Ancestry Hints in FTM 2012

1 Comments

I have been trying to figure out if there is an easy way to locate "hints" in FTM 2012, so far all I can see is that you have to look at each person to see if there are any hints. If you upload your tree to Ancestry and use it there, it will provide a page for all of your hints.

One thing I noticed about the Ancestry Tree is that you have to view your tree for it to discover hints. I am not sure if that is the way it is supposed to occur or not. I thought that once uploaded it would basically do the searching for you and provide the list. I had to view each member of my tree (2255 people) to find out that I have at current 419 hints. I probably missed a few of my family members doing the search this way but its a way to get it work.

I was hoping that in FTM 2012 there would be a similar page, or tab that you could see all the hints for everyone in your database. I have been using Family Tree Builder from MyHeritage, and I like the Smart Matching. Once you add someone to your database it automatically checks to see if there is a match and provides the little icon, but FTB also has the "Smart Matching" tab so you can see all your matches at once and not have to go person to person to check if you have a match.

I would not think that it would be that hard to implement this, and would love to have it added to FTM 2012. On a side note I also heard that your "hints" might not match up between the online tree and your FTM 2012 tree, which makes it all the more confusing to me. If anyone can confirm this or let me know if I am wrong that would be great.

About Post Author

Xfaith

David has been an avid home genealogist for 15 years, researching surnames: DECKER, KONDRC, MACZEK, HOPFENGARTNER, PERUTZ, LEDERER, and more.

1 comment:

Cousin RussDecember 8, 2011 at 3:25 AM
David,

What you observed is how I think it is supposed to work. That is, in FTM2012 you see the hints in the People Workspace, Family View, Pedigree chart.

In your Ancestry Member Tree (AMT) you see the same thing.

But, in the AMT, you do have the ability to see a list of All of the hints for your file.

What I do, IF I want to see everyone with hints, I just go to that list, print it, then return to FTM2012.

You can also work off of those hints in the AMT. I just prefer to work in FTM2012.

Two things about this:

1) much earlier versions of Family Tree Maker you would see far too many "hint" in what was called the Family Finder Report.

2) working from a Hint in FTM2012 takes you right to the hints, in the Web Search Workspace. In my experience, those "hint" are good ones.

When you add a new person, you will see the hints pretty quickly or you can just go to the Web Search workspace and run a Web Search from there.

The Hint issue, and I am only guessing what you are talking about, was resolved in the patch we received the other day. That is, if you use a hint or ignore a hint, either online or in FTM2012 it will be part of the next Sync. It wasn't that way earlier. The hints were not part of the sync, but is now.

Russ