Tree Share with Ancestry is useless

I spent hours and hours on Ancestry adding new people and triple checking each of them.

Then I started RM 8 and had them all to individually import. All was OK with the new people but a third were additions which caused RM to lock up.

The error occurred after I had added events and updated the even and when I click of the accept box the error comes, this had been reported prior but the last update did not resolve the problem.

Also can we please have an ACCEPT ALL it would make life far easier.

After a days work on RM I had only got a 1/3 the way through the changes so gave up and started a new project and that ran into issues, not impressed by the way RM 8 is functioning, I am glad I only use it as a backup for my Ancestry tree and for using the Tools like problem list which in itself is a pain, why is the damn thing reporting that the marriage is after a birth when it is a second marriage for their father after the death of the persons birth mother?

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This has been much discussed ever since the advent of TreeShare. The RM developers and some but not all RM users view an ACCEPT ALL as having a potential for serious database corruption and that therefore that TreeShare users are better served by not having an ACCEPT ALL feature.

I agree with Jerry. The goal of our hobby should be accuracy, not doing things the easiest way possible. Whenever you make mass adds or mass changes to your db you run the real risk of mass error inclusion that would take you a long time to weed out and fix, especially since RM doesn’t have an undo feature like Family Historian has.

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Actually, my opinion is a little more nuanced than that TreeShare’s lack of ACCEPT ALL is a good thing. I was simply reporting why it is the way it is.

It seems to me as if there are three basic ways to use TreeShare.

  1. Do all your work in Ancestry. Use TreeShare to download a local copy of your Ancestry data to run reports, download media files, find errors, backup your Ancestry data, and that sort of thing.
  2. Do all your work in RM. Use TreeShare to share your data on the Internet or to get Ancestry WebHints in RM.
  3. Work in both RM and Ancestry. Use TreeShare to sync your work in both directions.

This is a very basic list and surely is not exhaustive. For example, TreeShare could theoretically be used to allow two researchers using RM to collaborate by using a single shared Ancestry tree which is connected each of the two researcher’s local RM database. Although this is theoretically possible, and I don’t think it’s even remotely practical because of data losses that occur when data makes a round trip from RM to Ancestry and then back down to another RM.

That being said, I think an ACCEPT ALL would be perfectly safe for users operating in basic way #1 or basic way #2. I think the only dangerous situation for ACCEPT ALL would be with basic way #3. Here’s my thinking. With basic way #1, you can always achieve an ACCEPT ALL or repair any data corruption by deleting your RM database and downloading it again from Ancestry. With basic way #2, you can always achieve an ACCEPT ALL or repair any data corruption by deleting your your Ancestry tree and uploading it again from RM.

I operate in basic way #2, working only in RM and uploading to Ancestry. I never do the manual syncs between RM and Ancestry because doing so doubles the time I spend working in RM. Instead, I periodically delete my Ancestry tree and reload it from RM. So I do wish there was an ACCEPT ALL in TreeShare, provided it could be limited to being used in basic way #1 or basic way #2.I’m not sure how you could limit TreeShare in that way, but I would love to have an ACCEPT ALL that only worked for uploads from RM to Ancestry.

There are a couple of little glitches in my scheme. The first glitch is that deleting my Ancestry tree and reloading it removes all my WebHints approvals. The hints are regenerated, but the approval history is lost. The second glitch is that I don’t find Ancestry’s privatization tools to be adequate, so I keep my Ancestry tree completely private. So I wish TreeShare had an ACCEPT ALL that goes only from RM to Ancestry. And I wish that TreeShare had a way to limit the initial upload to an RM group rather than uploading everybody. That way I would be comfortable making my Ancestry tree public. As things stand, the only way I can share my RM data publicly on Ancestry is to make a second RM database containing only the data I’m willing to share and to upload that RM database to an Ancestry tree that I make public.

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I’m one of those that work with #1 of Jerry’s options and have no major issues with how TreeShare works. There are definitely some idiosyncrasy’s particularly around Marriage events/sources and missing Marriage events all together. However, I am wondering if Biggles is referring to ACCEPT ALL in relation to all the changed People or just to the changes for each individual person. This was something that TreeShare had in RM7 and for some unknown reason this was dropped in RM8?

Best to work in your RM8 computer file under your control and downloading new information as it is found. Then upload to ancestry keeping your file as the master.

FTM users found out the hard way just how trustworthy and dependable ancestry was to their customers when they dumped them in 2015. Luckily mackiev swooped in, fixed FTM and rescued users with a much improved experience.

My experience is that with both RM7 and RM8, there is no ACCEPT ALL for all the changed items for a person. Even within just one person, I have to approve each individual change - each new or changed fact for the person, each new or changed source for the person, etc. I can’t approve the whole person with one click.

