Family Historian User Group

How can I prevent the programme changing from Ancestry.co.uk to Ancestry.com please?

Sorry, can you be a bit clearer about what is being changed, and where? FH does not have direct links to Ancestry.

Ancestry have a local website domain for many countries.
UK is ancestry.co.uk
US is ancestry.com
Australia is ancestry.com.au
and so on for Canada, Germany, Italy, France, etc
There is often an Other Sites option at the very bottom of the Ancestry web pages to choose the country.
You subscription may only apply for one country.
What Ancestry domain have you bookmarked in your browser?

The default may be chosen your location on the Internet.
In Windows 10 what is set in Start > Settings > Time & Language for Date & Time and Region & Language?

Hi
This has happened to me over the last couple of days. I log onto Ancestry.co.uk then when looking at search results see loads for America and glance at address and it has changed to Ancestry.com. It happened earlier in the year. It is just a thing Ancestry does from time to time.
Ann

Alwyn
You are not alone! I have been suffering and complaining about the same thing and it has got so bad, I cancelled my subscription.

Their support staff are as good as useless, and just tell me to ensure I had the correct site selected -duh. Regardless of this setting, I still got results that directed me to Ancestry.com.

The same happens with their DNA matches. I get an e-mail from them detailing a potential match, but the links in the e-mail also direct me to Ancestry.com!

NB see my posts on the wdytya forum on this very subject

Since this appears to be nothing to do with FH, I have moved it to the General forum.

I could rant on and on about this and other recent problems with Ancestry. The .com site will appear randomly at any time and you are not always aware of it at first. Of course on the Home page of the .com site my own preferences are not there! I change it back and it stays .uk for a while, then sneakily goes back to .com.

And another thing (LOL) ..... the searches have suddenly got much, much worse. For example when searching for someone on a census if I specify 'county of birth, Yorkshire' I get a long list of people born in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Devon. Why?? I find myself using FMP much more these days but I still need them both for the PR coverage.

Anne

Anne,
Like you, I could go on and on about the faults with the Ancestry interface, some of their major failings are:

1. Search results. Their breakdown of results is rubbish! I do a general census search for someone, and am told the total results found, with a breakdown of how many in each census year. I see there are 5 in 1841, yet when I click on 1841 to view them, am told there were no records found!

2. Randomly filling search criteria with someone from my tree, ( when I haven’t selected anyone), causing me to clear the search and start again. This got so bad, I even deleted my tree!

3. Giving error 404-file not found, when I click to view an image.

4. Highlighting and typing over a birthdate doesn’t work. One has to delete it before entering new date. This fault is particularly annoying, as one doesn’t notice the date hasn’t changed and when one realises, one is forced to repeat the search with corrected birthdate. Why they also feel the need to have birthdate shown twice on search page I’ll never know, but it seems their mechanism to keep them in synch is the cause of this particular problem.

All in all, they seem to be trying to be too clever, and fail so miserably. They’ve obviously never heard of the KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid!

Gowermick wrote:4. Highlighting and typing over a birthdate doesn’t work. One has to delete it before entering new date.

Mike,

Are you by any chance using Firefox? I had this same problem when using Firefox. This same problem doesn't occur for me using Google Chrome or Internet Explorer. This leads me to believe it is a Firefox flaw not an Ancestry flaw.

Just one of several problems I've had with Firefox which made me switch to using Chrome.

Bill,
Whilst I do use Firefox, I really don’t think this is the cause. Firefox has no trouble with other fields, which work as one expects, but I just have this problem with the birthdate field. Which as I suggested, could be the result of the code they use to synchronise the two birthdate fields. ( I do question why they feel it necessary to have two birthdate fields). However, following your suggestion, will see if the trouble exists in Safari.

Even so, it doesn’t explain the other problems encountered with their search interface in general.

Mike,

I totally agree that there are other issues with the Ancestry interface. I've never understood the need to have two birthday fields either. I do think that the birth date field issue is a Firefox issue as it doesn't occur in any other browser I've tried.

Oh yes, Mike Loney. I had forgotten about the automatic filling in. I have worked out why it does that. If I leave the cursor/ pointer on the first box when I tab to the next one it then does the automatic filling in. When I remember I deliberately move to pointer away from the first box once I have clicked in it. Seems to work. Hope that helps. I concur with all you have said!!
Anne

BillH wrote: Mike,

Are you by any chance using Firefox? I had this same problem when using Firefox. This same problem doesn't occur for me using Google Chrome or Internet Explorer. This leads me to believe it is a Firefox flaw not an Ancestry flaw.

Just one of several problems I've had with Firefox which made me switch to using Chrome.

Bill,
I have tried this on Safari on my iPad and Edge on my PC, and I totally agree with you, the problem seems to be restricted to Firefox! I'll raise it on the Firefox forum and see if anyone else has encountered similar problems. Hopefully, if and when I return to Ancestry, the problem will have been resolved.
Thanks

Mike