Ryk Brown's Genealogy Forum

[RykBrown]

I just bought FTM08. FTM is the only program I have ever used. I can't count how many upgrades I've been through with no troubles. FTM08 is an entirely new program with a new data format and IT IS NOT COMPATIBLE with previous versions. It is not simply a new interface that sits over your old data file. It's a completely new data format so when you upgrade there is a untility program that converts your old data file to the new format. And the old format and the new format are not completely compatible.

If you have any names in your file with a suffix, such as names with the following formatting:
Ryk Brown, B.A., M.Div.
Alexander Stewart, 1st Laird of Ardvorlich
Robert Bruce, King of Scots

Names with suffixes in these formats were compatible with FTM05 and all earlier versions. However FTM08 will corrupt these entries to read:
Brown, B.A. M.Div Ryk
Stewart, 1st Laird of Ardvorlich Alexander
Bruce, King of Scots Robert

It removes the commas and turns the suffix into a prefix. Thus my first name is now "B.A.". It formats my name as if my first name is my second middle name. The first name of Alexander Stewart becomes "1st". Thus, Alexander is sorted alphabetically as "Stewart, 1st" instead of "Stewart, Alexander", etc.

There is an essential service pack just released today which claims that it fixes a "name parsing problem". However it does NOT fix this problem. I downloaded the service pack, restarted the program and the data is still corrupt. So I deleted the datafile and re-imported my old good back-up copy and it still corrupts it.

I'll be contacting the manufacturer about this.
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Ryk Brown
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Descendant of...well, all of these families, except for the ones that my wife is descended from, save for the ones we share in common...Eek! I married my cousin!

[jsybalsky]

Did this problem get fixed? Wouldn't want to lose my 20,000 entries to corruption!

[RykBrown]

No. They replied to my inquiries and indicated that they have no intention of fixing it in the current build. If enough people are concerned about it, then they MAY look at addressing it in the next build. They had the gall to tell me that "technically" the old version of FTM wasn't supposed to accept suffixes to names. But it did! So I don't think it's really the user's problem. But they don't seem to want to accept responsibility for it.

I should clarify that the problem only occurs for a user who is upgrading from an older version and who uses suffixes in names, as in the examples above. For a user who is just starting with FTM08 there is no problem. And for a user who does not use suffixes, there is also no problem.

Sad, because it looks like a really great program with some very helpful new features that I would love to take advantage of. Meanwhile I've gone back to the old version of FTM.
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Ryk Brown
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Descendant of...well, all of these families, except for the ones that my wife is descended from, save for the ones we share in common...Eek! I married my cousin!

[jsybalsky]

Yet another reason not to upgrade.

They also won't fix the limit of 99 generations. Nor allowing you to edit a report once you make it or add photos to a report once created or merge multiple reports for indexing and saying as a pdf.

Oh yeah and they don't wish to support FTM 16 (the version before 2008) any more.

Jill
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Jill
www.sybalsky.com
I traced back to Adam and Eve, now where?

[Keryn]

Code:

"Too Late!" she hysterically cried.  Make matters worse, I was wayyyy back at Version 3 which said you had to delete the copy of the Version 3 you had or Version 17 wouldn't open - but, don't worry - once you put Version 17 on, the file will happily open for you.  Wrong.  With absolute trepidation I deleted Version 3 - and then tried to open my file in Version 17 and it would not.  I couldn't find my Version 3 to put back on (I tipped this little house upside down - there are not many places it could have been hiding ... except it was hiding ... at my cousin's who promptly turned up the other day with, "Oo'er, look what I had!").  In the end I had to upload my genesreunited version and it converted that - of course, all the marriage dates were missing and all my notes.  I've had to slowly work through the tree to look for missing items and re-research.  I will now burn the old copy onto a disk, load Version 3 on to a family member's computer, open up my old copy and physically copy anything I'm missing.  ALL THIS from a programme that was supposed to be so simple and seamless.