Sorry, I wasn’t very clear. The ACCEPT ALL box was when you needed to update a FACT for a person. That was definitely available in RM7 TreeShare.

Totally wrong.

I use Ancestry as my main Tree with Roots Magic as a backup and I am very careful with adding people and documents to the Ancestry Tree.

What is a total pain is then spending three days in Roots Magic going through Tree Share with each person and their data being added and amended one at a time.

Then RM repeatedly crashes on me when there has been too many changes for each person and when I click on Accept it crashes and so I have to close down and restart hence three days work just to deal with a flaky programme that is Roots Magic that despite Reporting the Fault RM have miserably failed to rectify it.

In fact it is easier if there are a lot of changes in an Ancestry Tree to forget about the tree in RM and to start off a new project and import the whole tree and media from Ancestry.

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Please Do Not treat us as a child.

My Ancestry Tree is accurate, there are no errors, no person or citation is added without it being thoroughly checked.

To then spend three days Tree Sharing to sync the Ancestry and Roots Magic trees is plain stupid and an insult to the user.

Put Accept All into the programme but do so with warnings.

Yesterday after importing the Ancestry tree as a new RM project I used the Tools and clicked on Duplicates and being a programme with flaws Roots Magic then presented three people and their so called Duplicates, who were not duplicates but simply Cousins who had the same name but different parents.

So if you think RM is the bees knees it is not it is flawed and the developers are piss poor at resolving the problems

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You will find that many of us do our work in RM8 and when we decide we have made enough changes, or added enough information, then we blow out the existing Ancestry Tree and Treeshare up another. This is opposite of what you suggest and it works for those of us that do it that way. My problem with pulling a new tree down from Ancestry is that it trashes the media names and turns them into a bunch of meaningless gibberish that I have to go through and sort out.

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We all have our own way of working and using what we consider suitable software to meet our needs. The replies you have received are from forum members (not Rootsmagic) who are trying to assist and give their thoughts on what you posted. There is no need for you to “shout” at them and show rudeness.
I would suggest you either reach out to Rootsmagic support, reconsider the way you work, or find software which suits your needs if Rootsmagic doesn’t.

Biggles,
Sounds like it’s time for you to find software that better matches your way of working.

No RM is the nearest to the best but the team needs to sort out the bugs and to give options to those of us who know what we are doing.

It helps also if replies are not patronising.

I’ll shout at anyone inconsiderate enough to write that their way is the only way.

All software has bugs, somewhere! It isn’t like this is something new to RM.

The problem with giving options to those who think they know what they are doing is that those same options are available to those that really don’t know what they are doing. The latter category is far larger than the former.

I suspect that your odds of winning a lottery jackpot are probably better than getting an ‘All’ button in Treeshare. Warning screen don’t mean diddly. Soemone, somewhere is going to think “I know what I am doing” and they will ignore the warning and end up blowing up their database…because they don’t know how to backup files either.

If RM can produce one software that has feature restrictions when unlicensed and unrestricted when licensed, would it not be possible to have two levels of licensing with corresponding levels of features? RM Essentials (unlicensed), RM “Standard” (Level 1 license), RM “Pro” (Level 2 license), charging more for the higher level. It has been requested in the past - probably more than a decade. I’ve yet to win the jackpot and I suspect the odds have gotten worse because of TreeShare and MacOS.

It is possible but still not probable. There is absolutely nothing to stop the “really don’t know what they are doing” group from buying the “Pro” version, which would be the same group that ignores any warnings to be wary of taking such actions.

Maybe what would hurry along such features lies in getting Ancestry to actually allow more software vendors access to the API so that they can incorporate their versions of Treeshare. Maybe then RM will tip their scale in favor of the “Pro” users and dismiss the ‘know nots’ and the ensuing database trashing.

Or maybe they could have a preferences page that has buttons for each option you want turned on. Of course, you’d have to subscribe to each one, just like BMW is now doing for heated seats ($18/month). BMW heated seat subscription

I’m one of Jerry’s number 1s and am generally happy with tree share but find it better to sync the trees after every couple of hours of work. I also find it seems to work better if I update existing people before adding any that are new to RM (after first checking that they don’t have a new spouse as, annoyingly, RM will not recognise a marriage event (and add the spouse) if the spouse has not already been added although it will add parents and children). The only issues I have had like those Biggles has experienced occurred when I left it a few days before syncing - it didn’t seem to appreciate the volume of work!

I have been unable to have RM sync Media from Ancestry. RM downloads the media in to a separate folder but does not sync/update the media. Is there a “switch” I have to flick? I use the “Tree Share” which does a great job on the “data” but leaves the media sync out. The only way I have been able to include the media is download from Ancestry as a new Tree.