First Impressions: Family Tree Maker 2024 (FTM 2024)

First - Happy Mother's Day to all the moms!

Earlier today, I noticed in one of my Facebook groups, some users were receiving the long awaited FTM2024. I quickly Googled and found it was released yesterday. I advance purchased this last year, and have been anxiously awaiting the release. As with previous versions, the emails with download links are being metered out so they don't overwhelm their servers. My email arrived just a few minutes ago, and I was off to the races to download!

The download process itself was straightforward. As always, be sure you have backup of your existing tree. This is important because the new version converts the file, and if anything goes wrong, you definitely want a backup. I also noted, this is a full installer. Once installed and you've verified it's working, you can safely delete your previous version of FTM. This version has been enhanced to provide better speed and stability for very large trees. My tree is not large, so I may or may not see any speed improvements. After install, I compacted and backed up for good measure. I didn't notice any big difference in the time it took to do this. If you use Family Book Creator, there's also a free upgrade available to use with the new FTM update.

I installed with no issues at all. The conversion process was quick, and my workspace opened with no issues whatsoever. Connecting to Ancestry and FamilySearch were both easy to do. I was disheartened to see color coding hasn't been expanded yet, but I know it's a much requested feature and perhaps it will come in a future release. The new feature I do like is the Easy On the Eyes feature. This allows you to expand the section of the workspace you're using (by clicking a button in the section you want to enlarge. Click the button again and it reverts to standard size). The font size increases in only the selected section, but makes text SO much easier to read. No more squinting and wrinkling up my nose trying to read text in my tree! There are additional new features for Tree Vault users (I'm not one of them) and for those who enjoy collaboration, a Connect Workspace. Additionally, the Turn Back Time feature has been increased to 5000 changes (in case you realize far too late you've changed something you shouldn't have). Photo Darkroom has more new tools for those who like to edit their photo media (again, something I rarely do). The Companion Guide (digital version) is available from the Help menu and goes into more depth on the new features and how to use them.

While I'm sure there are many other smaller changes, the overall workspace itself is pretty much identical to the layout you're likely used to. There are no glaringly obvious changes to the user interface. I suspect most changes are under the hood - preparing for future updates. I did test sync both ways and it worked as expected. Typically, I only sync down, but I edited a few media captions and tested the upload. While it did seem to hang for about 30 seconds, it eventually completed with no errors. Since I generally work on Ancestry, with sync down to FTM, I'm going to have to poke around to look at how some of the other new features work. I suspect they'll be much more valuable to those who work primarily in FTM.

I'm very glad the new release is out, but I do hope we'll see some additional updates over the coming months. The overall improvements for users like me appear to be minimal. None the less, I like to make sure my software is up to date since it is my primary backup of my Ancestry tree. And who knows? I may find more of the improvements as I spend time with the update. All in all, updating and testing it out took less than 30 minutes. I was very pleased with the upgrade experience and I'm looking forward to checking it out further.

No So Random Blank Timeline Events

 

I can't tell you how many times I've seen people in forums complain Ancestry is changing their tree. They typical response is "No, Ancestry doesn't change your tree. Only you can change your tree. Have you given access to someone else? Did you perhaps save something to the wrong tree?" In most of these cases, people are concerned about deletions or missing branches. Both would be very concerning for sure!. And generally, I agree with the response. Unless you've given access to someone else, or a collection has been removed from the site, there's no reason to expect random changes to your tree on Ancestry.

But a hiccup between Ancestry and FTM has been adding unanticipated blank facts into my Ancestry tree. I've seen it happen a couple dozen times in the last month or so. I open a person profile to be greeted with one or two blank birth, death, or marriage facts at the bottom of the timeline. Most often, it seems to be marriage. I've safely deleted the blank facts on Ancestry, with no issues, but it begs the question WHY are they showing up?

To be perfectly clear, I don't save facts directly from hints. I enter all data manually before saving the hint, unchecking all selected boxes before saving. Then, I edit the citation to link the appropriate facts back to it. I don't let Ancestry do any of the data entry or linking facts to the citation. Plus, there's no reason there should ever be a totally blank fact on any person's timeline in my tree. Anyone familiar with manually entering facts on Ancestry knows you can't even save a completely blank fact. You don't have an opton to Save, only to Close.

