Myheritage Family Tree Builder Premium Keygen Generator Letöltés

The recent announcement by Ancestry of the “retirement” of Family Tree Maker (see for details) has turned out to be a great gift for other genealogy software producers. Thousands of disappointed genealogists are now looking for alternative products. Several companies have announced “special offers” for Family Tree Maker users who wish to switch to a Windows or Macintosh program that will remain supported for some time. I will suggest that a new announcement this morning from MyHeritage should be seriously considered by any Family Tree Maker user. Disclaimer: MyHeritage is the exclusive sponsor of this newsletter so I could be accused of bias. In fact, anyone who accuses me of bias is correct!

To be blunt, I probably am biased. Even so, I do think this is an excellent offer and I will invite readers who do not share my biases to read the announcement and decide for themselves. MyHeritage has announced a two-pronged offer: both Family Tree Builder software and an unlimited size Family Site for FREE. Of course, Family Tree Builder software for both Windows and Macintosh has always been free. (See my Free Genealogy Software article at for details.) The real gem in this announcement is the offer of a FREE family web site of unlimited size on MyHeritage.com. Both Family Tree Builder and Family Tree Maker will keep “mirrors” of your data in your Windows or Macintosh system and in the MyHeritage web site.

Both products will allow access from handheld tablet computers and “smartphones.” Several genealogy programs will copy data to web sites but only two of them that I know of support true two-way synchronization: Family Tree Builder from MyHeritage and the soon-to-be defunct Family Tree Maker from Ancestry. You can enter new data or make updates to existing data either on either the web site or in the desktop or handheld products, then synchronize (automatically update) the same changes to the other devices. If you have previously synchronized your genealogy data from your computer to Ancestry.com, you will be pleased to know that you can do the same with MyHeritage.com. Both Family Tree Builder and Family Tree Maker will allow for private web sites visible only to the uploader and invited guests or for public web sites visible to everyone in the world. The user remains in control of his or her own data.

Myheritage Family Tree Builder Premium Keygen Generator. Myheritage Family Tree Builder Premium Keygen, matlab mac keygen, zapgui sap keygen. The program automatically eliminates or merges duplicates, which is very useful. MyHeritage Family Tree Builder produces reports in PDF or HTML, which can be printed and shared. It supports same-sex marriages, as you do not need to specify gender in the program. Legacy Family Tree Genealogy Standard.

Until today, family web sites on the web site were free for databases of up to 250 people. Larger databases required payment, however.

Today’s announcement for users of Family Tree Maker changes that. Daniel Horowitz, the Genealogy and Translation Manager at MyHeritage, sent an email to me this morning to tell me of the new announcement, He wrote: “At MyHeritage, we believe there is still a place in the world for genealogy software, and there is value in the ability to work offline, and enjoy more powerful functionality that many websites cannot offer. We also believe that people should be able to discover and preserve their family history on whatever platform they are comfortable with. That’s why we are constantly innovating new technologies and enhancing our website, mobile apps and our Family Tree Builder genealogy software. “We are delighted to offer FTM users who move to MyHeritage, and who choose to sync their family tree with their MyHeritage family site, unlimited tree size capacity on their online family site, which is normally limited to 250 individuals on a free account.” OK, so I am biased. However, I will suggest you check out the details below (copied from the ) and then decide for yourself.

The following was written by the folks at MyHeritage: FTM Users: Join MyHeritage and get Family Tree Builder with an Unlimited Size Family Site for Free As you may have heard, Ancestry® has recently announced that it will no longer sell its Family Tree Maker® (FTM) software as of the end of this month, with further plans to discontinue support for the program. At MyHeritage, we believe there is still a place in the world for genealogy software, and there is value in the ability to work offline, and enjoy more powerful functionality that many websites cannot offer. We also believe that people should be able to discover and preserve their family history on whatever platform they are comfortable with. That’s why we are constantly innovating new technologies and enhancing our website, mobile apps and our genealogy software. MyHeritage Family Tree Builder So for all disappointed FTM users looking for alternative genealogy software, look no further! MyHeritage Family Tree Builder is the ideal tool to continue growing your family tree, and open new frontiers of research.

You’ll enjoy its innovative technologies and easy-to-use features. Family Tree Builder is FREE and you can use it to build a tree of up to 100,000 individuals on your computer. This is not an imposed size limit, but rather a technical limitation, but if you have a larger tree, you can use our new version that’s in beta. Family Tree Builder is also available for Mac through the Family Tree Builder Mac Extension. Former FTM users: after installing Family Tree Builder, we recommend that you sync your family tree with your MyHeritage family site.

You’ll get many benefits such as enhanced Smart Matches and Record Matches, ability to view and edit your tree using our free mobile apps, robust online backup of your tree data, and more. If you choose to sync, we will be happy to gift you with unlimited tree size capacity on your online family site, which is normally limited to 250 individuals on a free account. Simply email our support team at to ask for this free upgrade.

Feel free to email us if you have any questions regarding the transfer of your data to Family Tree Builder. To proceed, export your current family tree from FTM or Ancestry® into a GEDCOM file, download and install Family Tree Builder using the links above, import your GEDCOM into Family Tree Builder, and let the good times roll. For assistance on how to export your current tree as a GEDCOM file from another genealogy software or website,. Family Tree Builder 7.0 features full tree syncing, Smart Matches and Record Matches, photo tools, charts, maps, consistency checks and much more. In early 2016, we will release Family Tree Builder 8.0, which we have been developing for the past two years. Some of our power users are currently testing it in beta, and are enthusiastic about the new version’s improvements. We’ve invested significant resources to rewrite the program’s internals in order to support very large family trees (up to 500,000 individuals), with faster performance. You can about the features of Family Tree Builder 7.0 or watch below.

Well, I don’t have a blog and am not supported in any way by MyHeritage. That said, I concur – this is an offer very much worth looking into. As of last year they’re the providers of family tree management for 23andme, and the deal they’re offering to Ancestry people is vastly better as far as free tree size is concerned. 23andme folk only got the 250 size.

I don’t know if they intend to get into the business of doing any kind of DNA matching along with their “Smart Search” functionality, but I’ve asked the question, and we’ll see what the support rep comes back with. Hi Kenneth, According to a comparison that Dick posted yesterday, My Heritage Family Tree Builder will import FTM files prior to version 2914. I tried it by exporting my 2014 file into a 2010 file, yet when I tried to import it into FTB, it only transferred 380 out of 1800. I have FTM 2009 & 2012 that I think I’m going to reload I’ll use the 2012 to open the 2010 file and then close. If it that works, I’ll try importing the file written by FTM 2012, If that doesn’t work, I’ll give the 2009 a try. I did import the FTM GEDCOM but, as expected, most of my notes were lost. I maintain a separate family website using The Next Generation product that I export to from FTM.

FTM 2014 will not work, but if I am export the FTM 2014 ged to FTM 2012 and then export the FTM 2012 ged to TNG, with the help of a TNG utility I can make it work. Translated = Ancestry has never been interested in helping ease the transfer of MY data from their cloud to a separate product that is a legitimate use that they do not provide (a family-based standalone website). As is typicall with gedcom, I also have to manually transfer the new media files from FTM 2012 to TNG. I am very interested in the My Heritage offer, but the initial change will not be pleasant (e.g. Copying over medial files and likely re-entering manually comments and notes, etc.). Thank you to Dick Eastman for his insight on this matter Like. —>So far, after repeated trys to begin using Myheritagefamilytreebuilder 8.0 i keep coming up with Vimeo, a pay-for program You have something wrong in your computer.

Try it from a different computer. I bet you will get different results.

Family Tree Builder is a 100% free program available from MyHeritage. There is no charge.

If you want to use the option to sync with MyHeritage.com and if you have a large genealogy database, you may have to eventually pay for a MyHeritage.com subscription. However, there is never a charge for Family Tree Builder and there is no requirement to ever sync with MyHeritage.com. Thousands of people use Family Tree Builder without syncing and they never pay a dime for anything. Also, Family Tree Builder and MyHeritage are not associated in any way with Vimeo, a different company.

Yesterday my computer crashed when I was using FTM. I have more than 20 years of info saved on FTM and cannot access anything. I brought my computer to be serviced and the tech ran all the tests and told me nothing is wrong no virus or any other issue. I hooked it back up and everything worked fine except FTM program crashed – I tried to export it to Legacy but Legacy crashed. I scanned FTM with my antivirus and it was clean.

(Thank God I backed it up with Carbonite) Is the program inaccessible now? Or is the problem with my computer only? Storing all your data (including notes, document, images, etc) in FTB+MyHeritage.com is no different than using FTM+Ancestry.com: vendor lock-in which holds your information and untold thousands of hours of labor hostage to their whim. Store your data in a program that uses a format that will be accessible in 5, 10, 15, 50 years from now.

Gramps and Legacy Family Tree are two programs I know of which do so. There may be more. (GEDCOM doesn’t count, since too many programs & web sites don’t export everything into ged files, and also it doesn’t store media.) Liked. —>vendor lock-in which holds your information and untold thousands of hours of labor hostage to their whim Can you tell me why you think your data is held “hostage?” I am very familiar with both MyHeritage and Family Tree Builder and have never heard anyone claim that the data is held hostage. If it is your data, you can download your own data at any time so that you always have a copy of the latest version. You can also delete your data at any time from MyHeritage.com’s web servers.

See for details. MyHeritage has a very strong policy concerning ownership of the data uploaded to the site. MyHeritage claims to own the software, the web site, and things like that, the same as all other web sites.

However, MyHeritage also claims that data any uploaded by a user ALWAYS belongs to that user, not to MyHeritage. The user is always free to add, modify, download, or delete the user-contributed information at any time.

That doesn’t sound like a hostage situation to me. MyHeritage also will not sell your data on CDs or any other media. It will only publish your data online and then only if you explicitly give permission for that by making your information public. If you keep your information private, nobody else can see it unless you give permission to view it. I think I have the “best of both worlds” by using both Ancestry and MyHeritage. I will not miss Family Tree Maker which I paid a fee to own, but when I want to work offline I have access to Family Tree Builder which does not cost extra.

There are features of each of them which I like and those which I like less, but when I was seriously looking for another option MyHeritage offered me the opportunity for free to try another alternative. You may decide to switch from Ancestry, or you might do as I have done and use both. You may end up with two online trees, but to me that is just another way to have a backup while connecting with other family members who have chosen to use MyHeritage rather than Ancestry or vice versa. I’m sure with both companies changes will occur–some good while others are not so good–but the end objective with either of these, or any other company, is to offer you a product from which they will make money and will help you to achieve your goal of building a family tree. Marilyn- In a perfect world, I would love to have all of the major cloud-based sites kept current with my family research results.

Unfortunately, I do not have the time required to accomplish such a feat. The cloud-based sites have no interest in releasing API information that would allow for seamless transfer of data between different vendors (e.g. Ancestry and MyHeritage).

And so, we are left with utilizing Gedcom transfer (along with the shortcomings inherent in that process) and/or entering the data separately into each site. Rightly or wrongly, I will settle on one vendor. I have been with Ancestry.com, largely because of the benefits of FTM providing a syncable desktop link. That benefit appears to be going away, and contrary to what they say, I do not expect Ancestry.com to allow an outside software vendor to have the full access necessary to develop a substitute product for FTM. That is a common warning from the Macintosh OS X operating system. The following is an answer from the Apple tech Support page at In the Finder, locate the app you want to open.

Don’t use Launchpad to do this. Launchpad doesn’t allow you to access the shortcut menu. Press the Control key (and hold it down), then click the app icon. Choose Open from the shortcut menu. The app is saved as an exception to your security settings, and you will be able to open it in the future by double-clicking it, just like any registered app. Can you tell me how a MacavoGold membership relates to BillionGraves and Findmypast.

Over the past year I received word they had merged and were providing free access to all (at least that is what I thought it said). Do I access all three through one site. Are the three connected or not? My recent attempt to use Findmypast was far from free.

With this forced “off-line change in software programs” that has become mandatory now that reliability of any tech support by FTM will be a reality, I am attempting to clean up and access my strongest options for further research. I hate change (as many of us do when we truly don’t comprehend the bigger technical picture).

My MocavoGold, AncestryWorld, and Findagrave and Dick Eastman Blogs and Newsletters were a match that met all of my needs (except for adequate English translations of Swedish Arkivdigital.com items). I was blissfully happy.

Now the FTM debacle has thrown me completely off course. Until I get past this overwhelmed period, I can’t seem to move forward but need to make a decision prior to my 01-01 renewals on all. Can you help me sort through just these items mentioned with your greater knowledge and thoughts that come to mind. I need to get past the insecure feeling that I am on my own. I will appreciate any input. Billion Graves was not merged with anyone else.

It is still an independent company. It does have partnerships with several other organizations, however, including FindMyPast, FamilySearch, MyHeritage, Tributes.com, and probably some others I cannot remember right now. Mocavo was acquired by FindMyPast about a year and a half ago.

I wrote about that at —>Do I access all three through one site. They are operated as three separate services, even though two of them are owned by the same company. Each one has its own, separate web site Like.

I use FTM as my primary database, but as I have tested at 23andme, I now have a non-interactive tree at MyHeritage.com. I took one of the offers for a reduced subscription fee that included both unlimited family sites and the data subscription since then. I’d sure love to be able to try out this new offer, but don’t know that it would work with my existing tree and existing subscription. So far I haven’t been very impressed with the MyHeritage data subscription that I currently have because I haven’t yet found a way to truly examine the records mentioned as possible matches. For example, when it suggests a newspaper article from NewspaperArchive, you really can’t see enough of the text to truly know what you’re looking. Whenever it suggests an article, I then go directly to NewspaperArchive.com in order to be able to actually read the article in question. And the Smart Matches don’t do me much good, because they are only to trees that other people have built, without a way to look at the other tree in general without merging the person in question.

Maybe I’m missing something, but for those reasons, MyHeritage as a data provider doesn’t even come close to what Ancestry provides to me now. I’m also not thrilled about how a newly imported tree displays with default settings.

I can’t stand looking at the names of married women as showing the married surname with (born maiden surname) in parentheses. I managed to find the setting to correct that, but I’m guessing most people don’t even bother trying to change it, as most other trees display this way, which looks so incredibly odd to me.

If I were to try this offer, I doubt it would be my primary means of maintaining data for the above reasons. —>Will all this transfer seamlessly from my FTM software to the My Heritage Family Tree Builder software Probably not. It also will not transfer properly to any other web site or genealogy program. The problem is in GEDCOM specifications, written years before the addition of photographs and other images to genealogy programs became common. GEDCOM is very old fashioned. To be blunt, I hate GEDCOM. However, there is nothing else available in common use.

There have been several better methods of transferring genealogy data that have been invented in later years. GenBridge was one that worked well but there were others as well. The problem is that none of them ever became popular. Both the originating service or program AND the receiving service or program must support a standard before it can be used.

The only standard in common use is GEDCOM, complete with all its weaknesses and drawbacks. Family Tree Maker only supports GEDCOM export. The same is true for most other genealogy products. I downloaded the software from MyHeritage and uploaded my GEDCOM to it. Is there any place to put notes or biographies, sources? I don’t see anything.

