I’m hoping someone can help me make sense of a problem I’ve run into. I’ve moved to RootsMagic 11 and imported all my data from my previous program some months ago now, then uploaded everything to Ancestry. What I didn’t expect was that the import would create duplicate and even multiple plus more versions of the same sources. Instead of linking one source to several events, it has generated a separate source entry for each event, and even my notes have been turned into stand-alone sources. It has become very unwieldy to manage.
I’ve been trying to clean things up manually, and now Ancestry keeps giving me hints for sources I already have because they don’t look like Ancestry’s own versions. I’m not sure how to tackle tidying my tree and the sources. My tree isn’t huge compared to some, but 5000 names is still a lot to sort through. One idea is to keep cleaning up on Ancestry first and not merge with RootsMagic again until things look reasonably tidy, then download a cleaner copy.
Has anyone else dealt with this and found a good way to reduce the workload?
I have always found that there is a huge amount of duplication in Ancestry with both sources and media. To make matters worse they show census facts as residence facts so when you upload a person with (say) 5 census facts it wants to create 5 residence facts for that person with 5 new and different sources. In a family of 10 that is 50 new sources.
Ancestry also creates multiple versions of media when you treeshare to RM. For example, you may have a baptism record image from outside Ancestry that also has a date of birth shown on it. You attach it to the media gallery in Ancestry and then link it to both the birth and baptism facts. When you treeshare to RM, if you tick all the items to download, it will download 3 identical copies of the image with a randomly selected file name and attach one to the person and one to each of the facts. It does not download the one image and create different links to it. Very bloating and frustrating but Ancestry doesn’t seem to want to change it and, as you say, it is very time consuming to correct.
When performing an initial upload of a tree from RootsMagic to a new Ancestry tree, you are given the option to exclude sources. However, if the tree is already linked, sources and media are included by default in subsequent updates, and you must use a workaround to prevent this.
Initial Upload (New Ancestry Tree)
Open your desired family file in RootsMagic.
Click the TreeShare for Ancestry button on your toolbar (or navigate to Internet > TreeShare for Ancestry in the menu).
When the TreeShare window opens, select the Upload button.
A dialog window will appear. Here, you can name the new Ancestry tree and set the privacy options.
Crucially, on this initial upload screen, there will be options to exclude media files and sources. Ensure the option to exclude sources is selected.
Proceed with the upload. The tree structure and facts (without the specified sources) will be created on Ancestry.
Thanks for that. I’ll have to give it some serious thought as I have now attached my DNA and my testers to this tree. I know I can attach them again, but it’s also our matches that I’ve indentified that I have attached. I cringe everytime I go to a person that I’ve not been into for a while and see all the extra work I have to do to clean it up. Such a shame as one of the main reasons I went to RM was for the syncing.