Now, in this particular case, the person was married twice. One marriage is appropriately linked to both people in my tree using a standard Marriage fact. Since this person married into my family, her other spouse is not someone I choose to research. So, I create a custom fact for the other marriage (so I don't need to select a spouse) and I simply include the name of the spouse in the description. It's essentially a Marriage fact linked only to one person. In this case, both of those marriage facts are still exactly where they should be. I just have 2 more blank Marriage facts mysteriously showing at the very bottom of the timeline.

So, why do I think this is happening? I believe it's a hiccup (or change in logic) between Ancestry and FTM. When I investigated the most recent blank facts, I found they also existed in FTM, but linked to an unknown spouse. Having encountered the "unknown spouse" issue many times in the past, I understand how this can happen in FTM, and I've generally learned to ignore it, since it wasn't really causing any problem. But now, it seems the logic has changed during sync and it may indeed be creating a blank fact. After deleting the blank facts on Ancestry and syncing again, the blank facts are also removed in FTM. However, FTM still seems to think there's an unknown spouse and shows the following, even though the "facts" themselves are gone:

More than likely, my custom Marriage fact (linking only to the person I'm researching) is causing the majority of the cases. It's quite possible death facts may be a similar cause because there may be a spouse hyperlinked in the Ancestry record, but I may not be linking the record to the person (since they aren't actually in my tree). The Birth facts are a little murkier. I wonder if perhaps it's happening when only one parent is listed, or the hyperlinked parent has no name (someting I've noticed from time to time on Ancestry). Clicking on a "no name" hyperlink in a record returns an unknown page on Ancestry....so it makes sense if FTM is looking for the information and it can't find it. But it appears clear, the blank facts are being created on the FTM side when I sync down from Ancestry.

The new twist seems to be Ancestry allowing the blank fact upload when I sync the next time - something it won't allow to be created directly on the Ancestry site, and something I've never noticed uploading from FTM in the past. It's not a huge issue, and as I said, I can safely delete these blank facts quite easily if I find them. Please note, I have NOT tested deleting these blank facts in FTM first. I've only deleted them on Ancestry and synced down. I do not know if deleting in FTM will work exactly the same. I choose to avoid messing with unknown spouse issues in FTM (it's simply my personal preference).

The moral of this story? If you choose to use custom facts, or choose not to link some records to a spouse or parent, and you use FTM - you might occasionally see something odd appear on Ancestry you know you didn't enter. But rest assured, it doesn't mean anyone is "doing" anything to your tree. In my specific instances, it's seems to be an explainable sync hiccup and can be resolved with a couple quick deletions on Ancestry.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Sadly, No Backup Plan is Foolproof

Last Thursday night, I experienced a catastrophic failure with FTM2019. Even though I diligently back up (auto and manually), I was unable to sync to Ancestry even after restoring from backup (2 different backups from 2 different days as a matter of fact). Live Chat didn't even look for the issue, as soon as I told them restoring didn't work, they said I either had to upload my tree back to Ancestry, or download a new copy to FTM. Each has drawbacks. It was a a rough couple days deciding. 1/2 of my media files don't come down from Ancestry. I DO have backups of all the media so that's fine. But I also have a small amount of private notes and private facts, and FTM currently doesn't have an easy way to find these.

If I re-uploaded to Ancestry, I'd have had to re-invite some family to my new tree, relink all my DNA matches, and I'd be uploading a ton of media items eventually showing up for other users as those pesky multiple images of the same item, something I don't enjoy in my own research,  I didn't really want to go this route.

I did download a new copy of my tree from Ancestry to FTM, after applying my customizations for the tree, I started manually relinking, renaming, and recategorizing all the media files, including those not downloaded. (These extras are primarily screenshots of text only records, and additional pages of census records or draft cards when only the main image downloads.) I spent about 16 hours on it Friday and Saturday and was barely 5% of the way done. I started rethinking my plan. There was no way I'd finish any time soon, and my OCD dictates I've have had to work on it exclusively until finished. It wasn't practical given most of what I "lost" wasn't tremendously important and I really want to continue moving my tree forward.

I finally made the difficult decision not to do all the reattaching. I decided a tolerable amount of non-critical data loss was acceptable for me. Of course, I've saved all the media (and a copy of the tree) in case I want to refer to it. But after much consideration, the reality is most people see my online tree anyway. My male offspring has no real interest in genealogy (unless I happen to stumble on something interesting, then he'll listen for a few minutes). Most of my work will be preserved online. I doubt anything I have private would ever be found by anyone and there wasn't very much of it.

