Michelle,

Thanks for the news. I look forward to the update. Especially the book building and source template features.

Cheers — Randy

Hello Michelle,

Nice to hear from you again – I think we always get worried when a “great silence” descends!

It is nice when we get someone in your organisation who seems to be interested in communicating. Unfortunately this is not the case when raising questions through e-mail to the Support Team.

I presume you are aware of the concerns about the website performance from the Ancestry.com and searching records website blogs?

When trying to search the “England and Wales Birth Index 1984 – 2005″, a screen states that “you have not supplied enough information to perform the search” and directs you back to the old data entry page for that search which has the heading “Unknown”.

When I phoned UK customer service – they did not know of this problem. Can anyone explain why this facility is not available, and why a more meaningful message could not be put up instead advising what the problem is?

Michelle, I stumbled across this bolg- and I’m delighted. I’m very new to ancestry.com, and to genealogy. I’ve got my Family Tree goig, with 6,500 ancestors, 550 photos (with lots of comments), 350 stories, and 100 Comments already inputed. I want to buy Family Tree Maker, but I can’t seem to get any answers to what seem to me to be simple questions:

1) My PC is an Apple but I have do have the Parallels program so I can run Windows. Would FTM thus work on my Apple perfectly fine?

2) When I download my ancestry.com Tree to FTM, will all my photos and stories also download?

3) If 2) is “no” then how do I go about getting my photos, stories, and comments into FTM? Do I have to do it ALL over again? (I wouldn’t think so or you’d tell people that before they start their Trees- and you try to cross-sell them FTM.)

4) I want to get to a point where I can put my entire Tree- with all photos, stories, comments, audios, and videos- onto CDs, to give to my children. Is that possible?

Thanks again for your kind help!

Van Atkins
775.537.2541

I am using Family Tree Maker 2009 and am finding many errors/inconsistencies in the way relationships are calculated.

My mother and my father happen to be 3rd cousins–something that FTM 2009 doesn’t indicate. However, my actual first cousins (children of my mother’s brother) are listed as my 4th cousins! They in fact are both 1st and 4th cousins. The children of my father’s brothers are listed as my 1st cousins. All of these cousins should be indicated as both 1st anf 4th cousins.

Another example in FTM 2009: My uncle, John Bowler (my mother’s brother), is listed at only the brother-in-law of my father, yet he is listed as the 3rd cousin of my father’s brother.

Why doesn’t FTM 2009 correctly list both relationships? FTM version 11 could handle this correctly.

Are there any plans to release fixes for this problem any time soon?

New features are nice, but I would rather see bug fixes. For example, I have been absolutely frozen in my genealogy research for months now because FTM2009 crashes whenever I try to merge large GEDCOM’s. I was told a fix for this would be in SP1, but I don’t see anything mentioned. Is it there? What bugfixes are included in the patch?

I have a question about FTM 2009. Since I subscribe to Genealogy.com, I just received my free FTM 2009 disc. I am currently using FTM 2006 with Version 16 added on. This is my question. I am extremely hesitant about using FTM 2009 and doing away with FTm 2006. Can I use both? In other words, if I install FTM 2009 will it replace my current version or can I run both? I do hope someone can answer this question because I would like to try FTM 2009 but do not want to lose the other one either.

YEAH. Some missed features are returning

I hate my computer sometimes. Anyway as I previously posted Yeah…

I was wondering can you clarify what is the size factor that is considered an update versus a release?

Additionally how will these features be configurable? Things like the old calendar that existed through v16. Had the ability to define living versus all and items like that. Will this new calendar have those features? Will there be release notes on these new and returning features?

Thanks,

Joel

Hello Michelle,
My family is mostly from Washington D.C. but I can’t find any records for D.C. except census records.

Are they (birth, marriage, death, etc) not in Ancestry.com? If not, are there any plans to acquire them?

Hi Mary Beth #7

I have both 2009 and 16 running on the same box but they use different file formats. FTM2009 will take your old FTM file and convert a copy of it to the new format. As far as I know there isn’t a tool that will reverse that conversion if indeed you don’t like 2009.

You could double enter data into both versions.

