Keeping Reunion and Ancestry.com files in sync

[ptidman]

I have a confession to make. I am a leaf clicker. I don't always have a membership to Ancestry.com (too expensive), but when I do, or on occasions where they open up things for free, I like to poke around and discover new things about the people on my tree. When I do that, its just a few clicks, and bang, I've added a ton of information to the online tree.

Now I recognize that I could also manually enter each new fact i turn up to my Reunion file. But it is so much simpler to just do a few clicks within Ancestry to add that new information. My issue/question is, once I've done that, how can I get that new information back into my reunion file as painlessly as possible.

I ask this because I've just gone through the hell of matching and merging my Ancestry tree with my Reunion tree, after not doing so for years. I have a large tree (over 20000 people). I guess I just assumed that I would be able to download the Gedcom file from Ancestry, and merge it back into my Reunion file fairly painlessly. But that didn't happen. For some reason, I had thousands of people that needed to be merged one by one. They were clearly the same person, but for some reason they ended up with a different id number. Also, I'm pretty sure many of my sources are a complete mess now, and I have tons of duplicate events to delete.

But my leaf clicking habit is just too easy, too inviting, for me to give up. Should I just move to FTM 3 and give up on Reunion? I hate to do that, after using Reunion for over a decade. But painlessly working with Ancestry.com has become a must have feature for me. I know I can cut and paste. I guess that's not good enough for me.

Ancestry has become such a huge repository, I know that some of you must have a workflow of working with it efficiently, and without sources, etc. becoming a mess. I'm hoping some of you power users can tell me how you do it.

I guess i envision something like this. Downloading my reunion tree as a gedcom. Uploading that gedcom to Ancestry. Clicking away to my heart's delight. Downloading the ancestry tree as a gedcom. Reimporting that painlessly with match and merge into my Reunion tree.

Are there practices I could follow with sources, event memos, etc. that would make that as painless as possible? Or is this just a pipe dream?

[anitab]

Re: Keeping Reunion and Ancestry.com files in sync

This question could have been written by me! I am anxiously awaiting further responses!

[Michael Talibard]

Re: Keeping Reunion and Ancestry.com files in sync

...I like to poke around and discover new things about the people on my tree. When I do that, its just a few clicks, and bang, I've added a ton of information to the online tree.

Forgive me, but it is not possible to add 'a ton of information' with a few clicks unless you are operating a 'no-need-to-check' policy. I do maintain an Ancestry subscription, but Ancestry can only be as good as the people who use it, and I'm afraid there is a great deal of garbage out there. Your post suggests that you want to do genealogy without effort, and I'm afraid the world is just not like that.

[anitab]

Re: Keeping Reunion and Ancestry.com files in sync

Forgive me, but it is not possible to add 'a ton of information' with a few clicks unless you are operating a 'no-need-to-check' policy. I do maintain an Ancestry subscription, but Ancestry can only be as good as the people who use it, and I'm afraid there is a great deal of garbage out there. Your email suggests that you want to do genealogy without effort, and I'm afraid the world is just not like that.

I can't speak for ptidman, but I often add things at Ancestry in order to find documentation! Adding things does not equal accepting garbage (it's easy to note whether I've found documentation), but it does give me the opportunity to look for documentation that supports those things.

Example: I recently read something (on a very old message board post) that made me believe that my great-grandfather may have had two siblings I was unaware of. I added the names to the tree, and right away found death records for both of them (pretty sure I have the correct people, since their mother is said to have died in childbirth that year, and since the twin boys bear the names of their father and uncle). Adding them to my tree was an "easy" way to check them out, and attach the documentation.

Now all I need is any 'easy' way to add that to Reunion!

I'm waiting and watching and hoping for some positive suggestions...

[Michael Talibard]

Re: Keeping Reunion and Ancestry.com files in sync

If I have understood you, you want to maintain a near-identical tree in two places - Reunion and Ancestry. Why? If I were as satisfied with Ancestry as you seem to be, I wouldn't use Reunion, and vice versa.

