Wednesday, September 20, 2017

RootsMagic/Ancestry TreeShare Issue - Media Item Names - UPDATED!

I have been using the TreeShare feature in RootsMagic 7 since it was released in late June 2017.

At that time, I uploaded a new Ancestry Member Tree to Ancestry from my RootsMagic database, but I did not upload the Media I had attached to persons in my RootsMagic database because I knew it would take a long time to upload and I wanted to get started.  In hindsight, that was a mistake.

I have been using TreeShare almost every day to make the Ancestry Member Tree identical to my RootsMagic database.  I only transfer data from RootsMagic to Ancestry for reasons explained in My Best Practices for RootsMagic TreeShare and Ancestry WebHints.

While TreeSharing daily, I have been adding the Media in my RootsMagic database one person at a time, but only for the Person's name.  I have not been adding Media for an Event because Ancestry doesn't link the event and Media together in an Ancestry Member Tree for some reason.

After two plus months of use, I discovered a problem - let me show you:

1)  Here is the Media Album page for Thomas Richmond (1848-1917) in my RootsMagic database:


Note that there are Media Item Captions for each Media item.  They are, typically:

"Thomas Richmond + Juliet White Marriage Record - 1868 - Killingly, Conn."

2)  When I looked at the profile for Thomas Richmond in my new Ancestry Member Tree, which I added using TreeShare for the person, I see that ALL of the Media items have the Media item caption of "Media."  Every freaking one of them:


For every person I have TreeShared that has a Media item.  Dozens of persons.  Hundreds of Media items.

3)  I went into Ancestry and looked at my three year old Ancestry Member Tree for Thomas Richmond and saw:


This tree, uploaded via a GEDCOM file in 2014, has Media item captions identical to the captions in my RootsMagic database.

4)  My conclusion is that the Media item captions are not transferred to Ancestry in a TreeShare operation.  I don't know if I had selected to upload Media items when I did the initial TreeShare would have resulted in Media item captions.

What I do know is that it does not upload Media item captions when I TreeShare a person for whom I have added a Media item with a caption.  They all come out with the caption of "Media."

That is frustrating, and should be corrected.  I should not have to edit all of the Media item captions on my Ancestry Member Tree in order to fix this.

I don't know which company dropped this ball, but I hope that they fix it soon.  I will probably upload a new tree with all of the Media if and when they do.

I wonder if Family Tree Maker Media captions also are uploaded as "Media".

UPDATED 10 p.m.:  RootsMagic released Version 7.5.4 today which includes the fix for this issue.  I don't know if they were working on it before I posted this or not.  I don't think that the media item captions will be changed for the items already in the Ancestry Member Tree.  That's OK for this tree of mine.  If I was going to save my AMT forever, I would upload a new Ancestry Member Tree to contain the captions.  

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Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver

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3 comments:

RootsMagic said...

It's fixed in today's update.

Keith Riggle said...

Randy, to answer your question, media synced from Family Tree Maker to Ancestry have the same caption as they do in FTM.

Cousin Russ said...

Randy,

I had to go back to double check FTM2017, just to make sure I hadn't missed something.

As Keith mentioned, the Captions in FTM2017 are the Same in the Gallery in the AMT.

There is one slight difference, for me at least.

My Media files are LINKED to the PERSON and not a Fact. OR the Media file is Linked to a Citation. I do both all of the time.

The Caption Linked to the Person is correct and the Link to the Citation Media file is correct.

A media file in FTM2017 can be linked to a Person or a Citation. The Citation would be linked to the Facts.

Here is a link to what I see in my AMT

https://photos.app.goo.gl/1gAD4bGCSAeaR0p32

Russ