TonyC

RE: comment Number 7
Written by:
Mary Beth Marchant

Posted on:
January 28, 2009 at 12:20 pm
I have a question about FTM 2009. Since I subscribe to Genealogy.com, I just received my free FTM 2009 disc. I am currently using FTM 2006 with Version 16 added on. This is my question. I am extremely hesitant about using FTM 2009 and doing away with FTm 2006. Can I use both? In other words, if I install FTM 2009 will it replace my current version or can I run both? I do hope someone can answer this question because I would like to try FTM 2009 but do not want to lose the other one either.

Mary Beth

Since I am not ready to fully commit to FTM 2009 (due to lack of some features and some programming errors in FTM 2009) here is what I presently do.

I keep my data base/file in FTM 2006 version 16. I perform all my updates/corrections in FTM 2006.

Periodically I export my FTM 2006 file to FTM 2009. I then use FTM 2009 as a test program to see and test the features it has and to help me clean up my 2006 file.

I have two computer screens and am able to have 2006 loaded and running in one screen and FTM 2009 loaded and running on the second screen. By having two screens I am able to see both systems simultaneously side-by-side and see the differences between them. This works very well and have never had a problem.

If I see an error or somehing that needs to be fixed in my data base I always correct it in FTM 2006. Over time my FTM 2009 file gets out of date because all my corrections/adds are made in FTM 2006. When this happens I just export a new file to FTM 2009.

You might want to try this. I find it to be very helpful.

I am hoping there will come a time when FTM 2009 is sufficiently fixed/updated as to make it equivalent to FTM 2006 and when that time comes I intend on using FTM as my data base and drop FTM 2006

My suggestion to you and others is not to export your file to FTM 2009 and then kill/delete your FTM 2006 file. If you do this you will find too may problems and you won’t be able to go backwards and create your FTM 2006 file/data base

One of my pet peeves with the All-in-One tree was it did not keep generations in the same line, Extended Family Tree sounds like the perfect replacement to me (probably not for everyone). I am excited about the new upgrade.

Most of my issues with FTM are minor (and some have existed before 2008):

- Why does children sometimes appear from the “first” parent (husband) and sometimes the “second” parent (wife)? I can do the same tree with two different people and this will switch on me. I though the children should come from the link between husband and wife. It would be nice if you could choose an option but there may have to be some exception logic also. What do you do when you only know one of the parents, adopted children, or children of same-sex couples.

- Why does a person who is remarried appear on the chart as husband – wife 1 – wife 2 and not wife 1 – husband – wife 2? Of course what do you do for 3+ spouse (Liz Taylor?). Also what happens if wife 1 left husband to be with wife 2? I do drag and drop the chart to the way I like it but it would be nice if it could be a default.

- Why does my Places show the wrong location for Mississauga ON when I click on the city of the left side list but when I search it on the middle pane it goes to the right location. It would be nice if we could have a “personal” place database that we could modify place as correct.

- Also it would be nice if there was a “personal” timeline database (like personal dictionary in a word processing software) where you could add personal or country related events to your timeline or add current historic events if you wanted.

As I said these are some minor points. I know you have a long list of items to work on for all of the people who use this product. Good luck and keep up the good work.

Thanks – Robert

Question: Will we be notified when the ‘all in one’ chart is ready to download?

Thanks,
Janice

The technology of synching online trees existed in FTM 16, so why not with FTM 2009? It seems to me that Ancestry wants the online subscriptions to be focal point of the research that a person does. But without syncing capabilities in 2009 FTM, why should we do any research on existing online trees?

Regarding your response Michelle in item 17, surely as a company you should be embarrassed to release software with a reporting feature that doesn’t actually produed a true and accurate report. When the software was ready for release, if that function wasn’t working properly, surely it should have been pulled until it was!

Looking foward to update.
Just one question, can you tell us when the 1911 uk census will be available on Ancestry?

Michelle,

Thankyou for the update. Nice to see things are progressing. Can you tell me when we can expect the plugin functionality to become available. I have a number of ideas to add value to FTM and woudl welcome the feature.

best wishes
Glen

Re #22

Mark
I asked that question as soon as I found out that the 1911 UK census records had been released before the 100 year ‘rule’ allowed.