Do you get this ability if you upgrade? Also, there is no explanation on how to get this free site they are offering. If I “synch” my tree in their software to a site on MyHeritage, it seems like it will just give me one of those 250 people free sites.

Nothing about this offering is anywhere on their site. I have sent an e-mail requesting information on how to do this; but, so far have only gotten a canned answer back saying they will contact me later.

Hurry up and wait, I guess. Dick, I have FTM linked to Ancestry.com and I also have FTB with an old version of my 2 gedcoms in it, and I have an old free online tree on MyHeritage. MyHeritage says: “If you choose to sync, we will be happy to gift you with unlimited tree size capacity on your online family site, which is normally limited to 250 individuals on a free account. Simply email our support team at — to ask for this free upgrade.” My Question 1 – If I do this, will my supporting documents from Ancestry be linked? If not, is there a way to do that? My Question 2 – If I do this, will it break my current link to Ancestry or can they both stay linked and sync’d until FTM dies?

My Question 3 – If I import my newest versions of my two gedcoms to FTB, what happens to the old versions of the same two gedcoms I already have in FTB? —>If I do this, will my supporting documents from Ancestry be linked? If not, is there a way to do that? I assume you are going to use GEDCOM to move the information from Family Tree Maker to Family Tree Builder. If so, the documents probably will not be moved.

That is a limitation in GEDCOM. —>If I do this, will it break my current link to Ancestry or can they both stay linked and sync’d until FTM dies?

I am not an expert on Family Tee Maker. I suspect someone else can answer that question better than I can. Can someone else jump in here? —>If I import my newest versions of my two gedcoms to FTB, what happens to the old versions of the same two gedcoms I already have in FTB?

Your data will be merged. That is, if you have two records of a person, such as one in the old GEDCOM and one in the new GEDCOM, that person’s data from two records will be combined into one. You probably should read the information at first before importing anything new. NateS, in reply to FTM GEDCOM and Tree Sync, as I understand it and have done it: 1) If you have an online Tree up in the Ancestry cloud, you can always download a copy of the tree extracted as a GEDCOM – but the GEDCOM will NOT include the photos, documents, record images, and media files. 2) The only way right now to get the media automatically is to make sure your current version of FTM has recently “synced” using TreeSync.

Then all of the media is in your offline FTM file on your computer (note: a few things do not come down during TreeSync, for example, online comments, military pages, DNA results, any photo tags done online) 3) You will be able to Sync your tree for one more year, until the last day of 2016. But NOT after that – Ancestry will NOT sync after that, according to their announcement. But you can still use FTM after that, but without the Sync function.

The Ancestry Product VP explained that beginning the first day of 2017, users will have to download each photo, document, record image or other media one by one, by hand from the website. Once downloaded, everyone will have to save it in folders themselves and manually attach each record image or item of media to a person in their offline FTM tree (or other geneaology program one chooses to use). 4) Ancestry will ensure that Sync and FTM works for one more year, offering update patches if needed to fix any bugs or keep up with Microsoft operating system upgrades, etc. But not after the end of 2016 – support will stop on the first day in 2017, as will the Sync function. Then everyone will be able to continue to use their FTM (except for the Sync function) for as long as it remains functional in the face of computer operating system upgrades – but of course now all aspects of convenience and time saving are gone, and one has to manually make all changes to their tree (if doing research and attaching records) – eventually some Windows operating system upgrade will not be compatible, and some feature in FTM will not work properly.

This will continue over time until an upgrade more or less makes FTM unusable. Or if your computer dies (even during 2016), you may not be able to re-install your FTM on a new computer. Could be months or FTM might run ok for years – no one can predict what will break it. 5) Whatever is in your FTM file can be exported as a copy either as a GEDCOM (with some but not all of the information) or as an.FTM file (which has all the info).

Would be a fine thing if someone could write a utilily that would read the.FTM file and import everything to the new genealogy program one chooses to use, including photos, records, documents and notes, etc. This may be problematic because Ancestry may not make public all the data format and structures, and companies may not have an incentive to spend money for the effort. In the feedback on the Ancestry blog to the management, Ancestry FTM users have asked the management to either make their interface open source so computer programmers could create a free utility, or allow the alternative software vendors access to be able to import directly.

One can only remain skeptical that Ancestry will give its competitors access, especially the user generated media – but they did say they are looking into it and talking to potential vendors who would do this, thus not leaving everyone high and dry, and everyone should “stay tuned”. But no one at this point has any confidence in what Ancestry says – they have breached the bond of trust with their most dedicated customer users, and observing their behaviour in a dozen other similar situations of companies and products they have bought then abruptly shut down, one can’t count on any good solution emerging that might turn a major disaster for longtime genealogists and dedicated family historians with hundreds upon hundreds of hours invested into a mere heavy burden and time-consuming duplicate efforts. Pat, I started with the Basic at MyHeritage, tried it out until got to that limit and then went to the Premium. Both I like and they helped me add greatly thru the Smart Matches to my immediate one county family here in VA I have a huge database on the rest of my America Surname family, which is much too large to import to MyHeritage. Too much typing as IT is not in the Gedcom form.

The only thing I “dislike” abt. Their site is that they have not and will not? Apparently develop and make available a Pedigree Tree form for their customers. And that would be the major REASON as to why I would not put, even if it was, a Gedcom file on their site The horz.

“thing” they now have and customers use, would be and IS, just too much of a burden to use if one has thousands, and thousands of names!!!! I’m afraid you misunderstand my comment. I do use Ancestry.com – for research only. I use Roots Magic for my family tree so that I have a hard drive copy which only I can control (fort this reason, I do not sync anything with MyH). I also subscribe to MyHeritage.com – for both research and for maintaining a public on-line tree.

My question is simply is MyHeritage offering FTM owners free access, indefinitely, to all that I am paying for on MyHeritage’s website? If so, why should I continue to pay them anything? I just think that MyHeritage should clarify it’s offer so that it’s long-time subscribers don’t feel abused and so that Ancestry/FTM owners don’t misunderstand what they’re being offered. —>How do you compare Heritagemakers with Legacy? I am not familiar with the term “Heritagemakers.” I am guessing you might be talking about MyHeritage.

If so, the programs/services are very different from each other. MyHeritage.com is a web site but the company also offers apps for Android and for Apple iOS (iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch), as well as a free-standing genealogy program for Windows and Macintosh called Family Tree Builder. Legacy Family Tree is a free-standing genealogy program for Windows. There is no Macintosh version and there is no web-based service available with Legacy Family Tree.

Family Tree Builder for Windows and for macintosh is available in one version: FREE. Legacy Family Tree is available in two versions: FREE and the $29.95 Deluxe Version (on sale right now for $19.95). Both Family Tree Builder and Legacy Family Tree are very good programs, in my opinion, but have a very different “look and feel” from each other. There is more to legacy then what you wrote, the basic version is free, the deluxe is $29.95 for online download with out manuals or a program disk, if you want manuals and program disk it is 39.95, it for those experienced in ftm or any of the other genealogy programs the tutorials that come with the 29.95 should be enough. I am a former ftm user now using legacy and a past officer of the Clark County Washington Genealogy Society and many of use Legacy and we have a support group for Legacy. >Kenneth Powell.

Thank you for your very detailed response, information and instructions. I intend to print it out and study it carefully. I had no idea this process was going to be this complex, but I appreciate knowing it in time. Prior to seeing your response, I downloaded my 2 current gedcoms from Ancestry.com and imported them into FTB, but if I understand you correctly, I would get more complete results if I instead do an update sync between Ancestry and FTM and then export an.FTM file from FTM but then what do I do with the.FTM file? Can I import the.FTM file into FTB and then upload/sync it to MyHeritage? I’m not sure that I get the last part so as to include my photos and pdf.s etc.

So as to replicate what I now have in Ancestry.com. Best wishes, Nate Like.

That is NOT correct if you have 250 people or fewer in your database OR if you have thousands of individuals in your family tree and have taken advantage of the recent free offer for UNLIMITED tree size capacity. MyHeritage.com has three levels of service: FREE, Premium, and Premium Plus. The free service allows you to sync up to 250 people in your database at no charge. If you have more people than 250 people in your database, you will then need to pay for either the Premium or Premium Plus service. Of course, that limitation applies ONLY to anyone who does not take advantage of the FREE offer for an Unlimited Size Family Site as described in the announcement at As stated in the announcement, “If you choose to sync, we will be happy to gift you with UNLIMITED tree size capacity on your online family site, which is normally limited to 250 individuals on a free account.

Simply email our support team at to ask for this free upgrade.” Like. The new offer allows for FREE unlimited size family trees. As stated in the announcement: “If you choose to sync, we will be happy to gift you with unlimited tree size capacity on your online family site, which is normally limited to 250 individuals on a free account. Simply email our support team at to ask for this free upgrade.” I don’t know if this applies to you or not but one of the things I have learned in the past few days is that some people think the upgrade to unlimited number of people is automatic without asking for it. They try to transfer their data and then receive an error message simply because they never sent an email asking for the free upgrade. I have used Wikitree for many, many years now, pretty much since they started the site.

And yes they do offer the DNA I love that it is free to use with no limits. I love it’s customizable privacy settings for any person I add. I love the interaction you can have with other users – the help they give is amazing. I love the fact that they have mentors that you can contact for help or advice.

I exported my ged file and tried to upload it to the new free offer above. It did NOT copy over the photos from my file and then I kept getting the sales pitch offers – upgrade to sync the matches it finds, get premium for more options. Free should be free, not sales pitches.

For all of Ancestry’s faults, one thing I do say in it’s favor is that here in every library in Maine(not sure about other states), the full database of the Ancetry.com site is available FREE in the library via Proquest. You can bring your own computer/laptop to the library, research and save all info you find right to your own computer. There is NO charge for that. I don’t know of any other company that offers that service. So I think I will stick with my Wikitree.com and it’s amazing amount of options and Ancestry.com from the library. —>I exported an.ftmb file from FTM to include those extras.

Now how do I get that file, including those extras, into MyHeritage and Family Tree Builder/Mac? In fact, you won’t get those files into any program other than Family Tree Maker. You need to export a GEDCOM file, not an.ftmb file. GECOM is the univeral, although imperfect, method of transferring genealogy data between different computer programs. Quoting from MyHeritage’s announcement at: “To proceed, export your current family tree from FTM or Ancestry® into a GEDCOM file” Like.

Dick, I had in fact already done the GEDCOM download from Ancestry/upload to MyHeritage step, but I understood Kenneth Powell to say above at December 12, 2015 at 11:16 pm that: “1) but the GEDCOM will NOT include the photos, documents, record images, and media files. 2) The only way right now to get the media automatically is to make sure your current version of FTM has recently “synced” using TreeSync. Then all of the media is in your offline FTM file on your computer (note: a few things do not come down during TreeSync, for example, online comments, military pages, DNA results, any photo tags done online)5) Whatever is in your FTM file can be exported as a copy either as a GEDCOM (with some but not all of the information) or as an.FTM file (which has all the info). Would be a fine thing if someone could write a utilily that would read the.FTM file and import everything to the new genealogy program one chooses to use, including photos, records, documents and notes, etc.” Hence, my hopeful inquiry to MyHeritage Support as to whether they may have come up with a method to include the “photos, records, documents and notes, etc.” which Kenneth Powell said would be omitted.

(Although I have found that 14 pdf.s which I had previously uploaded to my Ancestry.com tree did automatically upload to MyHeritage inside the gedcom with nothing special done on my part.) Nate Like. Well, I have sorta made the leap by taking advantage of myHeritage’s offer by buying a Premium Plus Membership for half price for the first year, enabling me to act on their many smart matches, which has taken me a few hours, but I think I am going to hedge my bet by renewing my Ancestry.com membership for at least another six months, because I am having a bit of trouble adjusting to a number of differences, e.g. The rather cartoonish pink and pastel blue interface vs the professional look I am used to in Anc.; the fact that every time I try to slide the tree around with my cursor it instead seems to go into extreme zoom mode; the fact that search fields do not autofill after selecting or typing the person’s name and instead each search field has to be filled individually, e.g. Birth and death dates and localities, etc. Which slows me down a lot; the fact that adding new details and/or persons from newly found data seems less intuitive etc.; the fact that I have not yet found a way to perfectly merge two different versions of the same gedcom updated on different dates, due to the cautions and caveats express at the Help Center, etc.

Maybe there are options to change the look and feel and mouse functions lurking somewhere in the website and/or in a manual, and certainly it is up to me to take the time to learn more. But otherwise, I will have to weigh the additionally promised algorithms and record resources of MyHeritage against the look and functionality I like of Ancestry. And I may have to duplicate my expense for at least several months or more to arrive at a comfort level in my decision.

Best wishes to all for a Happy & Healthy New Year, Nate Like. After some e-mail exchanges for clarification, my gedcom exports from FTM have been successfully migrated to Family Tree Builder and sync’d with the offered unlimited family tree space on MyHeritage’s website. So, full marks to MyHeritage so far. As Nate commented, there will be a learning curve. However, I think it will be worthwhile, being really, really unwilling to relinquish the facility of a desktop program synchronised with a mobile tree in a cloud. In the first instance, I shall be interested to see how many e-mails I receive from MyHeritage. I won’t take out a subscription just yet, no matter how tempting those “matches” look.

I note that MyHeritage anticipates an upgrade to FTB next year; also their partnerships with other software companies, including Family Historian, which is a significant player in the UK. But, of course, if actively researching for records, one probably still needs the subscription to Ancestry. I looked into Family Tree Builder as a replacement for FTM. I like the program a lot, and if I was starting a tree from scratch I might well use it, but doing a Gedcom from FTM to Family Tree Builder was *horrific*. Although my media remain linked to individuals, ALL the media links to source citations were lost. I can’t even see that Family Tree Builder allows media linked to citations at all, which is mad – I want the scan of a census page attached to the citation itself, not individually and repetitively attached to every fact that citation references.

ALL my ‘residence’ facts were lost and appeared piecemeal in the ‘Contacts’ fields, but mostly just disappeared. Other bits and pieces seem to have gone missing too, so I’m afraid I just don’t trust FTB as a destination for a Gedcom import.

After using Ancestry.com for years and proceeding at my own pace, I have purchased and am trying out myHeritage but am frankly swamped and overwhelmed by the constant barrage of “Smart Match” emails. They have caused me so much confusion that I can’t even keep up with how I am related to all these people. At first, I spent hours trying to read and check the minute detail they present in support of each so-called smart match but now I find there are not enough hours in the day frankly to do that, and so I have been relying on their claims of a smart match, and thus my family tree has been ballooning on myHeritage to the extent that I am considering not renewing myHeritage and just going back to Ancestry.com which allows me to proceed at my own pace and set my own priorities.

Following the last, we’ve seen your outpouring of comments, questions and the concerns you have raised. I’ve read through many of your comments personally, and I want you to know that we truly value you as customers and your feedback. Here are three key things I’d like to re-assure you of after reading through your comments: • We are fully committed to supporting Family Tree Maker through at least the end of 2016 with all available support from member services, including technical issues, product issues, updates and attention to the product. You will be able to use the software, exactly as you do now, including TreeSync, for at least the next year. • We are exploring possible relationships with other desktop software solutions that would make it possible for their products to integrate with Ancestry. • We are exploring options to bring more reports and related functionality from Family Tree Maker into the online service. Stay tuned for updates on this over the coming year.

