Monday, September 26, 2011

Family Tree Maker 2012 TreeSync - Differences Between Online and Desktop Trees

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Tanura Jones (Modern Software Experience) wrote TreeSync Limitatons on 5 August 2011 that idnetified some of these issues, and commented on TreeSync.

Kathi Reed posted an interesting item on her Ancestor Search Blog on 12 September 2012 that I haven't seen referred to or posted anywhere else.  It appeared on the Ancestry.com Customer Help page (see What are the differences between the Family Tree Maker and Ancestry.com trees when using TreeSync™?).

Here is what it says:

Most content in trees is uploaded and/or synced seamlessly between Family Tree Maker and Ancestry. However, because Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker trees are in different formats, there are a few differences you should be aware of.

Facts

In general fact dates, names, places, and descriptions (including custom and alternate facts) are the same in Family Tree Maker and Ancestry trees. However, you may find that some fact types are labeled differently. For example, the Physical Description fact in Family Tree Maker is the Description fact in Ancestry trees.

Media Items
  • The caption of a media item in Family Tree Maker is the same as the Picture name field on Ancestry.
  • Audio and video items are not transferred between Family Tree Maker and Ancestry.
  • Media items attached to relationships in Family Tree Maker are not uploaded to Ancestry.com.
  • Records you’ve found on Ancestry.com and merged into Family Tree Maker won’t be re-uploaded to Ancestry.
  • Documents in Family Tree Maker will be uploaded to an Ancestry tree only if they are in one of these formats: .pdf, .doc, .txt, .rtf, and .htm.
  • Photos uploaded to Ancestry Member Trees cannot exceed 15MB, so a photo in your desktop tree that exceed this size limit will be resized when it is copied to Ancestry—your original file will not be affected. Images need to be in one of these formats: .jpeg, .bmp, .png, .gif, and .tiff.
Notes

In Family Tree Maker you can create a variety of notes: person, research, fact, relationship, media, and source citation. When you upload a tree to Ancestry only person notes will be included; they can only be viewed by people you have invited to your online tree.

Places

If you have entered shortened display names for locations or custom GPS coordinates in Family Tree Maker, they will not be included in your Ancestry tree.

Publications

Saved reports, charts, and books cannot be transferred from Family Tree Maker to Ancestry.

Relationships

In Family Tree Maker only you can view information you’ve entered for a living individual. In your Ancestry tree, anyone who is invited to your tree can view information about living individuals.

Sources
  • Sources created in Family Tree Maker using source templates will transfer to Ancestry, but you cannot edit these sources online.
  • Media items attached to source citations in Family Tree Maker will be uploaded; media items attached to sources in Family Tree Maker will not be uploaded.
Stories
  • A story created on Ancestry.com will become a .htm file in Family Tree Maker, which can be viewed in a Web browser. You can edit the text in a word-processing program.
  • Smart Stories created in Family Tree Maker will become .rtf text files in Ancestry. The story can’t be viewed within your Ancestry tree but the document can be down¬loaded. (Smart Stories are uploaded only if they are attached to individuals.)
There are many "small" differences on that list that may be significant for me and other FTM 2012 users.  The ones that concerned me were:

"Records you’ve found on Ancestry.com and merged into Family Tree Maker won’t be re-uploaded to Ancestry."  I'm confused here - does this mean if I've found a record on Ancestry.com and attached as a media item using FTM WebSearch won't be re-uploaded?  Or does it mean that a record I found on Ancestry.com, downloaded to my hard drive, and attached as a media item in FTM won't be re-uploaded?   I'm guessing that the second image would be uploaded to Ancestry, since I probably renamed the file in my computer files before attaching it to a person in my FTM file.

"In Family Tree Maker you can create a variety of notes: person, research, fact, relationship, media, and source citation. When you upload a tree to Ancestry only person notes will be included; "  If I have non-person notes in my FTM file, and sync it to Ancestry, will the non-person notes still be in my FTM file?  I think they will.  However, if something goes wrong with a sync, and I have to use the Ancestry tree to start again, will those non-person notes be included?

"Media items attached to source citations in Family Tree Maker will be uploaded; media items attached to sources in Family Tree Maker will not be uploaded."  Do people attach media to sources, and not to source citations?  I can think of some reasons to do that - attach an image of the front page or copyright page of a book or periodical issue. 

*  "Smart Stories created in Family Tree Maker will become .rtf text files in Ancestry. The story can’t be viewed within your Ancestry tree but the document can be down¬loaded. (Smart Stories are uploaded only if they are attached to individuals.)"  This surprised me - I've always thought that the purpose of "Smart Stories" was to be able to sync with a "Story" on an Ancestry Member Tree.  I was wrong, apparently (not the first time!).

I also found it interesting that this appeared in the Ancestry.com Customer Help section but is not (yet) on the Family Tree Maker Knowledge Base.  I think that it will be, however.

There are several other items in the Ancestry Customer Help database concerning Family Tree Maker 2012:

What’s new in Family Tree Maker 2012
Using the new TreeSync
TreeSync Frequently Asked Questions

In summary, I think that being able to synchronize "almost all" data between an Ancestry Member Tree and a Family Tree Maker 2012 database is a significant advance in technology.  This is a real advance for Ancestry and FTM that will advance FTM 2012 sales and AMT use.  However, there will be a major social problem for Ancestry/FTM IF there are significant sync problems that cause users to lose data.   In other words, they need to get it right the first time out of the box.

Edited 1 p.m. to include the Tamura Jones article link.

2 comments:

Geolover said...

One item encountered by beta testers is that images designated as something other than 'portraits' in an AMTree will be downloaded with the tree to FTM2012, but when the tree is uploaded again (necessary to begin synching) the images all revert to 'portraits' and detailed descriptions disappear.

Another item is that PDF files attached to AMTree persons or events will not download to FTM2012.

There are other elements in AMTrees that will not be preserved in FTM2012.

Overall, it is necessary to upload a tree from FTM2012 to synch between AMTree and FTM2012. Existing trees in AMT must first be downloaded, stripping away what FTM2012 does not support (such as military pages) and reformatting.

Duff Wilson (Ancestry.com) said...

Randy,

As you indicated, the core data in linked trees is synchronized in both directions. Some types of data that are unique to Ancestry Member Trees or Family Tree Maker, although not synchronized, can continue to be used fully in their native system. With respect to some of these items, I wanted to respond to your questions.

1) Regarding the statement that Ancestry records that are merged into Family Tree Maker are not re-uploaded to Ancestry as part of the sync process. This is referring to Ancestry records that are merged and attached to source citations directly in FTM or on Ancestry. Since these are directly linked to the records that are already on Ancestry.com, there is no need to upload them again. Record images that are downloaded and attached manually would be uploaded because they are not directly linked to the Ancestry record online.

2) Non-person notes in your FTM file will remain in FTM. They are simply not synchronized to Ancestry. If an FTM tree is later created from the online tree, the non-person notes are not in the online tree and will not be part of that download. Because the data stored in the two tree systems is not identical, neither is a complete backup of the other. We recommend that people continue the practice of creating periodic backups in Family Tree Maker.

3) While media items attached to source citations are common, media items attached to sources are not. When present in FTM, these source media items are uploaded during the sync process and are attached to the citations associated with the source.

4) The stories created in each system are fundamentally different and are transferred to the other system during the sync process for read access. Stories created on Ancestry are saved in a common web format as .htm files, while stories from Family Tree Maker are saved in a common desktop format as Rich Text (.rtf) files.

Some of these limitations will likely be improved with future enhancements.