The indexes and images are online through the pay-per-view site run by findmypast.com – not cheap though.

Maybe there isn’t enough money left in the coffers after the rash of advertising that TGN have been doing lately.

It would be nice to know though – so when will it be available?

TonyC

Yay.. I have been waiting for the book building feature so that I can move from 2006. Will it move over my entire book as it exists?

# 25 David

Probably not any pictures, but the rest should survive

As always run a Tools>Compact on your FTM 2006 file before migrating it to FTM 2009

John D

Michell,

I have emailed you guys several times with a suggestion, but this is the first time I have joined your blog. What I would like to see is for FTM to make it easier to insert and use hyperlinks to web sites with information about individuals in the database. I have added the Web Citation field to the personal information frame at the right of the main body of the Family tab of the People button. This causes this field to appear at several other locations in the program. I would like for every place the Web Citation field appears in the program to appear in blue as a hyperlink that can be clicked to take the user to that page. As it now stands, none of the places this field appears shows it as a hyperlink, except in the Sources tab as a Reference Note for a particular Source-Citation.

I am not a professional genealogist. I use the research tools provided by ancestry.com, but I would also like to have an easy way to add web pages that I have found that pertain to a particular ancester. One side of my family has an enormous number of historical personages whose lives are already documented by Wikipedia articles. I realize that professional genealogists may view Wikipedia with a certain amount of disdain. However, as I said, I am not a professional genealogist. At this point, I am just attempting to create something that family members to whom I make my FTM database available will find interesting and intertaining. After I have collected links to web sites that contain information about ancestors, I hope to go back and sift through the information with a more critical eye and compare sources and citations. While doing that I will probably use the “Web Clipping” feature to copy particular facts, pictures and pages into FTM. However, I would initially like to just be able to link to web pages without actually merging them into FTM.

Since FTM already has the capability for adding the Web Citation field, surely it would not be too difficult to enable hypertext linking in every instance of the field. I would appreciate it very much if something could be done about this and welcome any comments you would care to make on.

Should be interesting. I hope it fixes the problems with custom reports (Missing fields like spouses name), and the .csv export is next to useless in its current form.

Cant wait to see what the update holds, but for now exporting to gedcom and importing the file to 2006 is the only way to get true custom reports

# 28 David

I agree with you about the custom report needing attention and I understand that it is high on the priority list.

You will see in the SP1, csv output has been vastly improved with the ability to export as columns as well as the existing rows.

John D

Gwain # 52

You can already add your own URLs in the web search and you will also find in SP1 that the web clipping has been improved.

It doesn’t go all the way to what you want, but have you considered putting your suggestions to the FTM enhancement link?

If you do, explain carefully (make the business case) why this enhancement would be useful and how you would use it.

http://ftm.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/ftm.cfg/php/enduser/ask_feedback.php

John D

# 23 Glen

The unused plug in has been a bit of a let down as when we saw it in FTM 2008 the expectation was that third party developers would write some neat plug ins especially to expand the program.

Alas that hasn’t happed although I believe that there is a SDK available for FTM?

I would encourage Michelle to contact you outside this blog

John D

John

Thanks for the reply.

As a professional software developer myself I have been looking forward to the API, but have not seen any details about how to get it. Michelle, if you do read this, please can you help.

Many thanks
Glen

# 32 Glen

Already have

John D

Hi Michelle. I just purchased Family Tree Maker 2009 WITHOUT these updates. How can I get them? Also, when I log in for ‘updates’ from within the software, I’m advised that I don’t have ‘administrator priviledged’. I’m on my computer at home. I own it. I’m the only user. What do I do to make this feature work? Thanks. CAL

Carol #34

I assume you are using Vista. You need to either right-click on the icon and run as administrator (one-time solution) or edit the properties short-cut icon. To do this, right-click, select properties, go to the compatibility tab and check Run this program as administrator (from now on the program will run as administator but note you will have an Allow button to push each time you run the program). You can turn the off altogether but it is not recommend by Microsoft.

In administration mode you will be able to check for updates and get these new features (when they are available).