We’ve put together an FAQ to address many of the other questions you’ve raised. Our member services team is also available for further questions.

What happens to Family Tree Maker at the end of next year? We are committed to helping our users through this transition. Towards the end of 2016, we will assess our progress toward a smooth transition for our customers and review our support commitment at that time. After January 1, 2017, features that require connectivity to Ancestry, such as TreeSync, uploading and downloading trees and media, and Web Search, may no longer be supported. Most Family Tree Maker features are designed to work offline, and should continue to function unless a change on your computer, such as an operating system update, causes the functionality to break. Will features such as charts, reporting and publishing be made available on Ancestry?

We are continuously exploring new options to make the experience better for all users and currently we’re looking into ways to bring desired features from Family Tree Maker into the online experience – such as report functionality or the ability to replace one instance of a change throughout your entire family tree. Will third party providers be able to integrate with Ancestry family trees? We are exploring possible relationships with other desktop software solutions that would make it possible for their products to integrate with Ancestry API. What happens to the family tree I’ve created using Family Tree Maker? Will it continue to be accessible?

You will continue to be able to access your data through the desktop software beyond Jan. 1, 2017, however over time there will be a gradual degradation of features. You can always export your tree and save it. When will you stop selling Family Tree Maker software? We will stop selling the desktop software on December 31, 2015, however we will continue to fully support Family Tree Maker at least one full year until January 1, 2017.

Until January 1, 2017, you will be able to continue to use the product and its full functionality, as you do today. Which versions of Family Tree Maker will Ancestry continue to support? Ancestry will continue to support all versions of Family Tree Maker at their current functionality until January 1, 2017. Will I be able to download my full tree? You can continue to download trees as a GEDCOM file. Users can also download and save historical records and media attached to individuals in their family trees.

Is Ancestry looking to sell Family Tree Maker, as you did with MyCanvas? Presently there are no plans to sell Family Tree Maker software. ============= UPDATE: On February 2nd we announced two new agreements that provide choices to preserve your work in ways that matter to you: (1) Software MacKiev is acquiring the Family Tree Maker software line as publisher for both Mac and Windows versions.

This new agreement means you will receive software updates and new versions from Software MacKiev, and have the ability to purchase new versions of Family Tree Maker from Software MacKiev as they are released. (2) We have made an agreement with RootsMagic to connect Ancestry with the RootsMagic software by the end of 2016. With this new relationship, RootsMagic can serve as your desktop family tree software, while having access to Ancestry hints, Ancestry searches, and the ability to save your tree on Ancestry. You can read the whole announcement We ask for your patience as Ancestry’s product team works with Software MacKiev and RootsMagic. As soon as we have an update, we will make another announcement.

For now, just know these options are coming and will be in place before the end of the year to ensure you do not have a break in tree syncing and preserving the work you have already done. Kendall Hulet has served as our Senior Vice President of Product Management at Ancestry since March 2015. He joined the Company in 2003 has held a variety of roles in the product organization including Director of International Product Management and most recently Vice President of Product Management for AncestryDNA. During his tenure, he was deeply involved in some of the most popular innovations at Ancestry, including the “Shaky Leaf” hinting system that has delivered over five billion discoveries; the Ancestry Family Tree system that has led to the creation of over 70 million family trees containing six billion ancestors; and the creation of the award winning Ancestry mobile app, which has been downloaded more than 12 million times. 1,515 Comments • Mike.

Please don’t do this! I don’t think you understand that many of your Family Tree Maker customers are older and not as proficient at using newer technology. I, for one, do not trust “the cloud”.

You are destroying a wonderful product, that many of us have used for many years, and we are fearful that all of our hard work and research will be lost. Please reconsider this decision.

You are fixing something that isn’t broke! I think you will find most of your customers are very concerned and upset about this. Please listen to us! This is a very bad idea. Many people, myself included, use Family Tree Maker as an off-line backup. In addition, FTM has many features that you have never made available in the web version.

Nothing you have said in the this or the earlier article in any way convinces me that you actually have any intention addressing the issues that we are raising. If you had, you would have already done so. Add me to the list of those who will probably be severing their relationship with Ancestry. Now just how does one nuke their data files?

FYI, I was using FTM before there was an Ancestry.com. I switched over to RootsMagic last night. They’re offering a discounted rate to refugees from ancestry.com. To my surprise, when I uploaded my gedcom file into RootsMagic, all of my photos, sources and notes were uploaded as well.

I hope others who try this have the same effortless experience. From what I can tell, the only drawback of RM7 as compared to FTM seems to be the Windows 98-style look of RM7. I’m deleting my trees from ancestry.com so they won’t be able to profit from my decades of original research by making my information available to their subscribers. I’m still at a loss to understand how ancestry.com “truly values” its customers. At least now I no longer am one of them.

I posted a brief comment in response to your blog yesterday and more detailed comments on your FB page. As I just posted on your FB page a few minutes ago, I am not willing to wait until January 1, 2017, to get satisfactory answers to my concerns. My current World Deluxe membership is paid through February 20, 2016. If I do not have satisfactory answers by that date, I will be cancelling not only my Ancestry subscription but also my separate Fold3 subscription. Frankly, I suspect that your January 1, 2017, support pledge is just a tactic to try to squeeze a full year of revenue out of us while you plan to do nothing of substance to satisfy our concerns.

Since it is clear that it is your strategy to force us to work through the “cloud” instead of having our master data on our own hard drives, I am particularly skeptical that you will satisfactorily respond to one of my key concerns: My husband is Filipino, and when I am with him in the Philippines, I am trying to expand my research on his family’s genealogy. Internet service there is spotty and expensive, especially outside of Manila. That means relying on the cloud for access to my data simply is not an option. It is absolutely critical that my master genealogy database be accessible to me directly on my laptop and not limited to any sort of internet connection. The following lead end was posted on the retirement of FTM notice: Kendall Hulet has served as our Senior Vice President of Product Management at Ancestry since March 2015.

He joined the Company in 2003 has held a variety of roles in the product organization including Director of International Product Management and most recently Vice President of Product Management for AncestryDNA. During his tenure, he was deeply involved in some of the most popular innovations at Ancestry, including the “Shaky Leaf” hinting system that has delivered over five billion discoveries; the Ancestry Family Tree system that has led to the creation of over 70 million family trees containing six billion ancestors; and the creation of the award winning Ancestry mobile app, which has been downloaded more than 12 million times. I would like to remind you research took place before Ancestry came along. Many sifted through micro film, records, books, and etc.

We shared among ourselves. So when you talk about the numbers of trees generated as a result of your efforts it appalls me. Yes, your tools helped but much of the work was done, by many, before you offered the tools, and many have since expanded on that work. You should remember we use the tools to organize and make the data meaningful.

Your company does not just hand us the trees or resolve the data. FTM has played a major role in our research and there will be resentment at the thought of losing that tool. IT IS OUR DATA! I agree that what was said in this post is not reassuring and that it’s merely marketing talk and doesn’t say anything more than the first post. Midas Civil 2011 Keygen Crack Serial Generator Downloads. I try to stay current with new developments and have never complained to Ancestry before, but on this issue I will. I don’t want my data held hostage by Ancestry.

I need a backup, it’s not that I’m not willing to embrace technology or the cloud (I’m a graphic/web designer). If Ancestry does not supply another option to syn our trees, then I will be maintaining my tree in my software program and Ancestry will be the biggest loser, having the great family trees on your service has been one of your great selling points for both people maintaining subscription and for DNA testing, and your loyal customers have given you their work at no cost and this is how you repay them. If you take the ease of use away, you won’t have as many trees and when people research on your website, it will be a manual process to save information to their software. I’m well aware of my software options. Serious genealogists (no matter their age) don’t want to give away their data and lose it if they don’t pay the subscription fee to Ancestry. For me it’s not about not wanting change. I thought I was making a good decision last year switching over to FTM and keeping my tree on Ancestry with my backup, but now I know it was a big mistake.

I’ve been with you for many years, and I’m disenchanted to say the least. My interest in researching on your site and budgeting for renewals doesn’t seem to be important any longer. It’s really control and greed. Your customers can make or break your company. You have a lot of good resources but why not work with your customers to make your service better. I’m sure another genealogy software company would be more than happy to supply this service ( both PC and MAC versions), so no excuses. Please just do what’s right by your customers.

Ancestry shouldn’t try to benchmark with Microsoft and Adobe, they have a totally different customer base catering more to the business world. Ancestry’s customers are genealogists who need to be more frugal. I feel like I’m wasting my time by commenting but hoping in the end that Ancestry will realize they are forsaking their customers. But since the decision makers at Ancestry have so little regard for their customers (you could have asked your customers if it was important), I’ve lost trust now and that’s the key component in any relationship. Kendall Hulet’s latest PR smoothing job only confirms his initial statement yesterday. We have until 1st Jan 2017 to continue with FTM with its current functionality. Therefore I will continue to enjoy it up to the renewal date of my subscription in the middle of next year.

This will provide ample time for rival software companies to produce meaningful alternatives and give me the time to assess them before making a choice. I have already uploaded a GED file to Roots Magic 7 and this was 100% successful and although an excellent alternative it does need some improvement before it can compare directly with FTM. I have no doubt Roots Magic and others are reading these posts so come on spruce up your act, work on syncing your PC software with an online tree and you will reap the benefit of thousands of defectors from FTM. Ancestry really don’t get it do they? We want our trees where we have total control over them – on our computers not at your whim in the never never. I note they did not respond to all the criticism over the new look – obviously it was done in the nursery – very pretty but not practical for working genealogists.

I wonder how many trees have been taken down from the website and how many have gone private in the last 24 hours? Unless this disastrous decision is rescinded I will certainly not be renewing my subscription once it expires. Dear Martha Goodwin I moved all my DNA work over to Family Tree DNA. And i can not tell you how happy i am real people helping real people. Groups and forums suited for your surname or General to join if you choose. Real tools you can use to compare DNA with other matches And after many many years with in just a year working with Adoption group there i Found my Biological Grandparents. Just can not say enough good things about them and they can transfer DNA from any company to them at a cost but a small cost.

Hope this helps. The above “reassurance” from Ancestry doesn’t wash.

They are basically just reiterating the original announcement. Despite the fact that over 7000 loyal customers have registered their disapproval on the original blog post, Ancestry just don’t care and are going ahead with their business plan. I have downloaded the trial version of RootsMagic, Family Historian, MyHeritage Family Tree and Legacy 8 and am in the process of investigating which one best suits my needs. One thing for certain – I will be ditching FTM as soon as possible. Ancestry – your actions have not only alienated your income base, but your reputation will be heavily tarnished in the genealogy industry.

Noone will ever trust you again. I wonder how long before the first law suits to try and stop you using the trees people have uploaded in good faith? Did anyone else catch the phrase “You will continue to be able to access your data through the desktop software beyond Jan. 1, 2017, however over time there will be a gradual degradation of features.” Does this mean after Jan 1, 2017 or before? I am getting ready to remove all seven of my trees with over a total of 25,000 people. Because I was one who download your app, but it chokes on my large trees and I have abandoned the app.

Your interface is difficult and if I want to use Ancestry, I will visit my library or go to my local family history center. Many of the records I seek are not online and I still do research the old fashion way, by visiting the source. There certainly seems to be a lot of exploration going on, and not many definite solutions on offer. That gives the impression that this decision was not fully thought out.

I appreciate that a business cannot be run as a democracy, but did no one think of exploring users’ views beforehand? Family Tree Maker and the Ancestry website complement each other really well, and each will be poorer if the integration is discontinued. How ironic, too, that TreeSync now works so well, after a shaky start!

Kendall, you are now advising us of possible solutions to our grievances, when we already have a product (Family Tree Maker) which meets all of our needs and is working most satisfactorily. Your excuse to “retire” FTM due to an apparent declining desktop market just doesn’t cut it I’m afraid. Not everyone uses a tablet or some other similar device. Furthermore, many would argue that Ancestry’s strength, size and appeal, as arguably the best genealogy product on the market, is mainly due because of me and the thousands of others just like me, who have willingly provided your organization with many beautiful old photographs, birth, marriage and death certificates and a myriad of other documentation for the benefit of your organization including it’s members, for us all to share and enjoy. And for this you remove the very tool (FTM) which is of such a great benefit to us, not to mention the appalling manner in which it was advised. Sorry mate but in my opinion you have done irreparable damage to your brand, in what can only be described as a public relations disaster, in my opinion.

Ancestry is going to force me and all its subscribers into New Ancestry in a few days. After eight months of endless promises that functionality, appearance, and readability will be improved, bugs and glitches will be fixed, and that your computer generated Life Story profile narratives won’t reduce us to tears of anger and frustration due to all the errors the program inserts into the narratives, Ancestry blind-sides us with the news that Family Tree Maker and all support for it will be gone January 1, 2017. So now you make the statement above that you’re planning to make improvements to the “online experience” (New Ancestry) to compensate for the loss of FTM when I can’t even yet print out a family group worksheet or do a continue search in New Ancestry. Your statement is nothing more than vague bait to try to get us to subscribe for another year.

In August, when I saw how very slowly any new improvements were being made to New Ancestry, I started printing out records. I downloaded Gedcoms, bought FTM and downloaded my trees.

Yesterday, I synced again and downloaded my updated Gedcoms. Today, I bought RootsMagic and downloaded Legacy. Does this sound like what a satisfied customer would do, or does it sound more like someone who does not believe the vague promises and is ready to bail out? Kendall Hulet and the Ancestry management team sticks to a position that remains a BREACH OF TRUST with Ancestry’s most LOYAL CUSTOMERS who quite frankly with their efforts over decades built up much of the best and most accurate Ancestry.com content. Remains a notable breaking of the brand promise to exactly those most dedicated to the MISSION of family stories and genealogy who have contributed not merely hundreds but thousands of hours, in many cases a life’s work, now creating not merely disappointment, but significant stress and not insignificant efforts disrupting the family researcher, end user and CUSTOMER, who is being insulted and DISRESPECTED, despite claims to the contrary.

What’s this “degradation of features” that will happen to FTM after January, 2017? Did the latest FTM update include provisions to deliberately degrade the features after that date? Under no circumstances will I allow the ancestry site to hold the master copy of my data. Under no circumstances will I use the ancestry.com site as my primary means to update data (it is garbage) 4. Like some others, I have taken advantage of the Roots Magic special FTM pricing and am currently testing it as my new respository of ancestry data.

This so called up-date is an absolute joke & gives no indication that they are listening to over 7000 complaints – all lodged within 24 hours of the initial announcement.I’ve been so entirely happy with Ancestry since joining about 6 years ago that I haven’t botherd to check out any other providers so I was pleased to see a couple of alternatives recommended in the comments above – Root Magic 7 & Family Tree DNA. I’ll be checking both and no doubt others out shortly. My current Ancestry subscription is good to November next year but it seems very unlikely that I will be re-newing. Someone please start up a fb site so that we can all become friends before this blog is taken down.

