* known issues with GEDCOMs downloaded from Ancestry.com

[jmurphy]

Disclaimer: I've just upgraded to FH6 earlier today. I haven't noticed this problem until now, but it MAY have been there all along and I just didn't notice until now.

I'm using today's release of FH6 as an excuse to start a new review cycle of my research by re-entering things in a fresh database in Family Historian. While I was without FH (I lost a hard drive), I was playing around with using Ancestry's online tree system as a way to keep track of records I had found. I downloaded GEDCOMs of these trees as a crude backup. There are many problems with these GEDCOMs, not least that they encode all the Census records as Residence events, which is why I would rather just re-analyze all my records and enter them fresh, instead of trying to clean up these files.

However, I do need to look at them from time to time, so I want to be aware of the problems that exist.

Today when looking at one of my 'end of a line' or 'brick wall' ancestors, I noticed that there were source references for him (e.g. for his name) from the National Probate Calendar. The only problem was, the entry was for his great-grandson's probate and not his. It's entirely possible that I attached the source on Ancestry to the wrong person in my tree there. I'm going to look at the underlying GEDCOM to see if I can determine what's happened. I may not be able to tell what's going on in the online tree itself because I don't have a sub for the UK records at the moment -- I only have a US sub on Ancestry.

I'm betting this is user error on my part, but I wanted to post anyway so others could report their own problems with importing Ancestry-generated GEDCOMs.

[jimlad68]

A quick partial repeat of what I said on another site earlier today:

"Ancestry have a lot of good things, but not their trees either online or their FTM, I gave up on both years ago......"

Ancestry do it their way, especially when it comes to notes, they freely admit that their own online trees and their own genealogy program FTM do not transfer notes (memos) correctly, if at all, if you upload a GEDCOM, don't expect to find your notes, at least not easily, notes for sources are often there, somewhere, but you have to hunt them down. This is even more amazing when you consider that their sister "free" site Rootweb trees take nearly anything in a Gedcom, display it all and simple to view, and also export it too.

[jmurphy]

If you can talk to Ancestry's front-facing big names directly, they do get where you are coming from. I watch Crista Cowan's presentations directly and have said things about the deficiencies of the online tree system in the chat rooms. Crista has promised to pass them up the line to the people who work on such things.

Ultimately it comes down to how much of a PITA it is for the developers to implement, and whether the people in charge of designing the user interface think it will help or hinder the new users. But if you don't give feedback, or only give it to the people taking metrics with their idiot surveys, then nothing will change.

[jimlad68]

I was in IT for many years and seen the scenario repeat itself. My guess (and only my guess) is that Ancestry decided to create a new Family Tree Maker. I understand they had acquired a very good in its time FTM that went to I think version 16. They then did a complete rewrite, I suspect by either a committee and/or by an outside organisation who cared little for genealogy, the "spec" did not consider existing structures like their existing Online trees or Gedcom etc etc, there then followed an initial new format FTM (Ftm 200x?) which could only be described as almost useless, then many years and new releases, and I suspect a minor fortune, to get to a reasonably useful program that still does not interface well with anything else, including their own online trees (unless it has improved dramatically since I last looked at it about 2 years ago).

Anyway, that is my take, despite being a long time loyal user of the other Ancestry products. However, a few interesting points here re Ancestry

http://www.fhug.org.uk/forum/viewtopic. ... fmp#p56384
starting by jmurphy » 26 Nov 2014 18:25