If you’ve been to Ancestry.com this morning, you probably noticed the new navigation bar at the top of the page. Tabs now include a drop-down menu so that you can navigate to sections of the site that previously would have required several clicks with just one. In the Family Tree menu, you’ll find all of your trees listed, and in Search, you’ll find links to search individual collections, all collections, and the card catalog. The Collaborate tab includes direct links to Message Boards, the World Archives Project, Member Connections, the Member Directory, and your Public Profile. Through the Learning Center menu, you can now access a variety of tools to keep you current, including the Article Archives, where you’ll find online articles from Ancestry.com newsletters and magazines, as well as webinars, the Ancestry.com blog, and other helpful sections. You can learn more about the changes on the Ancestry.com blog here, or click here to go directly to Ancestry.com.
I have been on both trees today and if that I can do alot of things easier than with the older toolbar System I have been on for over 8 Hours, it is graet improvement
You have really messed up the 1840 Kentucky Census. No matter what name I clicked on I did not get a page with names and it took hours of page turning to find the right name to correspond with the search.
I’m not impressed with your new search. There are situations where an advanced search would be nice but there is no place for birth or place of birth. You have messed up something that was easy to navigate in. Please improve or I will drop my membership. I have a world membership and you have made it next to impossible for me to research easily.
i don’t know what you have done or are going to do but if the print gets any smaller I will have to get a braille system.and when I look up things for instance on the census or obit.the print is very small. and what if I don’t want to switch to explorer 6-i did not like 7. I will just give up the computer period. ATT does not is not helpful either.
I don’t see much difference in the actual searching but I used to be able to get to a page (through a roundabout way) that would show databases in the order posted. It would show the most recent database first and would show which databases had been updated. It would be great if we could get to a list of recently updated databases and if it would tell us what was updated in the database. Such as a list of states added. That way we would know which ones to recheck.
Just moved 12,300 names from Family Tree Maker 2009 to your new Ancestry — what an improvement! Photos, stories, etc, make it the perfect website that I can now access from any computer any place I might be. Searching is vastly improved. Combining the power of ancestry.com with the Google genealogy tricks outlined in the January 2009 Family Tree Magazine is wonderful. What a bargain!
What in the heck is going on and what have you done to this? I am not at all impressed with this so-called “new version” of Ancestry.com! It is way to darn slow now . . it takes minutes for it to change screens, alot of the information is not correct, and I dont have hours to sit and wait for the information to pull up. I, too, am going to cancel my membership if this doesnt get a heck of alot faster shortly! I have spent hours and hours researching information and I sure as heck do not want to lose it all – especially from ridiculous & careless mistakes on your part . . . FIX IT IMMEIDATELY, please. I do not like this new version at all.
I’m very impressed with Ancestry, but would like to offer a suggestion concerning “hints”. I have several private trees at this point and always use the historical document hints, but find the family tree hints very distracting.
Is there a possibility in the future of having the family tree hints as an option to view or not? It takes so long too view and delete these hints and most are not well sourced.
What ever you do, please do not get rid of the link to the Old Search. Many time because the indexers either could not read the hand writing or were in to much of a hurry and miss spelled last names, the only way I can find records is by going to the old search link, clicking on the state,then census,marriage record etc., and going through the record page by page.
I do not like this new system. I only have a certain amount of time for genealogy in a weeks time and today I have gotten no where. I do not mind change but this is not a good change. If I can not manage my files I will have to dis continue my membership and go somewhere else.
I like the site. My question is when does it become official? I’ve even seen some of the world archives projects that I done! Good going!
I love the new ancestry. Much more info on each page. When will it be pernament? Love the new My Page. It has so much info on it and some of the old. Love the new email. Communicate with many in tree and some who need help. The biggest thing I can add that would greatly improve it is when we have searched or read a hint and it doesn’t fit if we could have a place to put doesn’t fit on it so I won’t keep wasting time pulling the same one up time after time.
We pray our Lord continues ot guide you in all you do to improve this wonderful way to reach out to family and to document the history of families.
In Christian Love,
Delia
I am not impressed the new search features. If you use exact matches for names or places you get nothing useful. If you don’t use exact matches you get so much stuff that is totally irrelevant to your search terms. Keep the old search it worked much better.