We can help each other to transition to suitable alternative providers. Hopefully as some have mentioned above those alternative providers will be looking at enhancing their products to replace FTM or better still buy it and provide the service which Ancestry seem intent on taking away from us. Shameful decision and appalling treatment of loyal customers. I really like Family Tree Maker and have used it constantly since version 10. It is not perfect, but I particularly like the customisable reports. I can do without synching to my online trees and I have found to my surprise that my old version 16 works OK with Windows 10. I plan to continue using FTM 16 until it breaks, but I shall make sure that I always have a current GEDCOM backup for each tree so that I can move to an alternative software when I need to.

Now, about my Ancestry subscription – I have paid it for more years than I care to remember, but this seems an ideal time to reconsider. Putting aside loyalty and community since Ancestry seems to have no such concepts, what is left? The databases – good, but not enough fresh useful material to be worth the money. Time to look elsewhere. The search facilities – not as good as they were. It is sometimes impossible to find a record even if you know it is there and put in as much detail as possible. The tree interface – oh dear.

The trees themselves – it was fun making them, it was useful sharing with others, but the good information is overwhelmed with a flood of copies and rubbish. If the serious people remove their trees as they are threatening to do then it will no longer be useful. Do I remove my own trees?

It hardly matters since everything has already been copied, sometimes appropriately, sometimes not. I have until August to decide, so there is plenty of time to look at alternatives.

What should Ancestry do to keep my custom? It’s probably too late now that the idea of leaving is firmly in my head. Do the current owners care whether I renew or not? Of course not. They will have sold by then. I use both the online tree and FTM, in combination they make a great system.

I really value working offline, having a copy of my tree offline and generally using the features of FTM not available on Ancestry. So long as you keep supporting FTM then my intention is to remain with ancestry.com. Nothing you have said so far gives me confidence that you genuinely understand the situation nor will Ancestry reverse the decision. I predict that like so many other subscribers by Jan 2017 I will have been forced to sever my custom with Ancestry and will be using a suitable (if not better) alternative. It will annoy me to go through all that effort, given that I am happy where I am at the moment. I am devastated by this announcement. Had it occurred to Ancestry that not everyone has superfast broadband.

Two of the invitees to my family trees on Ancestry live in rural areas where no one, BT included, are willing to upgrade their service from the old copper-wired telephone cables meaning that their broadband speed is next to useless. So Ancestry’;s assertion that “the Cloud” is used by everyone is absolute nonsense.

More than that, it is probably a smokescreen for achieving cost savings in their organisation. Clearly, Kendall, despite your claim to the contrary, you don’t value our feedback as customers at all. There were over 7,000 complaints within 24 hours of your announcement and they were NOT simply seeking a clarification.

Everyone fully understands your first post and your second post only serves to highten the level of contempt that ancestry has for its customers. What we are seeking is nothing less than a reversal of a ridiculous decision which is a slap in the face for many long term and loyal customers. First let me say that I understand why you are doing what you’re doing with FTM.

But, having said that, I still am not in favor of it and am disappointed. Secondly, you say that one of the reasons for stop selling FTM is “because of declining desktop software market.” I would just like to say that most of us older individuals (many of whom are retirees) and who probably make up a large number of FTM owners, prefer desktop software.

Because of FTM, we can work on our trees without the internet. This is very helpful if our internet is down, we are unable to access the internet, or if Ancestry is down (or not working) for some reason, we can still work on our trees.

This is a great advantage of the desktop software. I for one prefer the desktop software.

Thirdly, I am glad that you plan to support FTM, which is, in my opinion, the best desktop or any family tree software, through at least January 1, 2017 (hopefully longer). Fourthly, I would like to be positive and offer a suggestion that I hope you will seriously consider.

The one thing that I hope you keep for those of us who use FTM is the ability to access the hints (the leaves) for as long as we own and use FTM. This is one of, what I believe, the strongest parts of FTM beside all the report formats (that the internet is not necessary for) that FTM has. Please consider my suggestion/request which will help all of us who use FTM and Ancestry.com. I enjoy using both and one thing I have noticed with the hints is that between the two is that each none might not always give me the same hints and can have some different hints which offer much more help in my research than only being able to use only one of them for hints. This helps me get the best from both and for my trees. Fifth, the data entry in FTM is much easier than that of the Ancestry method and for those of us who, as my mother use to say, are more mature (older) is a great benefit.

Lastly, and alternative for you and for all the FTM users might be to allow another software company the rights to continue FTM and do all the support and be able to have all the benefits that we have now in FTM. This could be the best of both worlds and could really cut down on all the negative and angry blog entries that I read. You do not need all that negativity and angry users. Ancestry has and I hope always will be the best Genealogical Source for Family Tree research there is.

A loyal user. More double speak from the marketing representative. I’m not understanding the total contempt you are showing for your customers who have devoted countless hours and enormous amounts of money to their research. Telling us to wait to see until 2017 is ridiculous as many of us have a huge amount of data we will need to move to another location if we want to save it.

Considering the fact you gave us a 3 week notice before ending the sale of FTM software I would guess no one believes you will resolve our concerns in a timely manner that gives us options. From reading other comments it seems that I am not alone in reconsidering my relationship with Ancestry.com in the future. I don’t care how good it looks on paper, the death of Family Tree Maker is just a horrible decision by Ancestry. FTM was likely the industry leader in genealogical software and you just tossed all that away. As sorry as I am for all the serious Genealogist that use your program, I’m sorry for you and what Ancestry has become.

Even through all your marketing campaigns inviting newcomers to “click the leaf and find your past”, I felt you still gave attention to serious genealogists through the FTM software. Some of us are dedicated to finding our roots and we not only needed, but wanted, Family Tree Maker. I have some serious thinking to do between now and when my membership renews in March. Yesterday I have cancelled my World Explorer ancestry.com subscription even after being offered another 3 months for the price of 1.

When your reassurances materialize I will happily come back. I believe the great (only maybe)advantage of ancestry.com compared to your competitors is the ability to synchronize with FTM.

Kendall, if this was your idea and if you still have a job when this terrible marketing decision is sorted, a small advise on business 101. Know your costumers and bring them solutions not problems.Shame on you, for the time being. This commercial decision echoes Microsoft’s purchase of Money 20** and then scrap it in 2008. I and many hundreds of thousands of others continue to use it every day (it is still the best platform) despite the link to the internet being broken, and a registry ‘tweak’ needed to be made with W10 (found on MS Forums). I suspect that FTM 2014 will continue to run on hundreds of thousands of computers for many years to come. BUT the essential key elements MUST be retained – the ability to Sync and also research using Web Search tab. IF this is assured, then I remain a happy man.

Just cream off 1% of the subscriptions to sustain FTM support to all the loyal and experienced owners. Second thought, I hope Kendall Hulet’s boss is watching all of these comments and considering a new role for Kendall? Kendall, this addendum to your previous post isn’t helping.

What made Ancestry great was the PARTNERSHIP between you and your members. When you discontinue the software, and the sync, you, in effect, cut the link between the two. Ancestry purchased FTM, YOU linked the software to your site, YOU sold it to us as a revolutionary, new, way of researching. YOU proposed this partnership and now it feels like you’re trying to squeeze us out. Our hard work and loyalty are nothing. We depend on the software to download our data. You don’t care that, at this point, there’s no alternative.

“oops, sorry, we gotta cut the dead weight”. How about you “explore” this.given the amount of money I, and thousands (dare I say millions) of us have paid Ancestry over the years, instead of retiring the software, it should be a free download for all subscribers. Hulet, Your recent announcement regarding the decision to retire Family Tree Maker was a bombshell. It caught many of us off guard and feeling betrayed. I was one of those subscribers and users of FTM2014 which I purchased this past summer, directly from Ancestry as a download.

Six months after purchasing your product I learn of your plan to eliminate the product and cease support. Like many others, I have lost all confidence and trust in Ancestry.com. This announcement seems to be nothing more than damage repair. It seems to me you want to clean up the mess you made with your initial announcement but honestly, the damage is done and irreparable.

You can not undo betrayal. My family trees are private and unsearchable but I also intend to also remove my trees from Ancestry’s website in protest over this decision.

Hulet, I seriously doubt this means much to you but I do hope you live to regret your decision. So where are we all going to go, when we’ve taken down our Ancestry trees? I wish I didn’t have to leave, it’s been a pleasure for many years, but now that my careful research has been violated and mutilated by computer-generated misinformation, I just dread what Ancestry will do next. (I’m particularly nervous about my media attachments, now relegated invisibly to a separate tab unless attached to an event, and I fear that Ancestry may ‘disappear’ them in favour of its clip-art computer-imposed historical insights). I’ve enjoyed member connect, which has led to some superb collaboration over the years, and I don’t know where I’ll find that again.

Findmypast has good UK resources, but is its tree functionality any good? Can we share recommendations on what sites to move to? Mr Hulet, reading through your original statement and then the “placating” blog on 9th December, I think your statement of “valuing” your customers and their feedback rings very hollow.

I really do think you have underestimated the value your customers have placed on an excellent piece of software that apps (is there even one available for windows devices?), or indeed the web do not even get near to replicating for convenience and performance. The people using your services and FTM software are in the main driving a passion that takes up huge amounts of their time and to see a company like yours treat such passion so dismissively, answering their comments with such bland statements just makes your situation so much worse. I think you are about to lose an absolutely huge number of members truly a shame but one so easily reversed by a rethink on what looks to be a very, very poor decision. For me and i’m sure for many others, i’ll be looking around at alternative software solutions and a new records provider because your actions are driving me away.

It’s in your hands. I thought the customer was supposed to be king and always right how about listening to them? I am beyond disappointed in this.When I have finished putting my tree on Ancestry, I intended printing it out in book form using the Family tree software. I shall now have to look for a different programmme that lets me do this.

I am also annoyed that you are going to alter the format of the Ancestry programme so we will not have access to the previous version. The pages in this where you put your bits of rubbish picture on are an insult to the work people have done on their trees. You truly belittle them. I shall be glad when my membership expires so I can go elsewhere. As usual very short notice that FTM will no longer be sold after 31 December which you must of known about at least a year ago.

I will reinterate who ever designed the ‘new’ look ancestry needs to go back to design school – grey background pink & blue boxes what was you thinking? Oh perhaps a 5 yr old designed it? Black on white easily seen by anyone no distractions with colours. When you decide in 2017 to no longer support FTM what will happen to those who share and have access to personel trees like invites to FTM? Will there be refunds available to those people whom have purchased FTM as Christmas presents? Mr.Hulet, I would, if I were you, not give us knee-jerk responses to our roar of disappointment by trying to placate the over 7000 comments thus far with such lame updates that they’re embarrassing to read.

Wait it out, think it through. You wrote that you “truly value us as customers” makes me believe that you are indeed worried about losing money when we all walk away from renewing our yearly subscriptions. Just 7000 comments indicates over a million dollar loss should we all walk away and I think Ancestry will lose many millions when all is said and done. Good job, Mr. I think you blew it on this company decision. I find it shocking and ironic that a company who started as a company that built a software to allow users to track their historical and current family history for future generations is now dropping that very service and leaving people out in the cold. It comes across as Ancestry not caring about historical records (their own product line).

While I certainly understand the decision from a financial perspective, I think Ancestry is under estimating where it is leaving people and will leave Ancestry in a couple of decades. I also think they don’t care. It’s all about the annual subscriptions and where they stand financially today. I assume this will go through, but I can assure you, no matter what solution I have to come up with to manage my family history, it will not include Ancestry. If they don’t care about people that have been with them before the existence of annual subscriptions and the cloud, then something else would come along later where they would hurt the small older family member. I also think they are forgetting their longer term market. All these younger people who have entered into these new online subscriptions and can afford them, will someday be retired and will not be able to afford them.

Give it about 10-15 years and this new financial model will likely come crashing down on them. Well, you must be very satisfied with yourselves for taking your difficult decision and communicating it so carefully to your valued customers.

I feel somewhat like a 5 year old child who has just been told that Christmas has been cancelled and that Santa Claus isn’t real. I was intending to respond yesterday but couldn’t find the right words that were printable. Therefore I was for a moment pleased that you had decided to clarify the situation. For clarify please read “pull the wool over our eyes” or “provide marketing mumbo jumbo”. This must rank as the most unpopular corporate decision ever taken.

I can see no comeback from this situation. Some of the earlier responses that I have read do provide a few possible recovery routes that I can investigate, and I can at least thank these people for offering a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. It would seem that Ancestry are not at the tunnel’s end! I have been subscribing to Ancestry for many years and have used FMT for a good while also. It wouls seem highly unlikely that I will be renewing after next April and in the meantime will take whatever steps I can to protect my research and the investment of time and a not inconsderable amount of money.

FTM is not perfect, nor is Ancestry, but together they provide a very acceptable combination for my needs. At the very least I would hope that you will be able to provide the sync facility, even if FMT can no longer be used to conduct searces.

‘We really do appreciate your feedback’. I have been a project and production manager for over twenty years. The fact that almost every answer in this update says that they are still looking into the possibilities of offering some kind of integrated service with third party software should have been thoroughly discussed and planned before ever making this announcement. The fact that they are also still looking into designing and implementing other functionality that they are destroying with the death of FTM is another example of poor project design and implementation.

If only 10% of their customer base decides to delete their trees and cancel their service, it will cost Ancestry over 6.9 million dollars a year and loses them extensive data as customers begin to delete their research. I cannot see how this decision makes them more money.

Trying to justify it by saying we do not know how we will support the million plus Family Tree Maker customers seems fool hearty and just plain stupid. Information update we are not stupid.

We know what we want, we know what we like and even though FTM was not perfect, it was the best the market has to offer at this time. This information is not what we want to hear. Listen to your customers and find a different answer to whatever challenge your company is facing! “We are committed to helping our users through this transition.” Transition to what? You have removed important functionality by ditching the combination of the Ancestry.com and FTM. You are exploring. The options for FTM users should have been in place before you made the decision to discontinue support of FTM.

I have deleted my DNA profile (painful, since I paid for it) and will discontinue my subscription to Ancestry.com when it comes due in 2016. Ancestry.com cannot be trusted. My transition will be to another vendor. I have never purchased Family Tree Maker, however, I do not understand why Ancestry plans to “retire” it. It’s unbelievable the changes Ancestry has made over the last few months. It makes me afraid of what other changes are coming up.

I’m worried about my tree and all the sources and info I have saved. I don’t, for one minute, believe Ancestry “values” their customers. They already have a monopoly on most of the resources out there. Now it appears they are doing whatever they can to make their customers miserable. You’ve been “dumbing down” for a year or more now in an area where it really isn’t a good idea; now you are alienating a huge number of your customers (and probably a lot more would be alienated if there was an announcement on your home page) These will leave taking their data with them and making your product less attractive.