I see the 2009 Place database seems to contain townships. But there’s no obvious difference between entering a township and a city. I mention this because some townships have multiple towns and one of the towns has the same name as the township, so someone could be from the other town, but in the one township and if you just enter the township in the place field, there’s no way to tell what is meant unless you look at the source records.

Also, Microsoft Virtual Earth doesn’t seem to be able to make sense of townships. If I click Butler (township), Calhoun, Iowa, USA, it maps it to Calhoun, Harrison, Iowa, USA. You should work with Microsoft to get townships in their database.

Or I think there’s an ability in the Virtual Earth SDK to geocode locations. Maybe long/lat could be added to the Place database specifying the long/lat of townships and places that don’t map properly on Virtual Earth.

Or you could switch to Google Maps if you can find a good GMaps control for .NET, as it already recognizes townships.

# 34 Carol

The update is not released as yet but it is not very far away.

Have your FTM 2009 set to automatically detect updates and when it goes live it will detect the SP1 patch and update your program

John D

In my 2006 book, I have my own text documents that include images, will the nex bookbuilding have the option for you own text documents?

When you have a family sheet, etc. in your book, does it automatically update when you make changes in the database?

When can we expect to see the update? I’ve logged in as administrator a few times over the past week and am consistently told that my product is up-to-date when I go to update. Thanks,

Greg

I just uploaded the FTM 2009 that I received. I look forward to getting the update. With the book feature back, I may even like this new program. I create books for others and have done more than 100 books in the last few years. I look forward to importing a saved book from my old program. Lack of a book feature is a deal breaker for me.

Michelle, I just found your answer to my question. Thanks for your reply. I did install the FTM 2009 this afternoon and am waiting for the update. In order to use FTM I must have the book feature as I create my own books and have printed more than 100 books in the last couple of years. Looking forward to this. I use XP so I should automatically get the update. Is that correct. I have the check mark for “updates” checked and am also Administrator. Since I don’t have Vista, I guess I won’t run into that problem of making myself administrator every time I open the program.

I am preparing a seminar on the history of Genealogical Research. Could anyone provide me with the date of the first release of Family Tree Maker?

Robert # 44

Send me your email address. I have done a full history on FTM from the days of Banner Blue and the author Hess right through to the current owner including all the changes and owners

John D

RE: Comment #12

Kathy Marie, Don’t uninstall your 2006 IF you have FTM History Discs. I don’t believe they have any intention of putting back the Read CD feature in 2008/2009 or future releases.

I’m hoping that future updates will allow us to continue to make updates to our existing Family Tree Maker homepages. I much prefer using these pages than anything at Ancestry.com (though I do also use WorldConnect at Rootsweb.com — but that requires a GEDCOM upload).

The old format of the Ahnentafel report and the old format of the various Genealogy Reports, along with the ability to continue to update my Family Tree Maker homepage, are a couple of the reasons why I will continue to use FTM 16 as my primary program until these issues are addressed.

I do also have FTM 2009 (as I did FTM 2008 before it), but I cannot even think about using the newer program as my primary database until those problems are fixed.

So please consider:

1) Allowing update of Family Tree Maker homepage reports.

2) Bringing back the former, oh-so-much nicer format for the various Genealogy Reports (Ahnentafel, NGS Quarterly Descendant). What the current program produces is quite ugly from a user perspective.

I received the FTM2009 update. I uploaded a new tree after the patch. It is supposed to upload notes. However, I cannot find any “fact notes”.

I do not know why I was not notified of this update. I am haveing problems as alot of Family is not compatible with VISTA and computer crash forced me to have to go to vista.

Ok, called your help desk yesterday and was told that I was not merging data correctly despite the fact that I tried to tell the young man that I had been a member for 10 years and had used your software for at least to years. He insisted on sending me the answer which was supposed to tell me how to merge. Well clearly, there was nothing new.

Called again today and was told that there was a “bug” in the system. It will take a FEW WEEKS to fix. I asked for a refund of my money for those few weeks and was told no, there was too my other data on the website. Before I try to merge I should check to see that the program recognizes that there is media attached to the source. OK, tried that. If it doesn’t recognize that there is media attached, I am to notify you. I’m kind of mad. I pay good money to use your site, and supposedly it will work with your software. I suffered through the nightmare with 2008, till finally the 3rd patch seemed to correct the problem. I appreciated your giving 2009 and it seemed to be working, but you added a patch and now I am having problems again.