[donworth]

Re: Keeping Reunion and Ancestry.com files in sync

I can understand what you're trying to do. Yes, a lot of the public trees on Ancestry are pure garbage, and yes, a lot of them got that way from indiscriminate acceptance of the shaky leaf hints for records that don't really apply to the person. My wife ended up with her father attached to some wife who was a total stranger in someone's tree and couldn't get them to change it.

That said, we all use Ancestry and want to be able to collect the original records we find there to our genealogies. Ancestry makes it spectacularly easy to do that inside their user interface and with their trees. But if you use genealogy software on your own computer, it is difficult. To date, I have not found an easy way to synchronize my Reunion tree with my Ancestry public tree. So, instead, I periodically re-upload the GED Reunion produces to Ancestry and don't bother to manually update individual people in the Ancestry tree using their interface. The only reason I keep a public tree at all is as "cousin bait" and so that the matching algorithms in AncestryDNA will work. Occasionally I will manually add a speculative relative to my Ancestry tree to help with the DNA matches too. As to the records, if I find one, I download the image (or screen capture the abstract - or both) and store them as source files and copy and paste the source information for the record to a new source in Reunion. That way, instead of a link to a record image at Ancestry, I will always have the actual image file on my computer.

I have heard of people who run GEDs out of Reunion to Family Tree Maker on the Mac and then synch up to their Ancestry tree. Going through two merge processes seems bound to lose a lot of information to me. I'm already losing most of my source information, my notes, and my photographs when I upload a GED directly to Ancestry. And, for many of the reasons you mentioned (duplicates etc.) I detest merge operations and avoid them at all costs.

Don

[gathompson56]

Re: Keeping Reunion and Ancestry.com files in sync

My issue/question is, once I've done that, how can I get that new information back into my reunion file as painlessly as possible.

As you have discovered there is not a mechanism to directly link between your Ancestry and Reunion files. If you use Ancestry for research and Reunion for your documentation, as I do, then it seems at some stage you will have to manually enter data into Reunion. At best, cut and paste from Ancestry to Reunion.

I discovered the mistake of uploading a revised Gedcom from Reunion to Ancestry. All that that accomplished was regenerating hints that I had already either accepted or declined. So I had to walk through each one to verify which to accept and which to decline.

I am now a couple of months into creating appropriate Reunion sources for data that I indescriminately downloaded from Ancestry. If I accept that the data source fits my tree I cut and paste the source data from Ancestry and add it to my Reunion source information. Then as I create the source information I update or refine my Reunion information as required.

Then I go back to Ancestry, and if required, manually change data in that tree. By keeping the Ancestry tree current to my Reunion data base I am hoping I will get more hints from Ancestry. And it seems to be working.

Too Easy: clicking and accepting hints from Ancestry
Less easy: reviewing the data source to confirm that it fits your tree
Time consuming: building the source into your Reunion tree

[ptidman]

Re: Keeping Reunion and Ancestry.com files in sync

Just to avoid a potential rabbit trail, I am not looking to be empowered to be sloppy, I am looking for ease and efficiency in importing and communicating good data. I am a university professor. I talk to students about evaluating and documenting sources constantly. It is my life, and has been for more than 30 years.

Ancestry is constantly pulling up potential sources for the individuals on your tree. Yes, you can, and should search manually. But still, Ancestry is just churning out leads for me to follow up on without me doing anything. That's handy, even though much of what it turns up I end up ignoring. Sometimes it turns up good stuff. All on its own. Without me doing anything.

Once you find something you want to document, with basically one click you can add that record, with a source citation all filled out, to your Ancestry tree. Suppose, say, a leaf pops up indicating there's a census record. Bang, with one click you've got that noted. Indeed, you can often click through each of the family members in that census record, and attach that citation to each of them. It can all be done, literally, in seconds.

[But, having said that, I'm not completely happy with what Ancestry does when you click. Ancestry will, with that click, attach the census to name and dates, and create a "residence" event, but it doesn't capture a lot of useful information on the census, such as occupation, and it doesn't create a "census" event, which is what I had always done manually in Reunion.]