Is this some sort of elaborate and deliberate way of closing the company down? Look how quickly your competitors are targetting your disaffected customers. And, who on Earth do you imagine will be buying FTM from now until the end of December? All this “We are exploring.” should have been sorted before you made the decision or perhaps if it had you wouldn’t have made the decision. I used FTM from the beginning – Long before I ever used Ancestry – Luckily, I always copied and saved info to my computer and did not depend on Ancestry to upload all of their junk into my tree – I spent many hours transcribing info into my tree so that any one who looked could see all names and dates that I was associated to the person – verified with copy and source. So to me FTM is much more important than Ancestry – and the new Ancestry is a rather infantile. I have since deleted my family tree – will use up the rest of my subscription (since you will not give a refund) and then it will be GOOD BYE to you.

Millions of people have built your company to the important status you think you have attained by the hard work THEY have done – But also remember – those same millions of people can also shut you down – I know that I will not let you have total control of my families history while sitting on a cloud. I have used FTM on windows when I started a number of years a go and after becoming a MAC user switched to FTM when It became available.

The software is easy to use when building a tree because of a number of functions which I have not seen on other software. I have looked for thee functions on the online tree and they appear to be missing. That means the withdrawal of FTM is going to make building and checking a tree more difficult. I will therefore be reappraising the various offerings and choosing he best combination of desktop software and cloud services. This is unlikely to be Ancestry as the lack of a desktop and adequate functionality will push it down the list.

For the cost of an Ancestry subscription, the FTM software should be free to members as a benefit. It IS about the money because it is obvious that you have no respect or concern for the customers who have built Ancestry over the years and paid your excessive charges. By scuttling FTM, you are removing a valuable and important tool without having a full replacement plan, features or alternatives in place. I think this is a decision that Ancestry will regret and may ultimately lead to the company’s demise. Good luck with that.

I agree with the comments that we should remove our trees from Ancestry immediately. Without our data, they don’t survive. This is all about money; a change to mirror changes at Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop. Both Microsoft and Adobe discovered that a large segment of their users do not routinely purchase endless upgrades (like some FTM users?). Subsequently, both Microsoft and Adobe end support for Office and Photoshop and convert to a subscription service. Therefore, their cash flow will continue forever.

The Ancestry strategy could collapse if they do not immediately disclose that a conversion to subscription is the real strategy. Because by the comments herein show that smart users are jumping to competing software now, and will be lost to FTM forever before they offer the inevitable FTM service. Both subscription Photoshop and Office caused a firestorm at the start (as FTMs actions have). Now, subscription Photoshop and Office bitterness has mostly subsided and users have resigned themselves to the situation. Again, this is motivated by money (greed) and you will adapt or move on to a more customer friendly alternative. Thanks to fellow FTMers who have shared with me and added to my personal tree. I hope we all somehow continue to share.

Well, seven days ago you got another $389 from me. Spend is wisely because it’s the last you will see from me. I have used FTM since 1998, but I am now looking into Legacy Family Tree software. I have enjoyed the available records at Ancestry, but I was getting data long before you came along.

We genealogists have been and are a “community” that help each other. There is still Rootsweb (which was far better before Ancestry gobbled it up) as well as other online resources. I believe that there is more to this decision than meets the eye. Yes, it is about money, but it is also about control (which leads to more profit). By encouraging the exodus from desktop/laptop data to online/cloud data we will lose control over our own trees many of which have been multiple decades in-the-making. We will be at the mercy of cable/internet companies and other bloodsucking corporations like Ancestry to access our own data.

This latest debacle of greed on your part along with my inherent distrust of large soulless corporations is exactly why I have been so reluctant and judicious in my posting of an online tree. I have always been and will continue to be willing to share data with fellow researchers, but not in an online fashion which is just another source of revenue beyond the aforementioned $389 you just vacuumed from my wallet. And now Ancestry is added to the growing list of companies that were started by passionate people and then overrun by bean-counters who have no grasp of the original mission. In addition to my comment yesterday, I’d like to boil things down since I’m not sure understand the basic issues: 1) We are appalled that you made this decision without having alternatives for FTM in place. Address that issue, and own up to your mistake. It is ridiculous that you are saying that you are only now “exploring” this.

Did you truly not expect that loyal users of FTM would be upset? While I personally don’t want to lose FTM, it worries me more that you did not have answers in place about alternative solutions. It worries me that Ancestry decision-makers did not think ahead. What a bad business plan that is. Now you have forced us to decide, “Should I stick with a company with poor customer business plans??

” 2) Have you noticed that a large amount of serious genealogists who record sources are upset? Remember, that we also help others, and recommend programs to others. You have ignored our reactions and our share of your market and now you are scrambling for a solution. You preach accurate sourcing at your genealogy conferences, and now you are taking away the best tool to do that. Your online tree function is extremely awkward to source correctly.

Notice all the trees that have a census records listed as a source for a birth date of “April 17, 1899.” I cringe when I see that. I also cringe when I see how your online tree merges facts and deletes old facts, often without the customer realizing it. Is your market plan to only keep the groups of people who just copy the mistakes in other people’s trees?

And those who do not source their trees correctly? What is your goal?

3) In addition, it seems that you are also ignoring the groups of people who have poor internet connections, and those who are elderly. Do not forget these people are your customers, too. 4) You really need to read the article at the link someone posted above from the Harvard Business Review (I’m sure you’ve heard of Harvard, right?). I’ll add the link again, but here are a few direct quotes which might wake you up: “errors are inevitableBut dissatisfied customers are not After all, the battle for market share is won not by analyzing demographic trends, ratings points, and other global measures but rather by pleasing customers one at a time It’s tempting to dismiss the occasional problem as petty and complaining customers as cranks butNo business can afford to lose customers, if only because it costs much more to replace a customer than it does to retain one—five times more, most industry experts agree.

Companies that alienate and frustrate their customers will soon have none left to bother them. Those that go out of their way to please customers will soon have many more (Ancestry, notice Roots Web’s market strategy of appealing directly to YOUR Family Tree Maker customers, which you are handing to them on a silver platter.) When the inevitable problems arise, customers are almost always disappointed. (Please note, Ancestry, that the article says it is HOW you react that sets the immediate tone as to whether or not they stay dissatisfied.).Studies we’ve done show that more than half of all efforts to respond to customer complaints actually reinforce negative reactions to a service” (Ancestry are you listening? This is what you are doing now.) Soplease, all of the Ancestry decision-makers truly need to read that article today and LEARN from it. People are angry, and unfortunately (for you) that fact actually gives you very little time to come up with solutions. Days, perhaps.

That’s a fact from Business 101. Because you didn’t do your homework and have answers in place when you made your decision, now you are scrambling and there is no one to blame but yourselves. Againwhat a very poor business decision! If you don’t fix this within the next few days (yes, most likely DAYS), you will lose some of the most loyal customers you have. Just count the # of posts on this issue, and multiply that times four or five (because not everyone posts) to get the number of angry people there probably are. Then notice that the Harvard Business Review says it will cost you five times more to get new customers than to keep the old ones. That’s their number, not mine.

And guess what? Those customers who are dissatisfied tell people, and they tell peopledid you not realize this would happen?

Here is a ink again to that article. It should be the gold standard for your business practices. Starting today! Every day you don’t have solutions, more customers leave. I can’t believe I even have to tell you that. To quote you, Kendall: “I’ve read through many of your comments personally, and I want you to know that we truly value you as customers and your feedback.” Wow, what a rookie mistake to put in print the fact that you have only read a selection of comments.

If you value your customers, you will read ALL of the comments. If you have that many people upset, they all deserve a voice. If someone at Ancestry is keeping and using metrics, perhaps the December numbers regarding how many users cancelled/non-renewed, how many trees were deleted, and how many trees were made private will influence further business decisions. Beginning Dec 15, we are all forced to lose Classic and live with reduced function. That can only accelerate the loss of customers and the opportunity for sharing and collaboration. Ancestry is quickly destroying what, to me, was one of their core selling points – collaboration with others who have been at this much longer than my 6 years.

Based on blog comments, Ancestry is losing the people with the most knowledge. I have been doing genealogy for more than thirty years. I was doing it before there was a FTM or an Ancestry.com. FTM has been an essential part of my research since it’s creation. Additionally I, like so many others, have spent a great deal of money on subscriptions to Ancestry and did not mind because I felt Ancestry looked after their customers. Within the last year I finally decided to upload my family tree to Ancestry.

I see now this was a big mistake. What is even more sad is the amount of money I have spent on the DNA testing and also the amount of money I talked my family into spending for their DNA tests. I will be looking into finding another avenue which is more reliable, after which, I will be removing all my trees and DNA results from Ancestry along with my subscription. I have been an ancestry subscribe and Family Tree Maker user for many, many years. Your decision to phase out FTM is very disappointing There are reports that can be generated that simply cannot be done on the web site, such as producing ahnentafel reports, ancestor and descendant charts and all of the other options in the FTM program.

Although I have been told by one of your telephone representatives that the web site will be “expanded and improved” I will have to be shown. Please keep these features available. I have read Ancestry’s response to the posts of us, your customers, and frankly see nothing but “spin” This appears to be nothing but a profit driven decision. This most assuredly will be lost in the avalanche of mail you will receive but I add my “hear, hear” to all the postings of unbelief that Ancestry would do this!

I have used Family Tree Maker since it began and have been loyal to the software. This doesn’t seem to make sense, at least to the users. Is this all about money?

What software makes the books and other reports? I not only use the software for my personal genealogy but that of LDS pioneer history.

What software are we to use when we are unable to be online? My concern is that the cloud will be taken down somehow and along with it all the data, not just genealogical but everything that we now are saving there. I hope this will be approached at RootsTech in Febuary there will be many, many questions! Terry Latey The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Church History Department Remote Service Missionary Pioneer Research Library Research Librarian Mormon Trail Center at Historic Winter Quarters 3215 State Street Omaha, NE Historical Pioneer Research Group, Inc, Administrator to the Early LDS Database, “Crossroads to the West”, & “Lest They Be Forgotten” Projects. You haven’t mentioned those of us who have only just purchased FTM. I’m a first time buyer and haven’t even figured out how to use my new software yet and feel like there is probably no point in spending my valuable time learning how to as I only bought it for the sync facility. I spent a few weeks in Ireland two years ago, travelling around the Townlands of my ancestors and visiting their graves.

The rural cottages we stayed at had no internet access and I wrote everything down on paper. I’m going back to Ireland in 2017 to continue my research and buying your software was going to make this so much easier, or so I thought.

You can’t possibly think that this is ok. By now a lot has been said about your decision regarding Family Tree Maker. I am disappointed but I realise that in todays world businesses must change to keep at least in line with the competition etc. It is good to hear that FTM will continue to be supported for a while but that’s not the issue for me, I would like to know what your broad plans are beyond 2016/2017 so that customers like me who have a considerable amount of data on FTM software are able to make an informed decision what they do with their info. It seems strange that an organisation like yours will not provide a facility to store, collate update and share the information found by means of their research using the Ancestry site. I assume I am correct in assuming that you won’t be making a tree making facility available. As your communication specifically mentioned Desktop Software is it correct to assume that the App that can be used via IPad will continue in which case the issue of record storage is probably less especially if some enhancements are made to the App.

FTM software will, of course, become obsolete over time as operating systems change. Having charts, reports, saving and printing capabilities on my computer is not just an option for me. It is a necessity.

Accessing these features online (and paying a fee for the privilege) is completely unacceptable. In so many situations today, I am expected to turn over control of my life to companies. Your company will not succeed with my genealogy.

I will continue to use Ancestry as a research tool for as long as I decide to do so, but I will not substitute Ancestry for my software. I represent a large group of users of FTM (and Ancestry) here in the UK. If you haen’t figured it out yet.this is all about forcing people to use the “crap” interface that doesn’t work so that Ancestry can “sell” the information the users provide for free.

(Meaning that Ancestry makes you have a membership to see even the trees that “free” users have created.) And making your tree private doesn’t help.Ancestry still has access to it by virtue of you putting it on their site. The only thing you block is the public from seeing it. (I have had private family photos that only I possess show up in the search even though the tree they were from was private and I was the ONLY one with access to it.) And even if your tree is private, it gets included into things such as the Millenium File and the Family Data Collection. (Which are in NO way records like Ancestry likes to call them!) If your family tree is on their website, it assures that you keep a membership up so that you can see the things you have added to your tree. (Because most people don’t save everything to their computers) If you ever cancel your membership, yes, your tree rremains, but everything in it that is connected to Ancestry will no longer be available for you to view. If you have FTM, sync your trees and remove them! If you don’t, take the time to go in and save each and every record or photo you’ve ever added to you computer.

If you don’t, you will lose them all if you ever cancel your membership! Obviously this is an unwise decision.

What I find interesting is a parallel with another computer debate that has been going on for decades now: Mainframe computers. Many people preached the death of mainframes, but nothing could be further from the truth. Many folks are now migrating their expensive to operate/unreliable applications back to the reliable/dependent/fast mainframes. So this current fashion of phones/tablets/web applications, while it will explore new avenues, will never replace personal ownership of data. Relinquishing control of personal data to some 3rd party is the flaw that Ancestry organization has failed to grasp.

While THEY may have lots of good searchable records available, I consider Ancestry / FTM just tools, and just as I can switch my chainsaw from brand A to B, I can switch my family research tool also. Once you have lost my trust (which you have, along with many others), even paying me to come back won’t work. Even if you continue to support FTM (which I hope you do), and even if you reinstate the “traditional” user interface/experience (which I hope you do), it is TOO late now.

You have started this road to divorce, no turning back now. This announcement simply solidifies the recent bad news. It appears that the best we can do at this point is to get our data out of the Ancestry.com ecosystem and move on- our pleas are falling on deaf, greedy ears. For me, this involves ending my annual World subscription, deleting my online tree and finding another product- so far RootsMagic appears to be the most compatible with the FTM output GEDCOM file. The Web and tablet interfaces are simply not up to the task of being used to enter data- they were good only for occasional viewing of it.

Without the FTM desktop software, I simply have no need for the rest of their offerings. Interestingly, as I was researching alternative software last night, FTM is ranked the number one genealogy software program followed by Legacy and Roots Magic. It remains a mystery why a company would abandon the number one program. I will be trying the #2 and #3 programs over the next few months.

My long-standing subscription expires in May 2016 and I will not be renewing unless Ancestry rescinds this decision. Everyone with a tree on Ancestry needs to make sure that you have each document that is connected to your tree, saved on your own computer before deleting your online tree. For those of you who have purchased FTM recently and now find from this ill considered action that it will soon cease to do what it is advertised to do you should now ask for your money back. If you have purchased from a retailer other than Ancestry, and in the UK there are some; pursue the retailer. They hold the responsibility and I would venture to suggest they will be less than pleased.

Which may result / should result in all the stock they have being returned forthwith. In point of fact it puts them in a some what invidious position as with this decision ( at least in the UK ) that stock now contravenes the Trading Acts as it is no longer fit fror the advertised purpose which means that the Trading Standards authorities could take an interest should a refund be refused. That could create some very interesting scenarios which could well point out to Ancestry how ill considered this action is. Ancestry its time to reconsider or at least put together some sort of reply to all of the posts above, something which as yet, as far as I am aware, you have been unwilling to do ~ if as you say you appreciate feedback ~ then at least have the courtesy to reply to the feedback you have recieved on this and should some respect for your customers who have been good enough to offer it. Dear Blah, Blah, Blah I have used FTM since 2005. Each new version came with its bugs. Always told it will be fixed and improved.