So I scrapped the reattaching project, redownloaded another fresh copy of my tree, and I'm moving on! I do have color coding and some filters set up in my software, so I can reference people easily and track where I am in my research, but for the most part (probably 95%), my sync will be down from Ancestry only from here on in. FTM is now a true mirror tree. (If this happens again, it won't be any big deal). I won't rename my media anymore (beyond the titles on Ancestry photos). I won't take all the screenshots or index only data. I won't categorize my media (I already do it on Ancestry anyway). And since I already transcribe and save everything in my Ancestry citations, I'm not really losing a whole lot (just a little). 

It was disheartening the restore didn't work...especially since I try so hard to make sure I have backups of backups. I suspect somehow the trees became unlinked, explaining why there were no options to restore. I've no clue how it happened (it certainly wasn't intentional and I don't recall seeing any pop-up confirming such an action), but anytime 2 different programs try to communicate, there are bound to be glitches from time to time - especially with all the changes Ancestry's been making. Everything happens for a reason. Yes, I felt (and still sort of feel) like the world stopped spinning briefly. But I'm trying to be optimistic and forge ahead. In a few days it'll be nothing more than a memory, like nothing ever happened. I'm back to researching (albeit adjusting to not doing all the double documentation, improving my speed thru hints slightly), so all is well with my genealogy world.

My OCD Backup Plan

 

Being OCD, I can't even imagine what would happen if I lost access to all my research. It would my worst nightmare come true. So....I have a fairly robust backup plan...with backups of my backups.

My main tree is on Ancestry, but I use Family Tree Maker (FTM) as my desktop software. It's wise to remember record sets may be removed from your research site of choice at any time. Having downloads of media images is important if you want to be able to refer to them in the future (or if you take a break from your subscription). I take it a step further and take screenshots of indexed records (anything without an image) so I can see how I found certain facts. I sync repeatedly as I research (way more than a normal person....like after ever record I add...it's not as bad as it sounds, really!) and rename and save all media and screenshots as I go. 

When I'm done for the day, I compact to 0, create a manual backup, and do the auto backup provided by the program. Then, I copy these 3 files to my documents folder and sync to OneDrive. At this point, I have 3 copies of my active working tree files (2 on the laptop and one in OneDrive).

Since I keep a lot of working media files (not yet in my tree) on my desktop and I want to be sure I always have installation media available if necessary, I also backup my desktop and downloads folder to OneDrive in real-time as well. I also keep another copy of working media files in a duplicate folder just in case I accidentally delete something I didn't mean to on and have already emptied the recycle bin. 

I also have my FTM media folder sync'd to Google Drive. As I'm adding/editing media, those files are kept up to date. PLEASE NOTE: Syncing to Google Drive in real-time can cause some issues with media in FTM and it's not recommended. I absolutely do encounter instances where FTM thinks files are missing (they aren't) and I have to relink them. Since I rename all media files, I can easily find and correct these issues with just a few key clicks. If you aren't backing this particular folder up to a cloud location in real-time, you'll likely have less issues....this is just my preferred way to have an always up to date copy of my media (especially since it's the longest part of a restore if something goes wrong) and I'm willing to relink a few files every couple of days. But if you're not as OCD as I am, I wouldn't recommend this method for the typical FTM user.

Once a week, I sync all my FTM files, media folder, notes program and any other genealogy folders I've updated during the week to USB. 

Since my laptop is primarily used for genealogy research, I don't have a lot of extra programs on it, but I do take time to do a Windows disk image at least once or twice a year for good measure. And when I'm particularly motivated, I'll backup all my genealogy files to the external drive as one more layer of protection (but I admit, I only do this on occasion since I already have 3 locations for all my files).

I like to think being OCD isn't entirely a bad thing. In this case, it means I have a disaster recovery plan (with backups of backups). No one portion of my data is backed up only to one location (I don't like all my eggs in one basket). If the worst were to happen, I could be back up and running in a couple hours as if nothing had happened. Your backup plan has to be one you're comfortable with, but I strongly suggest a minimum of 2 distinct and separate storage locations for all your files. It's better to have too many backups than none at all!

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

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."