I agree with the other comments, I also do not like the new version of Ancestry. I liked the original version the best for searching. I got the best results and it seemed to be much easier to search. However,I am still able to find what I am looking for. Regarding the Newspaper Obit & Marriage Collections, such as The Boston Globe, names came up that did not match at all. As other members commented, I agree that Exact Match gives you nothing, while not checking Exact Match gives way too many names to check, which is a waste of time for me. I hope that some changes will be made. I will continue my membership, because I really need access to the Census Records, I am at a dead end without them.
BRAVO!!! GRT JOB!!THANKS FOR THE EXTRAS!!
I have only been doing this for a few days. As much as it is frustrating and overwelming when trying to find a needle in a haystack, I find it is also at the same time the most exciting, rewarding experience I have had in a long time when it come to discovering things about my family that I totally had no clue of. I just wish I knew a little bit more on how to find certain things, it can be very frustrating at times.
i did try it sorry to say i found i was all fingers and thumbs,it is frustrating,i know it saves time,and what bothers me i hope it all comes easy to me each day.i could enjoy thanks very much to ancestry.com
God I hate this new navigation and format. Nothing seems to work right. I go to look at a record and it won’t let me save it. Then I try to go back to the person I was searching on and sometimes it won’t give me a “Return to whoever Jones” link to go back to their profile page. It goes straight into a Family Tree format page and doesn’t give me a tab to look at the “Person” or “Profile” of the individual, you have to click on their name and then click on View Profile.
I tried to save an Obit link and it wouldn’t let me.
It was much easier to read the profiles the way you had it before. This format seems to spread it out more and isn’t as easy to add anything. I don’t see a “Add Stories” link. I se where I can comment, but not the old Add a Story thing. I haven’t checked yet, but I wonder if it even lets me view stories I’ve already added in the past.
Why can’t you people just leave well enough alone. It would be different if these things helped, but they haven’t done anything but complicate things. I hate the new Search too and only use the Old Search. I can’t get any good results with the New Search.
I am very computer savvy and learn things quickly, but your new additions or changes aren’t worth learning. They just make me angry.
Your new search system is a disaster. I can’t get back to anything I’ve been able to pursue over the past several years by typing in the exact same info that got me there the last time. This is hardly an improvement and could be the thing that finally brings me to cancelling my subscription after several years.
Well, I like everything except; for some reason; now when ever I do a search; I come up with nothing; even records I have already found and saved; just as a test;I did a search on my father and I come up with nothing everytime; what is the deal. I waste hours and hours and I am totaly frustrated. I am really not happy.
I was looking at original census yesterday and was informed that I had to download the enhancement viewing program (I had this already loaded before) I did as I was told and now I can’t print or save anything to my computer while I’m using the Enhancement viewer. I rebooted after the download. I have to revert to unenhanced viewing to print anything. I haven’t tried the saving to my computer in the unenhanced mode yet. Will this be fixed?
The new view is hard to “read”. I know it is just going to take time and that even though you are asking for our opinion you haven’t come this far to revert to the old view. Frankly I don’t know why you couldn’t have just tweaked the old view and added your enhancements without a complete overhaul….I believe in the old adage – if it isn’t broke don’t fix it. Your site was perfect for the most part before you started changing things. It’s kinda like comcast – everytime I finally get everything just the way I like it and am familier with the workings things are changed and I have to start all over again learning how to move and use the site.
Here are my four comments concerning Ancestry’s “new” website format:
[1] It’s much slower.
[2] Why are advertisements showing up after subscribers login to the site?
[3] The new US Census search is terrible. It fails to find individuals that I know appear in certain locations. This is the worst “improvement” thus far. It’s five steps back from the previous search function.
[4] Less value for the money. How about using subscriber fees for the addition of more US databases? The past two to three years has seen a huge growth in foreign databases relative to US databases on Ancestry. But my strong hunch is that the vast majority of Ancestry subscribers are from the US. I personally would really like to see more emphasis on the addition of newspapers to the databases.
As the owner of my family tree,even I am not able to see the information I typed in for my living relatives or for myself. How am I to edit information or add events when I cannot see the information that should already be there. Previously all of the names and information were visible and easy to manage.
hate the new program
What is happening? Every time I search a name it comes up check back soon? This has been going on since Sunday?
I liked the old way…..it is sooooooooooo hard to navigate, I liked it better when I could click on eg. canadian births or deaths etc. I’m not sure about this…..too hard.
I’m not pleased with the new format at all. When it’s time to renew my membership, I doubt if I will unless it returns to the older format.
I do not like the small print, can’t read it..and how can you print a group sheet without all that Ancestry stuff on it?