Even FTM 2015 still have bugs and limitations in reports and searching/sorting. Have spent many hours talking with customer service and support on improvements needed over the last few yearsWHAT A WASTE OF MY TIME.NOT one was implemented. Soam I REALLY TO BELIEVE you NOW!!!! You can fool some of the people some of the time but not all the people all the time.

It is time you come to the table and be honest with us all. You will definitely be losing more than you will gain if you don’t. If not, count me out and my data too. Not willing to wait much longer! I’ve retired Ancestry.com!!

It’s official as soon as my subscription runs out. I’ve uploaded RootsMagic7 (feels more like family and not a corporation!) and my DNA results to another site with an awesome data base.

I’ve recommended Ancestry.com to my family and friends in the past. I’ve bought FTM software for myself and updated over the years and purchased it for family members as gifts. The laptop usage is paramount for me and my family. Your new format is for children (just my opinion). Too many of your public trees are junk. The biggest reason I’ve made these decisions is your lack of respect for your client base. I am extremely disappointed with this decision.

I use Ancestry.com to conduct research and I use FTM to input my data. I have over 1200 people entered in my tree – that’s hours and hours of work. Does this mean I will need to reenter all of that data into another program once my FTM in obsolete? I have researched other software and I choose to use FTM because it’s user friendly and there are just some things that I can do on FTM that I can’t do on others. However, this decision will force me to shop around and give my money to another company. I could go on and on about this, but I know that the bottom line (money) is the only thing that is pushing this decision. If Ancestry.com really wanted to keep their customers happy in our quest to research and find our ancestors, then they would do anything they could to help us.

Taking away a very integral part of the process is not it. SHAME ON YOU!!! It is clear from the uncompromising reply that Ancestry are NOT going to reconsider their decision not to continue support for FTM or, importantly, the SYNC interface.

The recent response proves that the decision was made purely on financial grounds without any forethought about opening up the SYNC interface or hiving off FTM to someone who would develop it further. What sort of business decision is that? It is small wonder that subscribers are leaving in droves.

I shall, for one, because I don’t believe that a company with business ethics like that deserve another penny from me. I feel so strongly, I heartily wish Ancestry’s business will collapse. Dear Kendall H – you stepped in it bigtime with this decision. All the “exploring” you now say you will be doing, as a result of the backlash over your decision to kill FTM, should have been done prior to that decision. Your “exploring” is not good enough. FTM was a good program all the better because it was able to sync with the web version of our trees. As others have said, we are often in areas without internet, but we need access to up-to-date tree.

FTM allowed us that. And now you say, no more. I had an old copy of Legacy 7.5 Deluxe on my backup hard drive. I resurrected it last night and downloaded the latest version.

I will learn to use it. The loss to Ancestry in all this?

The goodwill of your long time customers. The benefit of their up-to-date family trees for your “shaky leaves”. Bad, bad decision. You need to rethink, and fast.

The longer you continue on this path of destruction of FTM, the more damage you do to the relationship with your customers who pay your salary. Some misc thoughts on this mess; – I see my previous blog post has been “uncurated”, i.e., removed. – Facebook Ancestry posts ( ) have been more direct.”Hi everyone, when that deadline comes closer we will be providing direction and updates on our blog regarding the Family Tree Maker program. In the meantime, we are taking notice of the feedback our members are providing us and sincerely appreciate you letting us know how you feel this” or this truthful beauty”We are unsure at this time what accessibility will be available to Family Tree Maker after we discontinue supporting it.

Please keep an eye on our blog posts for any future updates.” – The internet is burning up with comments on the FTM retirement situation.a few links: – For a good overview as to how Ancestry got into this mess see Tamaru Jones’ 2014 summary of perceived software issues at Ancestry:. While I recognize the business case for discontinuing FTM, the situation does a serious disservice to those of us who do research via more than just the shaky leaves. The sync feature is a major reason that I bought FTM and I use it constantly. Ancestry folk, I realize you use my online tree and the research I have put into it as a selling point for new customers but Ancestry online doesn’t give me enough features to work with in seriously doing my research and analysis. That’s what FTM helps me do. Reports, syncing with Ancestry to pull down recent research updates etc. Without a continued syncing feature I am more likely to let my online trees languish and keep my real, detailed, updated trees in my old FTM or maybe a different application.

Valued research that currently helps your other customers won’t be kept online. I can’t fathom ONLY having access to the cloud version of Ancestry. For me, FTM offers a highly important advantage over Ancestry online trees: the ability to extensively write notes on lives. I use the Notes section for transcripts of records, for copies of emails from family members, for details on a life gathered over the years, for thoughts.

My notes are an integral part of my research– they are easily available to look at, they assist me in finding mistakes and holes in my work, they provide extensive detail that isn’t available via attached records only. I would never add these notes to a web/cloud-based tree– much of it is private information and thoughts that I wouldn’t trust to be kept private.

I will never keep ALL of my records in the cloud. Too much information that I possess is private and should stay private. For example, on a living person– yes, Ancestry will use the word “Private” for the record as shown online in a public tree. But one simply needs to open the records attached to that person’s life in the public tree to easily access all kinds of information, even their actual name. Please reconsider this decision. I will miss FTM but I have already begun searching for an alternative. What Ancestry doesn’t seem to understand is that nothing less than continuing to sell FTM and not ceasing to support it are the only acceptable answers here.

You would honestly think that after the massive outpouring of complaints Ancestry would be on their hands and knees begging for forgiveness. Hulet tried to make a point and say that he respects his customers.

That is an outright lie. He has no idea the amount of time, money, and dedication so many people have spent on preserving their family history. This get-rich-quick scheme is undermining all of that. Does he not realize that the vast majority of his customers can see right through it? I don’t use the interface with Ancestry.com from FTM so not worried about that.

I worry that the software will not be kept current and may not function under new operating systems. I guess I could keep an old PC with no Internet connection sitting in a corner with the current operating system and a copy of FTM. Here is a hint. Never just link a source document found on Ancestry to your tree. Download to your computer or print the document. I download and do redundant backups.

I have never trusted Ancestry. Ancestry has so much information, but it is sloppily indexed and the search engine is terrible, horrible, There are not enough negative words to describe. What good is the information if you can’t find it? Why should I have to look at 100 hits not even close to the search parameters before finding an exact match.

Why should putting more information into the search parameters result in less relevant information rather than more? Ancestry.com has more problems with its services than discontinuing the support of FTM. Maybe they should spend less money on TV shows and “there’s a leaf” adds and more on the functionality of their website. They are dumbing it down and no serious researchers need apply. I am one of those 12 million downloads mentioned in the announcement. I guess what Ancestry doesn’t see is how many of those downloads are now deleted from devices.

The iPad app was a nearly useless app that is no longer active on any of my devices. So don’t equate downloads to active users. I think what this customer community has realized is that Mr. Hulet is a “Corporate” Product manager and not a “Customer” Product manager. We fully see that he has no sense of supporting the FTM customers.

If he, in any way, thinks the online Ancestry site or the Apps are a replacement, he himself is not a genealogy user. The FTM customer community’s wishes can probably be summed up with the following Request that Mr. Hulet resign or be removed from the Ancestry company. Hulet with a true “Customer” focused VP of Product Mgmt. Reverse the decision to retire FTM and renew the support of FTM to the “Customer” base End the ‘childish’ graphical tweaks to the Ancestry online system and renew an interest in making it a great “search” tool. Barring this course of action by Ancestry, at least my family’s plans will be to Lock all family tree records on Ancestry. Determine replacement program for FTM – already in contact with my state historical society to determine what will be best replacement for FTM.

Move FTM records, data, media, etc to new desktop software. Verify any remaining Ancestry data is included in the new desktop software.

Remove all family data from Ancestry. End regular World membership in Ancestry. May sign up for occasional month use for a quick search. Essentially end my many, many years “Customer” relationship with Ancestry/FTM.

Ancestry doesn’t realize how personal they’ve made this decision. This deals with the historical records of “OUR” families. The many trips to the places our ancestors lived and all the great data we collected to trace the history of those early family members. The near literal stacks of gold stored in FTM to document the many previous generations.

In a way, Mr. Hulet – on behalf of Ancestry – is telling us our families and years of hard work don’t mean a thing to them. And we’re supposed to just blindly follow them ahead with only the broken/unfinished online system? Someone did not think this through. These Ancestry facebook posts are telling: “Hi everyone, when that deadline comes closer we will be providing direction and updates on our blog regarding the Family Tree Maker program.

In the meantime, we are taking notice of the feedback our members are providing us and sincerely appreciate you letting us know how you feel this.” and the best to date. “We are unsure at this time what accessibility will be available to Family Tree Maker after we discontinue supporting it. Please keep an eye on our blog posts for any future updates.”. From Legacy Family Tree: “Per the Family Tree Maker Announcement on Dec. 8, 2015 when Ancestry.com announced they will discontinue their Family Tree Maker software effective Dec.

We know this change is difficult, yet know that you will enjoy Legacy Family Tree. Millions have already downloaded it. See how to Import a Family Tree Maker file into Legacy: Why FTM users love Legacy: Company-user relationship and support; Reasonable pricing and free updates; Navigation and data entry; Sourcing capabilities; User-friendly; Reports [Numerous charts in the Deluxe version]; Name list; View multiple databases side-by-side / drag-drop; Web pages [FamilySearch]; Color choices. Price choices: Free Standard Version. [No trial cut-off date.] Import your FTM file in minutes. Or $10 off – through Dec.

31, 2015, which means Legacy Deluxe (download-edition) is $19.95. Dear Kendall Hulet Firstly I must say it took you long enough to respond considering the size and negativity of your announcement to retire FTM. But what is even more unbelievable is you response is just a rewording and patronizing response to your first announcement to your loyal customers. You mention you read some of the responses perhaps you did but you seem to have missed the point completely that people are making, they want to keep tree sync and want support for FTM past jan1 2017. Here is a life lesson Humans are an emotional species especially when it comes to family and these tress are family to us ( I hope this does not need to be explained as to why this is the case due to the nature of your business) any way the main point is this, people take it very personally when it comes to family, and considering the business you are in this should be very clear to you and if you continue down this road with out adequate redress to you customers concerns this will affect your company negatively. I have had a look at your competitors commercial response and really they are laughing at your companies decision and more likely at this response as well.

Come on and catch wake up son. Ancestry is holding our family history hostage with this decision to no longer support Family Tree Maker. I’ve checked out Roots Magic and it seems a viable alternative for me and looks like it may even have more features than Family Tree Maker! I had never put all of my research info on Ancestry and I am thankful that I didn’t. I will only use Ancestry for research. Bad, bad decision, Ancestry.

Roots Magic should send a thank you card to each Ancestry management member because they will reap the rewards of Ancestry’s inane decision. I became concerned some time back when I would call in for assistance with an Ancestry function and was repeatedly told that they would email me a FAQ to solve the problem rather than walking me through the solution. Customer ‘service’ seemed to be slipping away. Then the “new” Ancestry appeared and in spite of numerous complaints by members, it was stuffed down our throats.

Now we are given 2 weeks warning that FTM is on the way out. The negative response from members has been huge and the excuses by Ancestry are weak at best. So, it appears this is a done deal and the exodus from Ancestry is going to be phenomenal. Since members were not consulted as to the desirability of this change prior to the announcement and once again change is being stuffed down our throats, I expect, I too, will end my subscription.

I’ll be sure to close the door behind me. Ancestry.com and FTM are inseparable, They are a package that I pay a subscription for.

The nominal cost of FTM and updates are part of the recurring cost of Ancestry.com. I was very happy with the arrangement, but since you are removing FTM capability for local backup and reports, you have lowered the value of subscription substantially. How could you not have a plan for a reporting capability and backups of our data prior to this announcement?

It makes me think there is something more you are not telling the subscribers, because it is very bad news. Hulet & The Team That Made This Decision, You are not acting like a company who is committed to their customers. Do you actually realize & understand that, while you provide access to records, that it is US, The Customer, who has made your company successful?

It is actually OUR millions of hours of painstaking research to put your offering to good use, that has allowed you to succeed. Or have you lost sight of that? And, where is the CEO of Ancestry in all this? Hiding in his/her office while you are the face of all this customer upset? You really need to make a decision for third-party software. Either sell FTM to a company or offer thiird-party software providers access.

Remember Apple? Jobs refusal to make their system software available on other computers nearly sunk the company. Yes, they came back, but were on the brink. Is this where you want to take Ancestry? Your customers are furious with you–not just on the software but also on the “New Ancestry.” So, think about it, you have made thousands of loyal users on BOTH platforms quite upset recently.

This is not indicative of a customer-focused organization. You’ve become internally-focused and lost sight of what/who makes your company successful. Don’t believe that Ancestry is so almighty that some other company won’t come along and exploit your weakness? I’ll continue with you for now to see what happens.

Don’t know how long our relationship will last though because trust has been severely weakened. Frankly, this is PR bull****! There is nothing in your answers that is beyond what was already obvious from your initial announcement. Consequently I, and I am sure many others, will not be fooled by your ongoing contempt for your customers. Starting off a new blog item to take the sting out of the 7,000+ negative comments you have on your former blog post fools no-one. Many of your customers are disgusted and feel a huge sense of distrust with you as an organisation. When do you plan to address that – or does that not matter to you?

ADMIN EDIT: Altered a word to keep it within the community guidelines. This is more to the posters on here, rather than Ancestry. So many of you are talking about switching to Roots Magic, or Legacy, etc., but are you not jumping the gun? Say you buy Roots Magic and Ancestry partners with Legacy to provide syncing through the software, etc. Then you buy again and start all over. I have used FTM since the very first version (where we got a few disks that we could search) I am as upset about seeing it go as anyone. Just saying don’t run out and buy something until they announce who they are going to partner with.

Ancestry, you treat us like a herd of sheep. *Before* you made your arbitrary and self-serving decision, you should have had a deal worked out with another software program.

The deal should have included giving us a monetary credit towards said software, and, of course the software should have been able to seamlessly sync from your expensive subscription service to our desktops. Instead, we are expected to be seen, but not heard, like good little children. Oh, and I’m really glad that you are giving us until your, once again, arbitrary date of 23 Dec to be able to actually speak our minds. To Kristie Wells – no, there won’t be that many comments this time. We’ve already poured out our hearts in response to the last blog posting. With the new blog posting making it crystal clear that you don’t even understand our hurt and betrayal, let alone want to do anything about it, most of us are just moving on, heart-broken.

We don’t trust you, period. I just bought RootsMagic and I’m removing my trees from Ancestry and canceling my membership. I just wish I knew for sure that you won’t go on using my information without my knowledge. I am not at all happy with this notice which I just received today, December 10. What are we to do to ensure we have all of our information downloaded from Ancestry? I just purchased FTM3 this year.

Many moons ago, I used PAF and went to FTM only because PAF seemed antiquated. I do not like using the Cloud. I believe that my personal information is not safe from hackers nor am I sure what server it is on or who can look at it. Many of us gave uploaded pictures, etc. Ancestry’s bottom line seems to be the almighty dollar and not a desire to help those of us attempting to build our family story for all our descendants. Your high subscription rates for a tremendous amount of free information gleaned from online sources is proof of that. Bottom line, I wonder where those of us who want a program to keep all of our information safe and easily stored, go from here.

