RM11 to Ancestry TreeShare question

RootsMagic
1

Tried connecting my working RM file to new Ancestry tree. In my case it treated all sources as being from outside Ancestry although most originally were created and linked from Ancestry through Treeshare.

Connecting my working Ancestry tree to new RM11 file recognized ancestry sources properly, but of course has none of my other sources like FS and personally entered information and sources.

Do I have a setting wrong or is this the designed behavior?

2

I have gotten those “unknown sources” and no idea why. It makes no sense.

Hopefully someone with more insight knows.

3

does it seem to matter if they are freeform, Template, or standard sources and what fields the source /citation info is in – any noticeable pattern?

4

I see the same result and this is clearly not the way it worked in the past. My last full TreeShare update was in Feb 2026 and “Ancestry Sources” were preserved after a ‘Disconnect from Ancestry’ and subsequent new TreeShare.

Perhaps @rzamor1 can comment next week on whether this is ‘working as designed’ due to the new API or whether we should open tickets to report an issue.

Let’s hope it’s the latter. Otherwise we’ll need to submit an enhancement request to restore the prior functionality.

In the meantime I’ll dig a little deeper to try an gain an understanding of what’s changed.

  • [edit1: upon further investigation I can see that a few “Ancestry Sources” did survive the new TreeShare. Over the next few days will try to find a pattern.]
  • [edit 2: after an apples-to-apples comparison using the RM file that had been TreeShared up to ancestry back in February, it’s clear that “Ancestry Sources” were preserved after a ‘Disconnect from Ancestry’ and subsequent new TreeShare. I decided to leave my comments above rather than deleting them so it would not confuse others reading through this post.]
5

In my experience it has always worked like that when uploading a RM tree to Ancestry. Ancestry only shows sources as Ancestry ones if the Ancestry hint is accepted within Ancestry and any associated media is attached. It treats all sources (including ones originally from Ancestry) uploaded from RM as externally created. I presume this is because changes may have been made to them in RM or elsewhere.

6

As a follow-on to my earlier post…

Today I did an apples-to-apples comparison using the RM file that had been TreeShared up to ancestry back in February. That file has not been edited since the Feb upload. I coped the RM file, disconnected the new copy from ancestry, and then Treeshared up a new tree up.

Spot check results of the new ancestry tree display “Ancestry Sources” that align with the February upload. It’s clear from this test that “Ancestry Sources” were preserved after a ‘Disconnect from Ancestry’ and subsequent new TreeShare. I suspect that some citations failed as I see a few citation entries in the AncestryTable where the anId value changed to a format indicating an “Other Source”. This will need to be investigated but at this point I’m more inclined to suspect a problem with the file I uploaded yesterday rather than a problem introduced by the API change.

So, James, sorry but I am not sure what’s going on with your db. I would suggest trying your original upload again to see if you get better results. If it does repeat it may be best to open a support ticket.

Also, not sure if you disconnected a copy db or your original. If it was your master db, you could restore a backup (if you did a backup prior to the disconnect). Restoring the backup will re-establish the Treeshare connection back to the way it was. (rename your current master db first.)

7

@jduggan118 I’m posting a follow-up to my prior comments because further testing identified that the above statement was only partially correct. There has been a change to RM in the way that TreeShare stores sources downloaded from ancestry. It seems that this change occurred sometime after February of this year. At this point, RM is no longer storing Source/Citation details in the AncestryTable in a way that distinguishes Ancestry Sources from non-Ancestry Sources.

I have opened a ticket with RM Support referencing this post, requesting clarification of whether this change was required due to the new Ancestry API or if it is something that could be restored. You may want to do the same if you haven’t already. Below is a summary of my test results :

  • New TreeShare downloads of citations that were created in Ancestry and appear in the “Ancestry Sources” portion of their webpage are no longer identified as such in RM’s internal AncestryTable.
  • These citations will appear in the “Other sources” portion of the webpage after a subsequent TreeShare.
  • RM citations of this type (created in Ancestry and appear in the “Ancestry Source” portion of their webpage ), that were TreeShared prior to this change in RM, will upload as expected as long as they have not been over-written into the non-ancestry source format by one of the following scenarios:
    • A ‘Disconnect from Ancestry tree’ + subsequent upload of a RM DB via TreeShare
    • TreeShare is run after the ‘Reset TreeShare’ action

What I noted in my prior post turned out to be a 1-time event. After the ‘Disconnect from Ancestry tree’ + TreeShare upload of my RM DB, things appeared as expected on my Ancestry webpage but the RM AncestryTable had been over-written, so a subsequent ‘Disconnect from Ancestry tree’ + TreeShare upload resulted in all citations displaying in the “Other sources” portion of the ancestry webpage.

8

Sounds like I can go back to a backup and preserve the source table if I am careful. That sacrifices months of work in RM! Really faced with two bad alternatives. Failing to preserve ancestry flags is a major shortcoming. Will have to see if there is a workaround that lets me keep using RM. This appears to force me to a greater dependency on Ancestry and Wikitree.