I have been sharing an Ancestry account with my spouse for years and I have two rather large trees there (one for my own family, one for everything else I’m interested in). Well, my spouse is about to become my ex-spouse and I need to move both those trees over to an individual account of my own. And as we all know, Ancestry (rather stupidly) won’t allow you to transfer a tree you own from one of their accounts to another one internally.
I’m thinking, therefore, that I ought to be able to copy each of my trees from the old Ancestry account down to a new, empty datsaset in RM8 (a separate dataset for each tree), and then turn right around and upload it again into the new Ancestry account.
But that seems almost too easy. Am I overlooking anything about the conversion between Ancestry & RM8 in either direction? Is there any “massaging” that I would have to do while it’s temporarily in RM8 on my destop computer, to make sure the tree in the new account is actually identical to the tree in the old account from which it was cloned?
I quote a reply I made to a message in another topic that may have some bearing. The original poster uses Mac and I use Windows.
“I also have the same problem with creating a new tree on Ancestry using treeshare and I use Windows 10. In my case it is usually more like 70 or 80 people (comparing the people count) that do not get created on Ancestry. I probably have a larger database (17000+) than you. If I then download the Ancestry database to a new RootsMagic 8 database, and do a compare between the new one and the original, I see the people that are missing from Ancestry. If I remember correctly from last time, running treeshare to update the Ancestry database also shows you the missing ones because they are not on Ancestry. I can usually add the missing ones in treeshare although sometimes I have to add them manually to Ancestry and then do an update.”
Do a small-scale test. It won’t take long to make a small Ancestry Tree on the joint account, TreeShare download to RM, Disconnect, switch Ancestry account in RM, and then TreeShare upload. I think you will find that unwanted things happen to Ancestry Sources and media in the Ancestry Gallery not from an Ancestry Source won’t all come across. And then there are these other issues that may arise such as loss of some people described by @cweese and maybe some screw ups on Marriage and other couple events.
Well, that sucks. One of my trees runs to about 10,000 people and the other one is about 9,800. Searching through both of them for errors and omissions would take months. I don’t really have much in the way of media added to Ancestry from outside sources, because I use Ancestry for research, not display purposes – I have a large presence on both WeRelate & WikiTree for that – but dropping marriage events and such is NOT good.
Not sure if anyone has tested this. GET The latest version of FTM 2019 (they just updated with about the last week). Download existing trees via FTM as needed to local computer(s). Then update to new Ancestry Account/Trees via FTM to Ancestry – then you could download using RM Tree Share. Not sure if that method will achieve the least loss you are looking for but something to try. It will require a license to FTM. I am not a big fan of the way FTM/Ancestry work together in regards to Media and such challenges as not being able to move a tree to a different account. I would also use FTM to create an archive in-case it is ever needed. As well as GEDCOM from both Ancestry and FTM. Then also download from Ancestry to RM – that way you have multiple versions etc. Maybe someone who has tested this can offer some better advise
Well, the GEDCOM protocol dates from the days of DOS. It has a lot of longstanding problems and limitations. If you’ve ever been to a GENTECH conference, it’s pretty depressing to hear what the techies have to say. Unfortunately, there’s not use-it-anywhere substitute for GEDCOM, and none on the horizon, either.
So I was trying to come up with a better alternative, but the software that both FTM & RM8 supply to interface with Ancestry appear to have almost as many problems as GEDCOM does. Probably, I will end up sighing deeply and just using GEDCOM.
What’s really needed is a completely rethinking and redesign and recoding of GEDCOM. Probably never going to happen, though. Genealogy is too much of a niche market.
At least the fact that GEDCOM, of course, doesn’t transfer media won’t bother me because I hardly ever copy images or other media to my Ancestry trees anyway. If they look useful, I just download them to my desktop and tuck them away for use later at WeRelate or WikiTree.
With the release of GEDCOM 7.0 in 2021, however, a push is underway to see 7.0 adopted. FamilySearch intends to be GEDCOM 7.0 compatible in Quarter 3 of 2022, and Ancestry.com has 7.0 compatibility on its roadmap but has not yet specified an implementation date.
In my first Ancestry account, I then “Invited” my 2nd account to be Editor of any trees. Then I work with RM. I haven’t noticed any data loss. Good luck