[RykBrown]

To the credit of the makers of FTM they recently sent out free upgrades for FTM08 users to upgrade to FTM09. That's the first time they have ever offered a FREE upgrade! I don't know if that's because there were so many problems with FTM08 that they felt they couldn't morally charge for a new version that is essentially a giant fix for the old one, or if they were just suddenly overcome by generosity. But I won't look a gift horse in the mouth.

I was hoping that FTM09 would solve the problems noted above. Sadly it does not.

For the last year, since FTM08 came out, I have continued to use FTM05 hoping that they would eventually fix the problem and that I could then upgrade to the newer program. It is now clear to me that they are never going to fix the problem and I was stuck with the choice of continuing to use FTM05 for the rest of my life and at some point be stuck with an obselete program and be forced to upgrade anyway, or bite the bullet and upgrade now and spend the time to manually convert the thousands of entries in my database that are incompatible with the new data format. And just accept the fact that the manufacturer clearly doesn't see this as an important enough problem to fix.

So, I bit the bullet and manually corrected thousands of entries in my database to be compatible with the new format. It probably took me 30 hours to accomplish, but I've done so and I am now using FTM09 successfully.

Now, on the plus side, there are some fantastic new features in FTM09 that made it worth the effort to convert. It's definitely a vastly superior program to the older versions. The new features that I find to be extremely helpful include:

1. It allows you to search the Ancestry database from within the program and when you find matching data it allows you to import the data directly from Ancestry into your database. It also automatically creates a footnote for each piece of data imported so you don't have to do the footnote for yourself (great for lazy people like me who are terrible at citing sources). If the data you're importing happens to include an image of the original document (such as a census page or birth/marriage/death registration), then it will also import that image as a jpg and attach it to the media file for that person. So with just a click you get the new data imported into your database with footnotes and a jpg of the original image. There is also an intermediate edit screen that appears that shows you the manner in which it's going to import this data and allows you to make corrections.

2. It allows you to search sites outside of Ancestry.com on the internet and to import that data directly into your database via web-clipping. It's not quite as smooth as the interface with Ancestry.com, but still faster than typing it by hand and manually creating a jpg file and importing it. It will also create an automatic footnote citing the web page where you found the data.

3. It allows better management of place names and allows you to make corrections to place names on a mass scale. For example: I found that I was not entirely consistent with how I entered place names. So for my home city I had hundreds of entries with the following variations:
Hamilton, Wentworth County, Ontario, Canada
Hamilton, Wentworth, Ontario, Canada
Hamilton, Wentworth, Ontario
Hamilton, Wentworth, Ont.
Hamilton, Ont.
etc.
The program allows me to correct all these entries throughout my database so they're all the same.
It also contains a massive database of place names with correct county notations. So, for example, if you find an entry that says John Stewart was born in Balquhidder, Scotland, but you don't know where in Scotland that is, the program will automatically suggest "Balquhidder, Perth, Scotland". That saves a lot of googling!

4. There's a cool built-in map interface that allows you to select any place name in your database and go directly to a map of that place. It's not entirely flawless or intuitive. So, for example - it finds "Hamilton, Wentworth, Ontario" correctly, but it cannot locate "Hamilton, Wentworth, Ontario, Canada" for some reason. That flaw aside, it's still a handy feature to be able to go straight to a map from within the program. It will also take the data you have for a given person and plot the course of their life onto a map showing where they moved throughout their life (assuming you've entered the place names in a format that the map program understands).

There are a pile of lesser improvements that I won't bother going into here.

And, let me reiterate, the data incompatibility is only a problem if you are upgrading from a pre-08 version and if you used suffixes with the names in your database (such as for titles of nobility). There are no concerns if you are starting out with FTM09 for the first time. It's definitely the best program on the market.

So, here's the bottom line for me:

Do I think the program is worth buying? Definitely yes.

Do I think it was worth the days and days and days I spent manually converting thousands of entries? Begrudgingly yes.

Am I still frustrated that the manufacturer doesn't seem to care enough about the data incompatibility to fix the problem? Definitely yes.

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Ryk Brown
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Descendant of...well, all of these families, except for the ones that my wife is descended from, save for the ones we share in common...Eek! I married my cousin!