Thank you for at least giving us a year’s heads-up. PS all subscribers.it’s not just older people who have trouble digesting software and computers. Quit making us look like a bunch of inept dummies! It does not feel like anyone at Ancestry.com is REALLY listening to the customer base. By that I mean the Serious users of the service, the ones that have built QUALITY family trees that others can use. Yes the numbers quoted for how many use the Ancestry.com might be true, but that probably mostly represents casual users that build a small tree, get bored, then never come back. The people that have made Ancestry.com a valuable service use FTM to manage their data.

If you are content with losing them, their data, and therefore ALL meaningful value to your service, then go ahead and drop FTM with no SERIOUS plan for replacing lost features. I suspect in 1 or 2 years Ancestry.com will be worthless and eventually fold if that is the course of action you take. This year’s changes to the web site are horrible.

The mobile app is worthless for more than casual browsing of a tree. Just who is your intended audience for your service? It surely is not the serious genealogy researcher, and probably not even the dedicated casual genealogy researcher. How can you build a business on what is left if you exclude those two groups? How did you reach the decision that you can alienate those two groups and have useful data for building family trees?

Is it really based on the person that just is curious about the past 1 or 2 generations? I have seen too many examples of what the most casually constructed trees contain, and it is faulty information slapped together by clicking blindly on your ‘shaky leaf’ without even considering if the people are really related. It feels like the board and senior management has accepted this plan with no marketing data based upon the Ancestry.com customer base. You do not have to read many of the comments to this posting or the original one to see the result of continuing down this path. Unless you want to lose 10,000 customers overnight (ones that actually pay annual subscriptions) and their trees, then you must QUICKLY reverse the plan to drop FTM and TreeSync. It is not going to sufficient to ‘explore’ other solutions. Even if you can actually implement FTM functionality within the online experience, it will not satisfy the real customers.

Kendall, while a nimble enterprise mindset and visionary focus ensures necessary profitability for company relevance and long term life, the poorly executed FTM retirement announcement has created panic in a core foundation of your brand’s strength and creates doubt in fact seeking suitors willing to invest in Ancestry.com’s model. While those behind the broader market outreach in DNA and shaky leaf family compilations might be commended from a marketing stand point, my guess is internal research would show those using FTM bring and help ACOM retain that same broader market needed for sustainability. It wouldn’t be too much of a broad stroke to suggest FTM is critical for story tellers, serious fact checkers and rare family heirloom photo archivists/sharers that ACOM uses in their mass marketing media commercials and ads. Let’s all try to imagine an ACOM commercial with frustrated new users seeking to navigate incorrect histories and images solely consisting of census and historical records. Many of us don’t mind playing guides to others following paths we chose to take, yet our stewardship of family stories and connections, is now challenged with a major blow to our shared journey.

Please be a better steward and help nudge ACOM’s next moves into easy market available tools (open source and API toolkits), timely communication and transition processes which balance the loss of FTM., and thereby show respect to many now feeling slighted. I have just added my post to your Blog agreeing with the anger being expressed by FTM users. I want to add that I am now in my 70s and like others above started out my old fashioned research in local history centres via micro fiches etc.

Over the years I have spent much time, and money to Ancestry subscriptions, in building up my tree on to FTM. Like other ‘oldies’ I am not always up to date with the ever changing IT world and hoped that with FTM on my PC my Data would be safe.

I ask you again to consider your many customers like me with trees on FTM and years of loyal subscriptions to you. Seems like you all are just doing the opposite of what you started a few years back. The integration of FTM and Ancestry.com. So why are you doing this. Do you expect all your loyal customers to just edit their family trees online.

So you can charge more money?? I haven’t looked at Ancestry’s bottom line, but I ‘m sure you are making more money than you know what to do with and you keep raising the cost of using your services to where it is almost beyond most of our reach.?????

Is all I can say. I can’t find the email, but I recall my invitation to join Fold3 for half price a month ago was based on being a loyal FTM user. I then got another invite to newspaper.com that I am – make that was – looking into.

When my Ancestry membership expires in July I will be an ex-customer as will also happen when my Fold3 year is up. So your decision is costing you every year, from me alone, the price of my annual membership, my Fold3 membership, and my aborted newspapers.com membership. Smart marketing decision. Microsoft made the assumption that the world was turning to touchscreen gadgets and came out with Windows 8. How did that work? What did it cost Microsoft to gets its head out of its ### after that one? Ancestry is basing its decision on the myth that no one uses desktop programs anymore.

History repeating itself? I would like to meet the person who brought this to the boardroom table. Are you out of your mind? Clearly, he or she has never done a lick of genealogy in their lives. I always thought that Ancestry.com was the best of the best.

I cannot believe a company that had an otherwise good reputation could so quickly dismiss the customers that helped them rise to their level of success. You underestimated the power of a genealogist. I would assume that a large percentage of us are retired with nothing but time to band together and fight. I can’t imagine how you will ever recover from this. Shame on you. I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who has had enough of the way that internet & software companies treat their users when those companies decide to make a change—which, by the way, user—you don’t need to know much or anything about, either before or after. I’ve owned a computer for 16 years now, and over time, you see the thoughtlessness being repeated again and again.

In 2015, I purchased only 1 new piece of software, and I expect to let most or all of my genealogy subscriptions lapse upon expiration in Spring 2016. I’m tired of dealing with the non-stop changes and being used as a guinea pig to test them. I’ve decided that I can wait until I get to heaven to learn about the rest of my ancestors—without going through so much h*ll now. Your response is a step in the right direction (and reflects what you should have said in the original announcement) and I commend you for that, but it doesn’t go far enough.

If you truly have no intention of ever selling the product again that’s fine, but if so you should commit to making it an open source project supported by the community. I can’t tell you how many of my customers (computer support) are elderly citizens who have put years into their FTM based geneology work and you can’t seriously expect them to learn an entirely new system at this point. Transitioning to open source solves that problem at a very modest transitional cost to you. Beyond that, you should commit to opening your sync API to third parties.

Saying you are exploring possibilities of working with third party solutions is good an encouraging, but it’s also weak because it makes it clear you want to dictate the future. If you commit to opening the API it is then up to the third party to adapt their software, taking you off the hook. You can certainly charge a support fee to those third parties if they want to use your engineering time in any way. The part that is missing here is the clear commitment to do right by your customers, rather than simply looking into it. I have not been doing genealogy as long as many of these people.

I complained yesterday, so I will keep it to a minimum today. I downloaded the Ancestry apps to my android phone and tablet. I found them useless because the screen is too small and I never learned to text fast, so using those devices for Ancestry is impossible. I only bought Family Treemaker for backup. I also bought the Companion Book because I struggle with online help.

I haven’t done much with FTM but I rely on its sync and backup. I live in the middle of nowhere by choice, but it means there is no cable, only 3G and my cellphone does not even work in my home as a phone. My WIFI is slow.

My internet goes out when it snows, or the winds are strong, or my antenna ices up. There is no choice for an alternate provider. I just did a speedtest on my connection and it’s really good right now. 1.76 mbps download and.48 upload. I’ve never seen upload that high.

My kids laugh! They have it 100 times faster. Even one window open on my desktop causes me to wait. Interesting that using Ancestry last night took forever.

Depending on an online only source scares me to death. Each computer or software upgrade is difficult. I’ve always used Macs (for art) and this is why I chose FTM. I’m not confident in my problem solving. Even downloading a gedcom looks “scary”. What if I screw something up. I’m still of that generation.

I have FTM for a backup, and an external drive for a backup of a backup. I’m worried that my external drive is too old. Anything new worries me so I stick with what I know. I’ve made many mistakes in my early work on a tree with Ancestry. I went from private to public to private with my trees. I just bought into World and took the DNA test. Looks like lots of “cousins” will be jumping ship.

I’ve taken many classes in genealogy and the #1 thing is “Don’t rely on the internet for research.” Heaven forbid for your only tree? Many people on the Facebook groups I belong to suggest tribalpages.com. Even before this debacle. I have not tried it. They’ve also shared these articles. For what it’s worth, I’m trying not to panic, and hoping that there will be real options and answers from Ancestry. Maybe this suggestions will help others.

If not, I value all of your help. Merry Christmas.

EVERYONE PLEASE NOTE:- This is Ancestry’s response to comments I have been leaving on their FB page. Please take particular note of the comment – that members needs are ‘best served elsewhere’:- “Hi Tom, we’re sorry you feel this way. However, it is not the case that we wish to treat any member with contempt. Nor are we interested in fooling members. However, sometimes, the product offerings we have do not align with the member’s specific need and they are better served elsewhere. This is the unfortunate reality with regards to Family Tree Maker.”. I love researching and for that reason I have always used FTM and Family Historian – there are slight differences, but protection of my information is top priority so I ensure that my files are compatible with more than one system.

I do link to Ancestry – and have enjoyed doing so – but I use it as a backup and it’s handy if a relative wants to view something, but it’s private, not public. I shall continue to research, gradually moving to another program – time will tell, at the moment it will be Family Historian – and keeping backups of my tree in safe places in the time honoured way.

That old saying ‘never put all your eggs in one basket’ applies to most things in life. This is very disappointing. It is very obvious that the purchase of Family Tree software is likely to have been to acquire something that one intends to use for the rest of one’s life. I purchased my second FTM edition a year ago with the desktop/web integration a key selling point The web facilities in Ancestry are in no way comparable to desktop FTM.

Is this simply a cynical ploy to drive more traffic to the website and generate revenue via subscriptions and/or advertisements by making customers who bought FTM in good faith dependent on the website and a subscription? I imagine Ancestry’s lawyers have provided assurance that Ancestry can not be sued for this manouevre, but this is an effective way to ensure that this corporation will never be trusted by customers again – not by this customer anyway – unless there is continued support for FTM & synchronisation with the web by some means.

As everyone has said above, I’m shocked that Ancestry would do something as stupid as taking away our ability to work and save our research data OFFLINE since none of us are comfortable having all of our data stored online where we have no assurance as to its safety and security. I for one so not utilize ANY online storage features such as THE CLOUD and others for that very reason. I guess I like the many other folks who commented above will be looking for a new local program to use. I have used FTM since it was a DOS version and have recommended it to many people over the years as the best genealogy data management program. It is interesting that Ancestry has not given a clear reason for such a drastic plan. Limiting comments is one way to prevent this back lash. But I am quite positive this ill conceived change will damage Ancestry.

I know you believe the FTM users are all old fogies clinging to their family and desk tops. It is quite evident the new interface is designed to be used on tablets by novices. Your error will lead to the loss of most serious genealogists. Their trees will disappear and your “leaves” will wither. I know you think profit and growth depend on the idiots attracted by your celebrity based stories.

Sort a gym membership mentality. Casual users who build trees of 3 to 4 generations of say 70- 200 people and keep their membership for one or two billing cycles. The source of such clients is vast and their trees do not take up much memory. When interest wains, they are easily replaced by other such customers. Ancestry’s reputation is not based on such subscribers.

We long term customers have been the seller to our less interested family members. I am responsible for 5 subscriptions in closer family and many more with friends and extended family. That will come to a screaming stop. You have really screwed up and may have lost your job. Remember new coke? Oh my goodness, Mr. Hulet condescended to state that he read through “many” of the comments PERSONALLY.

Should we applaud and be grateful for his tenacity at reading a few trifling grouses from the peasantry? Unfortunately, like so many others, my attitude toward Ancestry.com has been permanently tainted by this rapacious move on their part. I have marked my tree Private, and if EVERYONE did so, it would significantly diminish one of the touted values of Ancestry – allowing other people to view and copy your research with a few clicks.

I will not be subscribing internationally, as I was just about to do. I have already deleted two of my three trees and am preparing to remove the third. I have downloaded a free program to use temporarily while I decide on the replacement program.

I am incredulous that they are continuing to sell FTM, at full price no less, through the end of the year. Skulduggery at its finest. I have been a member of Ancestry for at least 10 years, and worked on my research for 25 or more. I bought FTM less than two years ago and spent HOURS and hours typing in my >8,000 ancestors (my old program was OLD and wasn’t compatible), and now they are dropping it. I am NOT trusting my research to their greasy cloud.

As someone else said, other programs are compatible with importing a Gedcom file. Download your Ancestry info as a Gedcom todayit is quick and easy, and upload it to another program. Even the free program imported the file right away, photos and all.

I hope this parsimonious action by Ancestry highly benefits many of the other genealogical software companies, who appear more than willing to work with the former Ancestry customers. Good luck to all.

To: Kendall Hulet at Ancestry.com I really want to believe your statement: “.we’ve seen your outpouring of comments, questions and the concerns you have raised. I’ve read through many of your comments personally, and I want you to know that we truly value you as customers and your feedback.” but frankly, I just don’t. The evidence of Ancestry’s track record over the past year just does not support this statement. Unfortunately, trust has been lost. Firstly, it was seriously challenged due to the way in which, you failed to listen, or respond to, the thousands of pleas not to ‘retire’ ‘Old Ancestry’, or, at the very least allow us to have the option to choose.

The ‘Old Ancestry’ was superior in so many ways and also more user-friendly but our opinions and experience fell on deaf ears. Secondly, your decision to ‘retire’ FTM without an established alternative and the way in which, you have made and dealt with this current announcement has killed it for me.

Let’s face the reality!. We are not going to be able to save FTM, no matter how strongly we protest, or in whatever numbers, any more than we were able to save ‘Old Ancestry’ despite the thousands of voices that rose up in an attempt to do so. It’s a done deal!. The rest just comes across as lip service and damage limitation on your part. What’s the damage limitation from our (your customers) point of view?

“We are exploring possible relationships with other desktop software solutions that would make it possible for their products to integrate with Ancestry”. I get the fact that, if FTM has to go, and you allow other software to become compatible and integrate with Ancestry, that all may not be lost.BUT ONLY if it includes the ability to Link & Synch our trees and Web Search as FTM does now. The loss of familiarity of using the existing FTM and the financial cost of purchasing new compatible/integrative software are two problems which may be particularly difficult for your more senior members or those who are not financially able to do this. (There’s that word again! I’m really not so sure how appropriate its use is in connection with Ancestry anymore?).

That if you do successfully negotiate to produce compatible software that you will also: 1) Support the transfer from FTM to this new compatible/integrative software or negotiate support into the agreement with the software provider. 2) Negotiate a substantial discount for existing FTM customers who are being forced to buy the new software because of your decision to ‘retire’ the one they have already paid for. “We are exploring options to bring more reports and related functionality from Family Tree Maker into the online service. Stay tuned for updates on this over the coming year”. For those members who are happy to maintain and store their tree on the Ancestry site then I guess this can only be a bonus under the circumstances but you are just not listening to the thousands of comments from members who have stated categorically that they do not want, and will not have, their tree soley on line. They want to be able to back up their precious trees on reliable and compatible software which is under their own control and ownership.