So, why do I want to do this? One is the whole efficiency of time and effort thing. (I've always cited, but I'm glad I'm not writing papers on a typewriter anymore, glad there are tools like Endnote out there). The other is that through Ancestry I can easily share my research with my siblings and children, none of whom have any genealogy software. I'm also interested in checking out the DNA stuff.

So, why not just go all the way over to the Ancestry way of doing things? Frankly, I'm teetering on that brink. I've even bought FTM3. But I've used Reunion for decades now. It's what I'm used to. And in many, many cases I just like the way Reunion does things. It is certainly what I am used to. Switching to FTM kinda feels like switching to Windows. So, here I sit, struggling to bring these two worlds together more seamlessly.

I can't, right now, download a file from the one program and open it in another without making messes. Big file = big messes. I was hoping there might be good practices that would enable me to avoid that. I'm coming to realize that for now at least what I want may be a pipe dream. It shouldn't be that way. (I can recall when Mac MS word documents could not be shared, seamlessly, with Windows users. We still seem to be stuck there when it comes to genealogy files.) Is it just hopeless?

[Bob White]

Re: Keeping Reunion and Ancestry.com files in sync

Here is a response I made to a related question just last week:

Over the years, I have tried out most of the versions of most genealogy software on both platforms. Guess that makes me gene software nerd or something! On a scale of 1 to 10 of all the stuff I've looked at, I would give this software a 5 or 6. It's not horrible but it is a long way from wonderful, also. I started using Reunion in 1994 and it has survived all of my nerd work. I keep right on using it.

One program has stayed on my Mac and that is FTM 3. But, I don't use it as software. I use it as storage! Yes, I maintain nearly congruent trees in Reunion locally and on-line in Ancestry. You see... FTM 3 syncs found documents very slickly. So, a couple times a month, I fire up FTM 3 and let it sync with the on-line file and....voila, I have copies of all found items now on my Mac locally and the docs are easy to find because of association with a person.

With regard to the rest of this discussion, I have had the premium version of Ancestry for many years. For about three years, ending last year, I also had the premium version of MyHeritage. Early on with MH, it was finding some things that Ancestry hadn't turned up. But, over time, the search capabilities of both keep on improving. It got to the point where both were offering pretty much the same clues, so I decided to drop MH. No point in spending the dollars. Probably either one alone is just fine for research but having both is not necessary.

*********

The first paragraph refers to a new genealogy program that was under discussion. My workflow is simple. I do all my research/update work on a 27" monitor so that I can have Reunion and my on-line Ancestry tree sharing 50/50. I update one then the other working back and forth. I have no desire to collect 20,000 "relatives" so this works just fine for me.

[anitab]

Re: Keeping Reunion and Ancestry.com files in sync

Thank you so much for all the helpful suggestions!

I recently obtained FTM 3 - this way I will at least have everything on my computer, and stand some chance of doing the work I need to do. Since my original Reunion file is a GEDCOM from an Ancestry tree, some deleting is required! But I do want to have Reunion be my 'correct' tree, with attached documentation.

[One of my ancestors is listed on absolutely everyone's tree as having died in 1840. Even on the trees that show him alive in the 1850 census! Having that kind of information on one's tree prevents Ancestry from showing you 'hints' for anything past 1840, unless you have 'smart matches' turned off, and then what a lot of garbage you have to sift through!!]

[gathompson56]

Re: Keeping Reunion and Ancestry.com files in sync

[One of my ancestors is listed on absolutely everyone's tree as having died in 1840. Even on the trees that show him alive in the 1850 census! Having that kind of information on one's tree prevents Ancestry from showing you 'hints' for anything past 1840, unless you have 'smart matches' turned off, and then what a lot of garbage you have to sift through!!]

That's a great example of why not to accept someone else's tree at face value. At first it looks like everyone has come to the same conclusion through their own independent research that Uncle Fester died in 1840. When what probably has happened is that everyone copied the same bad data from each other without research.

