Family Tree Maker 2012 Data Issues

[sueannbowen]

Hi, is anyone else experiencing problems with FTM 2012 data? My application is really playing up. It has reproduced a number of individuals and taken a few facts (but not all) accross for the 'new' individual. It hasn't taken other family members though. By the way, these are not new individuals to the dataset but were entered years ago.

I haven't imported anything recently, any entries I have made have been manually entered. Not there have been many over the last few months as I haven't had much time for the Tree.

I have compacted the database as they suggest which would usually sort out any dodgy indexes in an SQL database. No success. I cannot see anything in their help section and wondered whether anyone else has noticed anything odd.

All suggestions will be much appreciated.

[janbooth]

Hi Sue,

I have had major problems with FTM 2012 as a whole section of my database has been corrupted. Unfortunately, I only noticed these errors when finally attempting to put my Family Tree on the Web and looked at lines I hadn't looked at for some time. Sources appear to have been corrupted, names duplicated, etc. I do regularly back my info up, but the backups are also corrupted right back to a 2011 version and I am now wondering if when updating to the 2012 version some of the database was corrupted because of bugs in the new version. Because I have found so much new information since my 2011 version, I am loth to lose all that data, so at the moment am physically going through my database and trying to correct as much as possible - a mammoth task!

I never import any data from anywhere else and enter it manually as you do. My last backup, before I found the majority of the faults, did crash and that caused even more problems. However, it is interesting to find someone else who has had problems similar, if not the same, as mine. My computer genius, aka my other half, says that because he can't get into the database himself (or words to that effect) the situation cannot be repaired easily so I guess for me the answer is to gradually repair manually the errors (have nearly finished my maternal side) and then take backups every time I update the Tree.

Not much help for you Sue but I do sympathise wholeheartedly with your problem.

Janet

[sueannbowen]

Hi Jan, thanks so much for coming back ion this - I thought I was going mad. My OH is also a whizz and he is really worried that even if you correct manually, if the corruptions are being caused by 2012, there is nothing to say that it won't do it all over again. We don't know which bit is causing the problem. One crude check is to count the number of individuals on the database. That was how I picked my errors up so you could keep an eye on that as you go along. Have you contacted Ancestry? I will I think and see what they have to say. My tree is probably not as big as yours, but now has a number of spurious lines ans dead ends and it takes ages as you say to correct them. I have run the data errors report which does show where people have the same name which is a start I suppose. Today I have 601 individuals in my tree when I opened the application last week I only had 597 and I haven't made any changes. I think I will keep those logged and then email ancestry with the evidence and see what they say. Will keep you posted and it would be helpful if any other forum member running this version could also check. I will make a separate post to that effect I think.

[Megan Roberts]

You guys have got me worried now, because only in the last couple of weeks have I switched to FTM2012, from FTM version16.

I had individual trees for each branch of my family, and then about 18 months ago decided to combine them one line at Ancestry, and the just down load a gedcom whenever I wanted something on my desktop. However, having spent hours uploading stuff to Ancestry, including endless documents and photos, I realised that simply downloading a gedcom was not the answer, as that does not copy all the "media" items.

So after making enquiries with Ancestry to ensure that changing to FTM 2012 with synchronisation would ensure that my desktop version also included all the media items (documents, photos etc), I bought a copy. About a week I downloaded / synchronised, and whilst many documents etc were included not all were. I have been meaning to give Ancestry a call and find out why.

If I get any useful answer from them I will let you know.

[sueannbowen]

Thanks Megan - I would be interested to hear what they say. Would you do the people count thing for a while for me? My other post refers.

[Megan Roberts]

Thanks Megan - Would you do the people count thing for a while for me? .

Will do.

[janbooth]

I seem to have a different problem to you Sue, in that I do not have duplicated individuals but some of my source records have been corrupted and changed, mostly certain census record (but not all) sources and some marriage sources. We did do a 2012 convert run on my old 2011 Tree and, as far as we can tell, that did not seem to corrupt the data so I have come to the conclusion (perhaps erroneously) that it could have happened when I first converted to 2012 before all the bugs were ironed out in the 2012 version. However, checking through 4000+ names is a nightmare!

Will keep you posted.

Janet

[LittleSpark]

My neighbour kindly installed her 2011 version for me but after about 4 months I gave up on it and have gone back to an earlier version.
It seemed to take ages entering things into the 2011 programme and when I looked at the 'trees' the number of pages they covered far outnumbered the old version, plus I had to keep moving people over as on some pages there would be only a couple of names!
Really frustrated me so I'll stick with the version I know and understand...lol

Sheila

[sueannbowen]

I seem to have a different problem to you Sue, in that I do not have duplicated individuals but some of my source records have been corrupted and changed, mostly certain census record (but not all) sources and some marriage sources. We did do a 2012 convert run on my old 2011 Tree and, as far as we can tell, that did not seem to corrupt the data so I have come to the conclusion (perhaps erroneously) that it could have happened when I first converted to 2012 before all the bugs were ironed out in the 2012 version. However, checking through 4000+ names is a nightmare!

Will keep you posted.

Janet

Hmm Janet all is not as we hope in this. I really think there is a problem with their indexing or similar. Even though you haven't noticed the same problem would you count for me as well?

I think we should keep a list of errors as they arise and then see where we go with it. Fortunatley I only have 600 odd people on my tree, heaven knows how I would get to the bottom of 4000!

[sueannbowen]

My neighbour kindly installed her 2011 version for me but after about 4 months I gave up on it and have gone back to an earlier version.
It seemed to take ages entering things into the 2011 programme and when I looked at the 'trees' the number of pages they covered far outnumbered the old version, plus I had to keep moving people over as on some pages there would be only a couple of names!
Really frustrated me so I'll stick with the version I know and understand...lol

Sheila

Good plan sheila, I wish I had stuck on 2005 - I liked the layout and Ancestry lure you in with a tweak here and a tweak there!