Do you use RootsMagic? Have an Ancestry tree? Do you sync them regularly?
Based on discussions from various genealogy groups, many RootsMagic users treat their Ancestry tree as their primary one, using RootsMagic’s TreeShare feature to download updates and sync information.
However, in the blog post “Why I Don’t Sync RootsMagic with Ancestry Anymore“ by Stewart Blandon Trainman, the author explains why they no longer download updates from Ancestry, which resonates with my own experience.
I’ve used RootsMagic as my primary tree and relied on TreeShare to upload changes for a while, but recently, I’ve run into problems that make me reconsider this approach. These issues, I believe, stem from the Ancestry side.
The Issues
Incorrect Change Detection: TreeShare often flags many people in my tree as “changed” when, in fact, they’re the same. With a large tree, this becomes time-consuming as I have to manually mark people as unchanged.
Source Conflicts: Individuals frequently appear on the TreeShare list as having changes when the only difference is in the event sources, which often turns out to be trivial or non-existent.
Slow Processes: While updating my Duggins research, I encountered serious lag time with TreeShare. For example, converting an old CENSUS event to a RESIDENCE event in RootsMagic is quick, but TreeShare required over 2 minutes just to delete a single census fact.
Similarly, correcting dates can take over a minute.
Time-consuming Uploads: Recently, I timed the upload of a single individual, Jasper Howard, to my Ancestry tree, and it took over 4 minutes, even getting stuck at 22% for a while.
What’s Next?
Given these frustrations, I suspect the problem lies with Ancestry’s handling of TreeShare. This was confirmed when I received the typical Ancestry error message while accessing my tree.
Moving forward, I’ve decided to stop using TreeShare for now. Instead, I’ll continue managing my primary tree in RootsMagic, adding individuals, sources, and images there. I’ll manually update my Ancestry tree when necessary, especially when new descendants are added as part of my DNA research. I’ll update sources on Ancestry as I accept hints during research.
I stopped syncing a long time ago. I decided to just upload a new tree after a major update.
I too stopped using TreeShare – about two years ago now, for the reasons Stewart outlined, and to an extent, the issues you raise. In fact, I moved my whole tree to Family Historian, use Ancestry as a sandbox and only add people to FH when I’m certain they’re connected to my tree, by manually inputting, downloading images, and attaching them one at a time.
All that said, I’ll forever be grateful to RM for making it possible to download my tree back in 2017, complete with document images (even if the filenames were generic) – it would have taken me far too long to do it individually.
If Ancestry can figure out a way to deliver information to RM in a more organized and clear format, in a timely manner, I might reconsider using RM as a secondary database.
Yup, not only did I stop using TreeShare, I gave up on RootsMagic as well.
Which software did you move to?
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