Those are the risks of Click+Accept of Ancestry hints. Also the reason why I am going back through my very short tree to clean those issues up before proceeding onto new research.

[anitab]

Re: Keeping Reunion and Ancestry.com files in sync

That's a great example of why not to accept someone else's tree at face value. At first it looks like everyone has come to the same conclusion through their own independent research that Uncle Fester died in 1840. When what probably has happened is that everyone copied the same bad data from each other without research.

Those are the risks of Click+Accept of Ancestry hints. Also the reason why I am going back through my very short tree to clean those issues up before proceeding onto new research.

You are so wise to have a very short tree! That would be my biggest piece of advice to anyone just beginning...

[donworth]

Re: Keeping Reunion and Ancestry.com files in sync

You are so wise to have a very short tree! That would be my biggest piece of advice to anyone just beginning...

Unfortunately, in the world of genetic genealogy, the advice most people get is to have a very large tree - and to go ahead and include guesses and suppositions so that you will have more potential leaf nodes that might connect with someone else's tree when a DNA match is found. With autosomal DNA test results the whole point is to find the MRCA (Most Recent Common Ancestors). If you have a short tree (or your match does), you're very unlikely to be able to do that.

That said, DNA will tend to drive the Ancestry trees even further off the edge w/re to poorly documented and erroneous information - and even genealogists like me who very carefully source their tree are going to be contributing to the muck in an attempt to find MRCAs.

When I put conjectural information on Ancestry I usually put a comment on the records that say why I'm including it and the basis for putting it there. (The fact that Ancestry doesn't pick up the NOTES field in the uploaded GED doesn't help tho.) But I suspect most of the click-accept people will never read it anyway.

Don

[Sue McCormick]

Re: Keeping Reunion and Ancestry.com files in sync

It is not only the other trees. Sometimes Ancestry offers you exceedingly dubious matches. Recently it has been telling my that one of my 2-great aunts is a match for her sister! I can't even figure out why. The given names are different, the dates are different, the husbands and descendants are different. Only the surnames and the parents are the same (which would be true for siblings). It would be easy to get confused with such a match and mess up your tree.

[moughty]

Re: Keeping Reunion and Ancestry.com files in sync

Just to avoid a potential rabbit trail, I am not looking to be empowered to be sloppy, I am looking for ease and efficiency in importing and communicating good data. I am a university professor. I talk to students about evaluating and documenting sources constantly. It is my life, and has been for more than 30 years.

I'm coming to this conversation late but have the same issues. I have been a Reunion user since (I think) 1992 and all of my notes, etc. are in my original Reunion files. I have been doing client work since 2001 and have not worked much on my own family. I have used Ancestry to update information where appropriate over the years, so my Reunion and Ancestry files are drastically different. I don't want to lose my original notes, but Ancestry file probably has an additional 1500 people. I have purchased and evaluated most of the desktop software, and although some have features I'd like to see in Reunion, overall, I would prefer to continue with Reunion. It may just be a comfort level. I am not a fan of FTM 3.0, but I use it only for the syncing capability. I've also considered RootsMagic, which now has a version that runs on Mac with Crossover (although it still very much looks like a PC program). I still prefer the report generation capabilities on Reunion (I keep an old copy of Pages so I can edit).

The issue is a lack of standards. Ancestry will not allow other software companies to connect to their database. I would also like to share my information with FamilySearch (for long term retention since no one in my family has any interest). That requires RootsMagic. Since I specialize in Irish research, I also have my tree at FindMyPast.ie. None of these programs talk to each other and my frustration level as I try to prepare a Register Report on one line right now is extremely high. I can't even go in and edit the report, because that throws the numbering off.

What I'd like to see at a minimum is a clean match and merge. I've tried this and had the same results that you had. Luckily I made a copy of the file before I attempted it. Instead of merging information it duplicated it so I now have multiple copies of the same events for each person.

If anyone has had any success in merging Reunion and Ancestry, I'd like to hear about it.

Donna