The new search is inferior to the old except for newspapers. Please keep both b/c I only use new for newspapers and everything else I use the old.
Everything seems smaller on the pages now including pictures. The new family tree is more difficult to navigate around in- maybe I’m not used to it yet, but the old seemed “cleaner” and easier to see at a glance. I especially enjoyed my larger pictures.
I too, think ancestry would be better to focus on US data bases and of course, I want southern U.S. data bases added- original records, not these books and stuff that I can’t even tell what country it is from. As a U.S. subscriber I pay for U.S. records only and when ancestry advertizes we add so many records… I expect those to at least be U.S. records. Some of the new databases aren’t even indexed either such as a South Carolina Directory I accidently stumbled across.
I DO NOT like whatever you have done to this site. When I ask for a specific year census, the person’s name, and the town/county/state they lived in, I should only get people in that county, not 25,000 plus people in the U.S. Why can’t we narrow down the search like before? RIDICULOUS!!!!!!
Also, I really don’t like the way the database is sorted. It used to be in alphabetical order so one could scroll down and find what you’re looking for. Now it’s a huge mess, in every kind of order. Almost like someone dropped all the files and just picked them up and stacked them in any order. Impossible to find the database I’m looking for.
Please go back to your previous format, or at least allow sorting and narrowing down.
I’ve read many of the feed backs you’ve received, and I whole heartedly agree with the majority that are extremely frustrated! The new information you’ve added is marvelous, but does it out way the added frustration? I personally don’t feel that it does.
I really wish that you would revert back until you can do something with this, or at least give the option to use the previous version.
I also go to the Message Boards and do volunteer lookups, but am completely unable to help out with the way it is right now. My forte “was†in census searches, but I’ve not been able to post a single thing since your conversion.
If I remember correctly, there was the option to search in the same manner it’s now set up in, on the previous version. And I’m sure that worked for some. It didn’t for me, so I didn’t use it. Why can’t we have the same option in this new version?
You had a good, well working, product until now.
PLEASE DO SOMETHING QUICKLY!
I cannot believe who the person is who has changed something that was working just fine. I hate the new format. I cannot print a census now by just one click on your page. I must now click print,go to page setup, change my page, then go back and click print. Would you please go print out a family tree and see what fun that is. Why, oh, why, change something that was working so good. Why pay someone just to make changes???
I thought I was all alone in my frustration with new site, but find I am not after reading all of the entries from above. My family tree want open on home page, copy is smaller so therefore I have to blow up page size, pictures want open unless I double click, if then. It’s too slow, doesn’t matter what time of day, so don’t say there are too many people trying to use program. I know next you will say its my computer, I have tried following all of the trouble shooting tricks you suggested, read everything you have written: I have unloaded and loaded new every thing on my computer to see if that was it: paid a professional computer tech to check my computer, he said it is a SOFTWARE ISSUE. I am retired and have spent a portion of almost every day since 2005 enjoying Ancestry, but now I am miserable with it and HATE it!!!!! After almost 5yrs I was able to do almost anything I wanted to do with program: even excepted past improvements but this one is TERRIBLE! Sorry folks, I know its your job and I was in the workforce for 40yrs, if I had turned out a product that didn’t work, I would have bee FIRED! I’m about to quit wasting my time, take what information I have gained and find another program. Please heed what I am about to say, I WILL BE DISCONTINUING MY MEMBERSHIP if this is not corrected soon. Sincerely, What could be a Lifetime Member, Linda Biggers Mitchell
I have been able to download the tool bar but it does not work.
Any help on that. Also, the world archives does not work.
I always use the old search because the new search doesn’t find people that I have found before. Why change something when it isn’t “broken?!” If you take away the old search, I will probably not renew.
WHAT HAPPENED TO “ADD AN EVENT”, ETC.????????
I’ve subscribed to ancestry.com for several years and now I’m almost as lost as the first time I used the site.
Today I’ve looked everywhere on the screen I could possibly imagine and can’t find how to add a marriage to a profile anymore. It’s possibly staring me in the face, but I can’t see it. Aaaaaarrrrrggghhhh!
There must be a more user-friendly method to improve your site, not merely update it to its current level of enhanced frustration and sickening color scheme…
What is going on today April 12, 2012….It is taking too long to do any research. It is not my computer because ATT had me do a speed check and my download and upload is fast. It is taking forever to do one small research ; it just keeps turning and turning. I use Google and for my searching not Windows Explorer.