What's Not Sync'd to FTM?

Since I started researching my family history, Family Tree Maker® (FTM) has been my desktop software of choice. It's no secret, I use Ancestry.com for most of my tree building and research, but it’s critical I have a backup of all my work just in case. For me, being able to reconstruct everything if there were a catastrophic failure is paramount. I don’t want to lose years of work! (I actually keep working 3 backups, but I’ll talk about those in another post).

FTM easily and reliably syncs both ways with Ancestry. 95% of the time I sync down from Ancestry, but I do occasionally make some smaller changes in the desktop software and sync up. Sure, there are users who have some challenges at various times, but I compact my database regularly, and make daily backups of my files. I personally have very few issues with the software. But this post isn't about all the features or reliability of Family Tree Maker®, it's about something some users may not think about…what doesn’t sync with Ancestry.com?

While the majority of tree content does sync, not everything does. It is not a 100% full backup either direction. The major data such as names, relationships, facts, sources, citations, repositories and most media do sync. Below is a synopsis of some of (what I think are) the more important non-syncing items.

Family Tree Maker® items that don’t syncAncestry.com:

• Information/media marked private
• Media categories, captions, audio/video files, archived web pages
• Many types of notes (but general person notes DO transfer)
• Web links
• Color coding

Ancestry.com data that doesn’t sync to Family Tree Maker®:

1. Comments
2. Tags
3. Web links
4. Media location, original poster*, transcriptions*, headstone names/date

*Because the original poster is not saved and photos tend to propagate quickly on Ancestry, resulting in duplicates of duplicates of duplicates (ok, you get the idea!) I save the original poster information in the description or every piece of media I attach on Ancestry (unless I'm the poster). This way the poster info does transfer to FTM. I also save an additional copy of the transcription for documents in an "other source" citation I create, which also syncs. So while the info doesn't necessarily natively transfer, there are some step you can take to be sure you retain this information.

For more detailed information on what doesn't sync check out What's NOT synced to Family Tree Maker® page on the Mackiev website. Once you know what does and doesn't sync, you can adjust your backup plan accordingly. There's nothing worse than the sinking feeling you get in that moment you realize you just lost years of work you may not be able to reconstruct. As Benjamin Franklin said, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."