ancestry and synced back to FTM. So if I changed the address to "Old Cemetery, Town, County, England" in Ancestry then synced, the address would change in FTM but would become unresolved, and I'd have to manually resolve it again. That even happens in FTM itself if you amend an address directly in the text field, rather than clicking the "Edit place name" button alongside the field - the address reverts to being unresolved.

An even more common issue is that every time I add a new fact or person in Ancestry with an existing address that I've already resolved in FTM, that address will be added to FTM as a separate unresolved copy, even though it's visually identical to the resolved one, and even though I've selected it from the Ancestry's drop-down of existing addresses. This happens more often than you might expect, because as well as e.g. adding family members on a census at a later date at a specific street address, the issue with the Place Name authority mean I have to manually split many "District, Town..." addresses as well, and each of these higher level locations is likely to be used on more people and facts. Another example is "The Principal Registry" in London where many probates are granted in the UK. Every time I add a new probate record in Ancestry with that address, it creates a separate unresolved copy in FTM which I have t manually split and resolve.

All this means I have to regularly go into "Places" and re-normalise addresses even when they're not actually new ones.

Re. the PlaceAuthority.db3, my understanding is that it's a standard DB3 file that could be edited easily with one of the free SQLite utilities available, but only IF we knew the password that's been used to encrypt it! All it needs is for MacKiev to tell us that password, but perhaps there are copyright or licensing restrictions that prevent them from doing so.

Re: Trees not synced online don't have the leaf hints

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Well, I really liked the hints. Too bad I won't be able to use them anymore, because I do NOT want to sync my tree. I wish I had paid more attention and realized that was the new standard, I wouldn't have upgraded to 2017. The only reason I upgraded was because I heard that ancestry wasn't going to support the hints in 2014 anymore. I really wish I could get used to one of the other software programs out there....

Re: Unable to convert file for one tree to FTM 2017

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I finally found a work-around solution that looks like it will work about 95%! In FTM 2012, I created an Export file of the Tree, BUT I had to check the box to only include records that are linked to individuals. I also Unchecked the box related to exporting Charts and Reports (that I'd created in the Publish Section). I was able to create a complete export file (confirmed that the number of people were the same in both files). I was able to convert that file to an ftm file and then open it in FTM 2017. It worked! The media files that didn't go over hadn't been linked to any individual. I can manually find them and put them into 2017 if I want to keep them. I saved a few of the "Publish" reports and books so I can have them if I need them, but may have to recreate charts and reports again from scratch.

Re: Delete all except Home Person

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Thank you, Ross Baldwin!!! Mission accomplished!!!

I had used Charts to delete branches of the tree but I had not noticed the "Select ..." button that opens the "Filter Individuals" dialog box. If it had been a snake, it would have bitten me! It seems like such a roundabout way to accomplish deleting multiple persons in FTM. Not particularly intuitive. Users should be able to do this from the People workspace, without having to go to Publish, Charts, etc.

Because you asked, and deserve an answer, here are the details of what I was trying to accomplish.

I am not trying to import data from another program. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my family tree has approximately 2000 people. I share the tree with several Ancestry members and I have had complaints that it is difficult to find people in the tree because the overwhelming majority of names in my tree are Spanish names that have accented letters. They often cannot locate people in the tree when using Ancestry's Find Person drop menu. If searching for the surname Álvarez, for example, Find Person cannot find a matching record unless they know how to enter an accented upper case "A" in the box. They don't. To add insult to injury, Find Person is case sensitive when it comes to accented characters. Searching for the name édgar will not match Édgar. Search for Lopez or lopez and you get “No matches found”. Search for lópez and it will match López. The "L" in this search is case insensitive but the "É" in Édgar is case sensitive.

Ancestry’s Find Person logic is user hostile for non-English languages. It is especially disappointing, because many of us pay extra for the World Explorer Membership and many of the records found in the civil, baptism, and census searches populate our trees with entries containing those accented letters.

I reported this to Ancestry years ago. They don’t care. The Google search engine has no problem with extended characters. It assumes that if you type ”perez” in a search box, you also want results for “pérez” and Pérez or pèrez, etc.

I am not going to destroy my tree in order to get around Ancestry’s search limitations. The people I share the tree with don't care about López versus Lopez. They just want to see the tree. It is easier for me to strip all the accents from a backup of my tree and upload it as a private, static tree that they can easily navigate their way through.

I have no intention of maintaining the duplicate tree. It’s way too much work. The labor cost/benefit doesn’t justify that kind of effort. Besides, maintaining data in two databases and trying to keep them synchronized is indeed chaotic! I tried merging an updated FTM tree with the existing older tree and the merge routine gets all twisted with its various merge thresholds, resulting in significantly more people on the target tree.

Additionally, there is another problem that complicates tree merges. Back to Spanish surnames. The Spanish naming convention is:

GivenName(s) PaternalSurname MaternalSurname

The paternal and maternal surnames belong in the Surname Field. When editing any part of a name that contains a compound surname from the Edit Panel or via Find Replace, FTM parses the name incorrectly. It puts only the last word in the string of surnames in the Surname Field and shifts the paternal surname to the GivenName(s) Field. Thus: María Luisa Rodríguez y López (correct surname is Rodríguez y López) winds up with only López in the Surname Field, completely corrupting the surname.

I have reported this also to MACKiev. No way of knowing whether they have taken ownership of this as a bug or whether it will also fall on deaf ears. Their focus seems almost exclusively on FTM's Sync function.

