Button for FamilySearch not working

If you are in the “Descendants” view and have selected one of the descendants, then the button for the FamilySearch menu is not active - although the person is already linked to FamilySearch.

It is working for me. Just takes a few minutes to populate correctly and then lets you go to the FS record.

The button for FamilySearch only lights up in the “view” part of the screen for Family View and Pedigree View. Even when the person is connected to FamilySearch, RM still has to connect up with FamilySearch and verify the person in FamilySearch before the icon lights up. Whenever the button for FamilySearch lights up in the “view” part of the screen for Family View or Pedigree View, it also lights up for the person in the side bar with the same caveat that the lighting up doesn’t take place until RM is able to make contact with FamilySearch and verify the person.

None of the other views support the FamilySearch icon in the “view” part of the screen. In particular, it is not supported for Descendant View in the “view” part of the screen. But all of the other views do appear to support the FamilySearch icon in the sidebar - namely for the one and only person who has the current focus. Nevertheless, the same caveat still applies: it doesn’t light up until RM is able to make contact with FamilySearch and verify the person.

All kinds of things can cause that verification to fail or to be very slow - like your home Internet being slow or down, or like FamilySearch’s servers or Internet being slow or down.

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Maybe I am misunderstanding this-- perhaps you mean that you have to connect the person to Familysearch before you can see the icon— BUT what I take it as is that even after you have initially linked your person to FamilySearch, you are saying that you have to be logged into to see the icon in the sidebar—on descendant view ( or any view I can see the Familysearch icon in the sidebar even when I am logged out of Familysearch


I will note that when I drastically change the view from the people the database opened up on to someone else, it does take a little bit for the icon to show up ( less than 5 seconds)

@Manfred – check to see if the FamilySearch icon at bottom of page is dark blue–check your setting that FamilySearch is checked under web hints and general-- shut RM down-- reopen and run all database tools-- if that doesn’t clear it up, I would try logging out of FamilySearch in RM and log back in-- might want to clear browser history also and or try another browser

Essentially, yes.

There is an RM database field that is filled in when your RM person is connected to FamilySearch. The field contains the FSID. You can see that field in several ways. For example, you can display it for each connected person instead of the RM id number. You can also display the FSID as a column in People View. But even when an RM person is connected to FS and the RM field is filled in with the FSID, the icon doesn’t light up until RM connects with FS and confirms the person. And that cannot happen unless RM is signed in to FS.

Unless I am misunderstanding, it seems to work fine for me. In Descendant View below, you can see Joseph is in synch with FS, and the button to open the synching process it there…

Did I misunderstand?

I probably was not clear enough.

Pedigree View and Family View have a button on every person in the actual view, plus a button in the sidebar for the focus person. The other views such as Descendant View only have the button in the sidebar for the focus person.

RM7 had buttons for every person on the actual view in Descendant View. This feature was dropped in RM8, RM9, RM10, and RM11.


Sorry @Jerry BUT that’s NOT what I am seeing now-- I know it seemed like it use to be that way BUT as you can see from my screenshot, I am in descendant view-- I am logged out of FamilySearch as indicated by the pop-up and the FamilySearch icon at bottom being grey BUT yet all the icons are blue for every person in the database

As an FYI for you all-- before starting, I logged out of FamilySearch and cleared my browser’s cache, rebooted the computer and ran the database tools to be sure something else wasn’t causing the buttons to populate blue when I open the database without being logged in…

I did a little poking around on this and found that in SETTINGS you don’t even have to have Enable Family Search WEB HINTS checked to see the blue icon BUT you MUST have ENABLE FAMILY SEARCH SUPPORT ( under General/ Gear ) checked in order to see the BLUE ICONS

For transparency, this whole database was downloaded from Family Search all at one time–so I don’t know if that would make a difference as to the blue icons being lit

RM 11.5.0.0-- 64 bit Windows 11

I did a little experiment, and I guess I don’t understand every aspect of RM’s internal behavior in this regard. All I did was to turn off WiFi before starting RM. I didn’t sign in or out of Family Search or clear browser cache or anything like that. I simply made it impossible for RM to contact FamilySearch.

The same people who had a blue icon before, still had a blue icon. Clicking the blue icon didn’t do anything, of course, with WiFi turned off. But then I looked at other people who I had not looked at recently and who I knew were linked to FamilySearch. They did not get their blue icon. So the blue icon can’t just be based on the fact that RM knows the person’s FSID. As soon as I turned WiFi back on, the blue icon did appear for these people.

The issue for me is as follows. If a person’s FS icon in the main part of the view in Family View or Pedigree is blue, then it is blue in the sidebar. But in any other view, the exact same person’s FS icon in the sidebar may or may not be blue. If it’s blue, it works. If it’s not blue in the same circumstances, it also works. You have no visual clue that the person is connected to FS or that clicking on the white icon will work, but it will. I think if the icon in the sidebar will work, then it should turn blue there no matter what is in the main view such as when the main view is Descendant View.

I did another try. I just selected one person and then switched to the descendent view. Then I clicked at every person in the tree. After some clicks the button wasn’t shown anymore. All persons where linked to FamilySearch for several days.

It’s working for me. I selected 12 people in the Descendent View and each kept the blue/pink icons.

My first guess (from the screenshots) is that the four folks without the blue icon MIGHT actually have their Ordinances icon illuminated and hovering it may report Need More Info:
L6NN-YXX
L6NN-YD3
L6FT-DYZ
L6NN-YDK

FamilySearch Person Tools status icons are generated only in the Family and Pedigree views. The sidebar information box shows only the people viewed in those views during the current session.

If you match someone to FamilySearch while in the Descendant view, their icons will not refresh. Open that person in the Family or Pedigree view first to generate the icons.

WebHints are generated separately.

I have never agreed completely with this characterization, but it’s hard to explain and I don’t think I explain it very well.

It is correct that the FamilySearch icon in the sidebar will not light up for person unless the icon has first lit up for the person in Family View or Pedigree View. I think that’s what you are saying. And once lit up for a particular person in Family View or Pedigree View, the FamilySearch icon will continue to light up for that person in the sidebar even if the main screen is now in some other view such as Descendant View. I think that is also what you are saying.

But if the person is matched to FamilySearch and if the person is in the sidebar and if the person has never been displayed in Family View or Pedigree View and if the Family Search icon for the person is not lit up, you can click on the “not lit up” icon FamilySearch icon in the sidebar and it will “just work”. That’s a lot of “if’s”. But I do it all the time, and it “just works”. It saves me a lot of time because I seldom use Family View or Pedigree View.

But even better would the following enhancement. If a person is matched to FamilySearch and if that person is displayed in the sidebar, it would be helpful if that person’s Family Search icon would light up no matter what View is displayed in the main view. I realize that to implement this enhancement, RM would have to go through the same processing for that one person who is displayed in the sidebar that it already goes through for all the people displayed in Family View or Pedigree View. That seems very doable. After all, it’s only one person.

Yes, that is what I was trying to say. Confirming the request for the info box status update regardless of view has been reported to development.

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