Thursday, July 11, 2013

Fold3.com Has NEW "Save to Ancestry" Feature - FAIL!

I received this in an email from Fold3 about their new feature - you can save a record to a person in your Ancestry Member Tree by clicking a link.

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When you discover an ancestor's record on Fold3, have you ever wished you could link it to a family tree on Ancestry.com? Well, your wish has come true!
Whenever you see a green "Save to Ancestry" button above a document or on a Fold3 memorial page, you can link that document or page directly to someone's profile on Ancestry. The lure is hard to resist with this eye-catching green button.

The process is effortless and intuitive. When you find a document you want to attach to someone you've already recorded in a family tree, simply click the "Save to Ancestry" button and follow the instructions.
You'll be asked to log into your Ancestry.com account, and then you'll see a drop-down list of your trees. Locate the tree you wish to save the document to, begin typing the name of the person to whom the record should be attached, choose the correct name from the list that appears, and then press save. Yes, it's that easy.
You'll then be given a choice of closing the window and continuing your search on Fold3, or viewing the profile of the person you attached the record to on Ancestry. If you choose the latter, you'll be taken to the profile page of the person you were just linking to where you can view the record link. It will appear under  "Source Information" on the right-hand side of the page as a citation link to Fold3. The document image is not added to your ancestor's profile, but the link is. If you click that link, you'll return to Fold3 where the image appears immediately in the Fold3 viewer.
You will also find a list of all Fold3 document links you've attached to someone's profile under "Source Citations" within the Facts and Sources tab on the tree. If you also want to see the actual document image, download it from Fold3 and then upload it through "Add Media" on the profile page.
If you've created a memorial page on Fold3, you can also add it to your ancestor's profile page on Ancestry.com simply by clicking the "Save to Ancestry" button at the top of the page. Never has it been so easy to bring all your sources together in one place.

Watch the "Save to Ancestry" tutorial, along with other helpful video tutorials, in the Fold3 Training Center and learn more ways to make the most of your discoveries on Fold3.
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That sounds really easy and useful. I watched the "Save to Ancestry" tutorial just to make sure I couldn't foul it up.
I went to Fold3.com, and searched for Martin Carringer in the Revolutionary War Pension Files.  Here is the screen in Fold3 for the first page of his Pension File:

There's the big green "Save to Ancestry" button above the image, over to the right.  I clicked on it, and a popup window opened showing my Ancestry.com user name.  I selected one of my trees, which contains Martin Carringer, from the dropdown list, and started typing the name:


The video said that it would show me candidate persons to pick as I typed.  It didn't.  I got to the end of the name, and waited.  I waited for 15 minutes.  Nothing.
I tried it again.  I tried other pages.  Nothing.  I signed out of Ancestry.com and signed back in.  Tried it again.  Nothing.  Waiting.  Still.  It's been 45 minutes of waiting now (I did go do other, more useful, things while I was waiting).  
I'll try again another day.  Maybe they're overloaded.  Maybe they've flagged my account so that i'll complain about it.  Maybe users have to be allowed to use it.  I have no clue.  I expect that a feature like this will work when I try it out after a public announcement.  Frustration!
Here's a screen shot from my Ancestry Member Tree containing Martin Carringer (1758-1835):

I had really high hopes for this - these records are golden.  Maybe it will be ready to use the next time I try. 
Copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver

4 comments:

KarenJ said...

I had trouble using this new feature also, but my problem was that I could not log into my ancestry.com account. My browser has the Norton Toolbar activated and I believe there is a technical issue with this combination. I contacted customer support at Fold3 and they responded very quickly, but appeared to be unaware of the technical issue and have not followed up with a solution.

Geolover said...

I used this feature once a few weeks ago and it worked smoothly. Ancestry.com has had several server/program problems since July 1. Maybe the fold3.com interface is another of them.

BarbJ said...

I've also used this new feature and it works great. The first time I used it I could not see where the link was added on my tree, so I thought maybe it would appear the following day. It did, but now the links appear as soon as I add them. Or maybe I just overlooked it the first time.

gentry said...

Give it another try. Looks like something broke Wednesday night but it was fixed this morning.

Sorry for the inconvenience!