Thursday, August 30, 2012

My FTM 2012 File Synced with Ancestry - only needed more Patience

In  my post The Perfect Plan ... is that you, Snidely? (28 August 2012), I complained that my Family Tree Maker 2012 database did not synchronize, using the TreeSync feature, with an Ancestry Member Tree after several hours.

Duff Wilson, a developer of Family Tree Maker, emailed me to offer his help.  I loaded my FTM 2012 file into my public Dropbox file, and sent him the link to the file on Tuesday afternoon.

His people worked on it and on Wednesday morning, Duff emailed me with this:

"We were able to upload and sync your tree successfully, and the process took just under three hours here in ideal conditions (uploaded internally with super-fast connection).   My guess is that it would likely take longer for you depending on your Internet speed.  Keep in mind that upload speeds are always much slower than download speeds.  In your case, did you let it continue or did you stop it after a couple of hours?  Your tree is very large, not only in terms of people (~41K), but also in terms of other supporting data such as sources and citations.  It’s hard for me to predict how long it might take for you to upload & sync your tree from where you are, but my guess is that it could take between three to six hours.  That isn’t only the time to upload your file of course, but  includes the time to actually create the tree online and link it to Family Tree Maker.

"If you did stop the process, I suggest trying again and letting it run. " 

I told Duff that I had stopped it after two or three hours.  In a later email, Duff commented:

"...keep in mind that most customer’s trees are much much smaller.  A tree as large as yours is probably in the top 1% in size so it’s certainly not typical of what most people will experience."

I waited until late Wednesday afternoon to try to sync my FTM 2012 to an Ancestry Member Tree.  I set it off and walked away from the computer (mowed the front lawn and watched the Convention on TV).  When I checked it at 8:30 p.m., it was still uploading.  At 10:12 p.m., the Sync was completed, although the Media continued to upload for an unknown period of time (505 Media items).  This morning, here is the FTM 2012 screen:


I took the screenshot above after I did a little editing, I guess, because it says "Sync needed."  I did have four Media items that didn't sync for some reason, and don't know how to find out.

Updated: 1:15 PM:  I clicked the link for the Media item problem, hit the "Retry" button and after several minutes the problem went away.  i'm assuming that the problem Media are now in both the FTM database and AMT, although I have no way of knowing which ones they were.  I'm currently "In Sync."

The "Randy Seaver's Genealogy Database - August 2012" is now a public Ancestry Member Tree (http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/45964539/family?fpid=6454448177):


I edited the "Tree Settings" page a bit also:



So, the answer to my TreeSync problem was PATIENCE!!  

My advice to others who set off to TreeSync a fairly large tree (in my case, 41,000 persons, 16,000 families, 760 sources, 30,000 citations, 5,500 places, 515 media items in a 91 mb file) is:

*  Compact your FTM 2012 file before trying to sync the file.

*  When you sync it, plan on waiting several hours for it to complete.  Don't be impatient.  


Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

1 comment:

Cousin Russ said...

Randy,

Congratulations.

Two comments:

1) Because that file didn't have any images, you just completed one part of the upload process. That is to get the Data Online. IF you had images, then FTM2012 would continue to Upload the Media files, and like your file size, the number and size of the media files may take a while longer. You WILL see a Media Complete indication.

2) updating the file going forward should not take as long. Updating either Online or in FTM2012, the TreeSync™ will be much shorter.

To add to Patients, Data first, then Media files second. You can work on your file while the Media files are being upload. WATCH for Media Complete.

Russ