I was merely looking for a way to update the "sanitized" copy of my tree on Ancestry without losing the authorized guests. It is much easier simply to replace the shared tree with an updated tree.

Thank you again for pointing me in the right direction.
Wilfred

Re: Trees not synced online don't have the leaf hints

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Its frustrating! You can still do web searches on Ancestry for an individual by clicking on "Web Search" then "New Search". You'll still get the info that are on the leaf hints. Just a little more difficult to get to.

Re: Alternate "share to" database - LDS Family Search Family Tree - Handling of burial location field as of Aug. 2017

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O.K., I see what you are saying about Ancestry not being amenable to the 4 + 1 place name. I've never had the occasion to edit a five-part place name in Ancestry and then sync; but I can see where it would not play nice with FTM.

All the best.

So what is impact of marking a file as "Private"?

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short answer: new rule, if you want hints in FTM2017 a user must upload the tree to A.com.

more info: several threads here discuss same in detail (merits, communication/notification of, etc. ) ; others point to facebook discussions and facebook user group discussions (couldn't find the latter as not Facebook member).

workaround: if choose to upload your "help relatives" files, default settings if uploading from FTM, I believe, are private and "masked from search of other users". To verify, after your upload and you link from within FTM , go to tree privacy settings at A.com, middle tab, and confirm those two settings checked. Default settings worked for us.

caveat: not sure of impact of these two privacy settings as it relates to A.com internal use:
- File or source enhancements using private living individuals. e.g. Is A.com able to use private files for say cleaning a new city directory database that just by "cleaning/matching" certain data elements throws those new source directories into the hints pool as now there is a "higher certainty" as to the integrity of the record through matching to privately marked files?
- Algorithm team extent of use?
- Current or new divisions attempting to monetize A.com database with living privately marked individuals. e.g. are they using living people to scrub and match facebook tools they are currently building out with their app in another division?
- Research pursuits. e.g. A.com as a corp is starting to use and partner with outside companies and entitities. how do living individuals in a tree, in a private file get handled.
- Archive rules. e.g. if i submit a "private" file now, and later decide to take it off server at A.com can they still use the archived "private" info. We have an example where Findagrave did just that.

tough call for those seeking max. privacy and still not knowing why this new rule in place...is it in place due to tech rewrite of software? or...an A.com business decision to encourage file building incentives or future customers? something else to explain?? ....who knows...


Re: Alternate "share to" database - LDS Family Search Family Tree - Handling of burial location field as of Aug. 2017

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I think it's just that I've got used to doing most of my work in Ancestry and prefer the interface, so I use FTM primarily as a tool for things like backups (which unlike Ancestry's gedcom exports include media of course) and place name management. I don't find FTM very intuitive for research and building my tree - and it's so slooow!

Privacy ?s and new requirement to upload files to A.com in exchange for hints.

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I strongly empathize with your frustrations.

I updated lingering questions we have in regards to privacy concerns (See post below original date Aug 3). Though we uploaded our files to test under new requirement for Hints access, I recently (8/9/17) got back a reply from A.com I sent in. re. questions on their "terms of use" clause No. 3 as it relates to user files where privacy settings are chosen.

the reply:

"We are writing today to let you know we are currently experiencing high volumes and we will be unable to personally respond to your email. We apologize for this inconvenience and invite you to visit our Ancestry Support Center where we offer many tools to help you quickly answer your question(s)."

I would love to speak to the team member, their supervisor and the new "privacy" director/officer as to who made the call to send a reply like that.

If they continue to move towards an IPO and all the regulatory conditions that go along with that...Sarbanes Oxley etc. they are going to have to do better to train their staff as to what really is going on behind the scenes in their data mining pursuits and to politely explain the same to their customers,..

FTM 2008 Service Pack 3

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I am still using FTM2008 and due to my computer not working any more am now using a laptop with Windows 7. Am I able to update the FTM 2008 SP3 using Windows 7?

Shirlee
Wellington, NZ

Re: FTM 2008 Service Pack 3

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Re: Um, where are plugins?

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Stephen

I know this is an old thread, but I have been unable to find you to help me resolve an issue I have been using Family book creator for many years and I am now trying to update it to use with FTM 2107

From what I have read this seems to be an easy process and since I already have a license I understand when I update it to FTM 2017 it should install the licensed version

But what I get instead is a trial version and wants about 50 plus dollars to obtain a licensed version

I cant seem to find an internet address to have you or your support group fix this

Would you please respond and give me an internet address that I can go directly to to get this fixed



Re: Um, where are plugins?


sync warnings

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Anyone seeing sync warnings for the past few days, or is it just me?

Re: sync warnings

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No, there have been sync warning Ambers and a Red over the past few days. I'm still trying to upload after installation of FTM 2017 last month. Customer Support are unable to help.

Re: Um, where are plugins?

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Thanks Burgess --- I have been there

To further explain

In order to download a FTM 2017 non trial version I have to enter my License Number

And I seem to have lost/misplaced the License Number

So I need to get directly to Stephen Harms and have him send me via E-mail a copy of my license number or better yet have him look up my License Number and then let me or him download a non trial version

I am sure he has enough information in his system t be able to do that

His system does know my E Mail Address and I am quite sure he knows/can find my License Number

So I need to get in touch directly with him or one of his support people

And Burgess, since this is an old thread if you have any info that will help me do this I would appreciate it

Re: sync warnings

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ok, wonder if the warnings are individual. ORANGE STATUS suggested it was on Ancestry side. Maybe just a generic message.

Re: sync warnings

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I had an Orange yesterday, early, but green later in the day. Synced with no problems.
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