Just one person—Benton McMillan Head should notify you of every merge which doesn’t work. Well, kind of mad here.

1920 Justice Precinct 4, Hale, TX—doesn’t work.
1900 Civil District 8, Jackson, TN—doesn’t work
1880 District 7, Clay, TN— Worked YEAH!!!!!
1910 Magisterial district 3, Christian, KY worked

This certainly destroys the pleasure of using your site and software!!!!!! Is anyone else having this problem?

I understand I will receive an email when each of these is corrected.

OK, with regard to the above post. I uninstalled 2009. Actually had to go and edit the registry, but I got it done. I reinstalled the program, and now it works. I think the patch is the problem. Please let us know when this problem is resolved

Michelle, #54

I can’t see them on Ancestry after I upload from FTM2009.

I can see them on FTM2009 just fine.

Michelle,
Regarding posts 50 & 51
Thanks for referring my question on to Christopher. I have done a copy and paste of his email which was received while I was away on vacation as well as my response.

I don’t know whether the problem with the patch has been resolved or not, but look forward to hearing back from Christopher.

Is there a blog which is more appropriate for using for problems with 2009?

Thanks again.
__________________________________________
From: Ancestry.com Support [mailto:ancestrysupport@custhelp.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2009 1:26 PM
To: Robbie Burnett
Subject: [Ancestry.com Blog] Comment: “Where is she? (and the latest news)” [Incident: 090219-000159]

Recently you requested personal assistance from our on-line support center. Below is a summary of your request and our response.

Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.

Subject
[Ancestry.com Blog] Comment: “Where is she? (and the latest news)”

Discussion Thread
Response (Christopher) 02/24/2009 02:26 PM
Dear Robbie,

Recently you posted a message on our Family Tree Maker blog and Michelle Pfister has contacted me and requested that I assist you in this matter. For reference, I have entered your blog message to this incident, you should see it below.

Does the merge not work at all or is it that you sometimes don’t get images with the merge? If it is the latter, then you are seeing a known issue with the patch. We implemented a timeout on the downloading of images from the site since it was sometimes causing crashes for the users. The problem is that the time out is a bit too short for people with slower connections.

Please let me know either way.

Christopher
Member Solutions
Family Tree Maker Support
http://ftm.custhelp.com/

______________________________________

Christopher,
Your response has only added to my frustration. Yes, the problem is with the media which sometimes merges and sometimes doesn’t. However, I called your technical support team twice and spoke with two different techs. Either neither of them knew, or neither of them admitted that there was a problem with the patch. I even mentioned to one of them that I thought the problem began when I downloaded and installed the patch. I had to figure it out on my own and uninstall and reinstall the program to get rid of the patch. It would have helped if they had just told me to uninstall the program to begin with rather than two phone calls and a post to your blog before I get an email admitting that there is a problem with the patch.

Now to your response that your have implemented a timeout on the downloading of images. I assume that you mean that there is a certain amount of time allowed before the merge takes place without the image. Is that correct? I don’t think I have a “slow” connection. It certainly is the best available in my area, but I do live in a rural area as, I am sure, do many of your customers.

I have a couple of suggestions:
1. If there is a known bug, as your email suggests, be sure that your tech support is aware. It is extremely frustrating to speak with tech support and be given a canned answer which tells me how to merge when I tried to tell him that I had been a member for at least 10 years.
2. With the release of any additional patches, be sure that there is a way to remove the patch without having to uninstall the whole program including editing the registry, before reinstalling. Better yet, test the patch with beta testers before releasing.

Has the issue been resolved? If not when do you expect resolution?

________________________________________

Michelle,
I asked last night on the webinar with no answer. I ask again. Has the issue with the “bug” been resolved? I do not want to reinstall the patch if it is going to cause the same problems again. Please respond

I posted #56, then 57, then I emailed tech support, no response. So I tried reinstalling the patch. Guess what. The “bug” is not fixed. Why can’t someone respond that the issue is not resolved. I guess I can uninstall and reinstall again.