Wouldn’t you? So, this brings us back to the urgent necessity for compatible/integrative software to replace FTM. Without it you are likely to lose a large proportion of your customer base. If you do genuinely intend to find an alternative, as you have suggested, then I would suggest making a more concrete announcement about this sooner rather than later if you want to prevent the migration of a large proportion of your subscribers to other genealogy providers.

To be honest, I suspect, it is the added hassle of not having the facilities that the integration between Ancestry and FTM provides that many of us want to avoid. But, if, in order to maintain ownership and control of our own trees, (which for many of us is non-negotiable), we are going to have to go backwards and have the hassle of either manually updating duplicate trees, one on line and one on our own computer software, or maintaining just one tree off line; return to copying and pasting or downloading and then uploading documents, photos etc. – then, the truth is, we can do that using any of the many genealogical sites on offer. It is the ability to link and synch our trees as well as the much more user friendly Web Search facility of finding information and documents and being able to save them directly to our FTM trees that gives Ancestry the edge and has attracted many of us to choose membership with Ancestry over other Genealogy sites. Without this edge, there is little to differentiate you, from other providers now. Find My Past, which in my experience has a far more effective and accurate search engine than Ancestry’s, is but one example. This coupled with the animosity and sense of betrayal that Ancestry has generated recently amongst its customers suggests that it is unlikely that they would be inclined to choose Ancestry in the future.

Doesn’t sound like good business sense to me! Recommendation from others, who have perhaps had some experience of navigating genealogical records and websites, is often how those, new to family history research select which genealogy provider to subscribe to. Hand on heart!

In the past I have always recommended Ancestry, closely followed by Find My Past and Family Search. In the future I shall be recommending Find My Past and Family Search. Rather sad after nearly 10 years collaboration and loyalty to Ancestry. On a final note! A question: Why have you chosen now, of all times to make this announcement?

It is less than a week away from the switch over in the UK from ‘Old’ to ‘New’ Ancestry, which in itself has and continues to create a great deal of animosity and dissatisfaction amongst your members, myself included. It is also two weeks away from what is, for many, the busiest holiday time of the year. Instead of enjoying valuable family time and perhaps a bit of relaxed family history research many of us are going to be frantically backing up our trees, exploring options of alternative software and genealogy sites and preparing ourselves for a mass migration from Ancestry. You seem intent on angering and inconveniencing your members in every way possible. Happy Christmas to you too!! If I received a copy of Family Tree Maker or an update of it in my Christmas stocking this year I would feel cheated both, as the recipient and also as the giver. Would it not have been more honourable to have withdrawn FTM well ahead of the Christmas season to avoid innocent shoppers buying it as a special gift for equally unsuspecting loved ones?

Do you have any idea how shocking it is to know you have cold bloodedly cashed in on the Christmas bounty, taken the profits, knowing that you plan to jump ship as soon as you can? Is there a warning on each product that they are spending a good deal of their hard earned cash on something that has no longevity?

Do you intend to refund these poor unsuspecting people when they realize they have been conned? Would I be correct in thinking that the dates that you are ceasing trading Family Tree Maker – 31 Dec 2015 and also the date that you propose to cease supporting the product – 1 Jan 2017 are both cleverly contrived? The first as I have already stated, to maximize on the Christmas sales of FTM and the latter date, not as you would like us to think, as a gesture of consideration and support to your long term customers of Family Tree Maker but, more to the point, a legal obligation that you have to honour (at least here in the UK) of 12 months Statutory Consumer Rights. The chances of this being read are minimal but at least I know I have tried. My membership expires in Feb 2016. Unless there has been an announcement before that time confirming that Ancestry has secured the availability of alternative compatible/integrative software to replace FTM, I shall not be renewing my membership. I will use the time until then to do what is necessary to be ready to delete my trees and leave.

I sincerely hope this won’t be necessary but I am resigned to it if need be. I will not support an organization that doesn’t listen to or consider its fee paying clientele and appears to be conducting itself in an unethical and highly questionable manner. Just one more of the thousands of disheartened and disappointed members of Ancestry.

I don’t think you are listening to us users. This is a devastating blow to all of us. Years and years of research have been put into our FTM and we don’t want to have to do it all again.

We are the ones who built your company. Do you really want us all to go to your competitors? My subscription would renew in Aug of 2016 I will not cancel right now cuz I know there would be no refund for the part of the year I haven’t used. I have however privatized my tree on ancestry.com and I will remove it before my subscription runs out. I will not renew my subscription and I urge all other FTM users to do the same thing. I hate to see ancestry go out of business because they do have tons of information on the site but I don’t see how they can stay in business when we all leave. Many thanks to you all for this outpouring of common sense and direct feedback.

1000’s of disgruntled customers and users have it right. But in a competitive world the reality is that all customers can do is decide where they spend their money.

I avoid using commercial cloud services for many reasons- and one of them is to retain and maintain control of my own files. Just in case things like this happen. I have used FTM successfully for about15 years, regularly updating to the latest versions, and have an Ancestry subscription that I will now also stop. I must and will now find a workable FTM substitute for expanding, exchanging and archiving my own trees.

They have given me -and all others like me- no real choice. And, yes, they are not listening. Incredibly poorly handled. Any “exploration” of exposing a sufficiently robust API for third-party vendors to use to integrate with online Ancestry trees should have been done well before this announcement, and something along the lines of “we are in active discussions with (names of parties)” made a part of the announcement. Spinning off FTM should have been explored – and also have been made a part of this announcement. My faith in Ancestry’s management has been thoroughly shaken. Vague promises of folding current FTM functionality into the new half-baked web product also do not comfort.

We’re to expect you’ll somehow do a good job with the significant new functionality, when you can’t even get the New Ancestry working as consistently as the old, with no new functionality of any consequence? But here’s the hugely important bit: The large part of the value of Ancestry, if not most of it, is in the community, and the treasured people in this community are not the 18-49 demo. Our elders are our treasures! They have the memories and the old letters & pictures in that box at the back of the closet. My 40-something husband can’t read cursive, and in spite of my best efforts, my own kids struggle (my parents are the reason I can – not everyone’s so lucky, and they don’t teach it in school any more). Our elders have given so much to us, and to Ancestry, simply by correcting erroneous transcriptions, never mind the priceless photos, stories, and documents so many share! Theirs is the DNA most precious to collect, because just one generation earlier is twice as good for matching.

And judging by the comments, they are the members most likely to flee Ancestry once your damage has been completed, if not well beforehand. Without our active elders actively contributing and curating, and without excellent tools with which to manage our (OUR!) information, all you are is a data broker, a provider of a commodity. A handy one, but also the most expensive and – crucially – not the only handy one. In my experience, the breakthroughs in genealogy come about through community.Yes, there’s crap in many trees, probably including mine.

There are also gems. I will hang with my flock, and that flock looks to be fleeing Ancestry. At some point, it will no longer be worth spending $300/year, and more, to continue my work here. The more people you drive away, the sooner that will happen.

I am extremely unhappy with Ancestry’s surprise post on Dec 8th to stop supporting Family Tree Maker. The Ancestry.com web software has very limited data management support for trees, no useful reporting, no ability to sort people by location, but can be a useful tool — primarily as it is connected to databases controlled and managed by their owners in a real database software package.

Even Microsoft’s move to the cloud didn’t remove the desktop applications. Obviously an abrupt and clearly unplanned end to Family Tree Maker is a very poor management decision. The Ancestry Update on Dec 9th reflects the same lack of planning, poor management and waffling about how long tree sync and other features will last. Ancestry DNA is ONLY useful when the people have a fully populated and vetted tree. With this change to the support of Family Tree Maker the value of Ancestry DNA has collapsed.

Ancestry should drop the price on the World subscription down to something in the neighborhood of $10 month to reflect the “new” management plan. I have been using Family Tree Maker since its early days under Broderbund and have maintained a World Subscription to Ancestry for many years. Time to explore other options since Ancestry has chosen to remove their own value from the study of Genealogy. World Tree Project – NOT! Could tell in advance when I was told Avantsoft support FTM2014 recently by your help line. The disinterest was palpable!

So 1/1/2017 and Tree Sync stops. This is all about ease for Ancestry and cost savings in space/ TCO. How dare you send me a Customer Satisfaction Survey immediately after you told me my 25+ years research is degraded! Here is my note to you that you expect good feedback on. I am appalled. Root Magic calls! The main summary is 1) I have more on my local FTM file than in the cloud 2) Functionality, whilst good, online is significantly less than locally.

3) I have bought every version from ver2 to FTM2014, costly me a small/ no large fortune over the years 4) You increase your annual fee quoting extras (i.e your online development costs) then treat your customers with contempt with this despicable action angry doesn’t cover it! Here is my letter to you dated yesterday. Note I am not a luddite BUT I am very very very unhappy with this decision, we have over 25 years worth of research stored on FTM (from vers2.0 upto ftm2014) – we have spent a fortune with you over the years The online version doesn’t hold all that is on our laptop version not least in terms of videos, plus lots of other research facts, notes, weblinks etc etc Please assure me that even though no further changes or support will happen that the TreeSync feature WILL BE AVAILABLE ad infinitum? Not just ending 1/2017 Yours sincerely K A Hellinger (keefhellinger) on ancestry Sent from Mail for Windows 10. I became aware of Ancestry’s disreputable business practices two years ago when, with scant notice, they destroyed all of the data in the 5 MyFamily sites – without providing any viable option.

They said that the information could be downloaded, and provided a few weeks in which to do that (I was out of the country). Then I find out that the “download” contained only the pictures with no captions, no family tree, no cousin messages, no e-mail addresses of members – just gibberish. Surely they could have provided a single pdf copy of everything on each site. Despite feeling betrayed by Ancestry, I still stayed with them because I loved FTM and the ability to sync with the online tree.

Now that rug has also been pulled out from under me. There is absolutely no reason to retain any connection with Ancestry. That important ingredient called “trust” has vaporized. I have made my 12,000 name fully researched tree private as a first step in the divorce process. When my subscription is up for renewal in February I will remove my tree (actually a combination of 5 trees) from the site, and will not renew my subscription.

I am eagerly anticipating that day. I was willing to give Ancestry a pass on the MyFamily debacle, but not so when combined with the FTM demolition.

I feel “violated” at this point, and want nothing further to do with a corporation whose lack of any apparent conscience or guilt put them in a league with Machiavelli. This is beginning to look like a petition although it does not look like Ancestry is listening. But I will add my weight to the arguments. FTM was/is a great product – I have the Ancestry apps on my IPAD and Iphone and, whilst they look very whizzy on the screens, are pretty useless for managing data and the more you build up the story of your family the more power you need to organize the data and publish and present it in different ways.

I have been using FTM and Ancestry for many years and am very disappointed with this proposal and hope that the “powers that be” will change their minds. I do have and have had subs to other genealogy sites:- FMP; Genes Reunited, The Genealogist – some of which offer tree building facilities which I do not use as they are not as powerful as FTM. What a dumb proposal! Ancestry are just doing what all major software shops are doing. Desktop software is an outmoded and financially unsustainable model for delivering product and content.

Moving to the cloud is inevitable and will not involve the sky falling down. The key will be whether Ancestry are willing to create an industry leading, visionary cloud product rather than their current mundane, dumbed down offering. If by the time FTM is retired, the cloud experience is as robust and feature filled, as FTM the panic will be over. I have successfully synced all my trees and will continue until the end of Dec 2015 to get as much information that I can uploaded so that my files will be complete. I have spent thousands of dollars supporting FTM and then Ancestry when it became available 25 years or so ago. I will be ending my relationship with Ancestry at the end of Dec. I am so saddened by this as I will no longer be able to be in contact with my new cousins and other family members because of this betrayal from Ancestry.com.

I will be going over to Roots Magic as I already own the software, as well as Legacy these were always my backup programs, as I don’t like either of them much. But, I am being forced into using them, I will also mourn the loss of the DNA database but have found a new home on couple of other sites. Not easy to use or sync but at least somewhere that is being kept alive for now.

I love Family Search.org, but they are now linked with Ancestry.com and I fear it will be destroyed as well. Also, know that Ancestry now owns findagrave.com and will be charging for its services in the future. That was told to us during the last RootsTech conference. So we will also loose that site unless we keep paying into Ancestry. This will be a loose, loose situation for the family historian who is on a budget, I think Ancestry just shot itself in the foot, and are hanging the members out to dry for their mistakes.

I don’t believe anything he says. He is only putting this kind of “marketing” information out there for legal reasons and because he is an employee, has no other choice. I am sure he did not make this decision alone. There are a lot of other characters behind the scenes that have the same disregard to the whole value of customers and the role FTM dedicated users have contributed to their success. I will be gone and feel sorry for the implications this will have on those Ancestry/FTM employees who do understand what we have contributed. After using FTM for 20 years (before there even was Ancestry.com), I am devastated to find out it will be no more. I have continued to upgrade each time one became available and have been extremely happy with the program as it seems to be one of the best genealogy programs out there.

The excuse that Ancestry is getting rid of it because of the decline in desktop use makes no sense, especially considering most genealogists are not in the “younger demographic” who use only tablets and phones. After 20 years of research, I hardly want to leave the security of my data in the cloud of a company who has so blindsided us!

Other downsides include having to access to my data only through the internet, the lack of many valuable tools found on FTM and the slow speed on the app (due to large trees). PLEASE give serious thought to your loyal customers and RECONSIDER dropping FTM.

Disappointing news but I have has to mainly use the website for some years for some time now due to the fragile nature of the sync feature. However I am cautious about having data in one place only as an enormous amount of time/money has gone into it. What is also challenging is that the model for access to records that we have referenced during a subscription period ends at the point the subscription does. Thus while synced to FTM if I download the record it is generally ok but otherwise it is lost when the subscription ends. I have relatives around the world but do not need a continual worldwide subscription but I still expect to have access to the research I have done. You have free access to our trees and at present we get nothing from ancestry for the huge amount of associations we share.

Please up your game in terms of the online offering, integrating with map software, present and historic and in terms of the confidence we can expect in data resilience and we may be less challenging to these changes. Are the App offerings also being withdrawn or will these continue to be available?

Also if there is no desktop linkage you may find people leeching to other offerings as this one of your near unique features which kept me for the last 15 years or so. Read Kristie Wells (from Ancestry” respond to Martha below. Ancestry does not care about customers leaving and is a poorly run company as show by this answer. “Kristie Wells @Martha: As someone who personally uses Family Tree Maker, I completely empathize with you on being able to sync your online/offline trees as well as wanting a long term viable ‘offline’ home for your family history. As an employee of the company, I absolutely hear your concerns and we are reading all the comments.

We are working on options over the next year, but understand your decision to leave now and I wish you all the best.”. If you go to you can find that the senior leadership at Ancestry.com are businessmen, technologists, lawyers, etc. I see no bona fide ‘genealogist among the leaders. Consequently, I think that they have made a calculated business decision to terminate Family Tree Maker. The best way to get their attention in a way that they will understand is CALL ANCESTRY.COM AND CANCEL YOUR MEMBERSHIP, and tell them why. If 5,000 of those who have complained on the blog each did so, assuming each had World Explorer membership at $300 per year, that would cost them $1.5 MILLION. I think this is the only way – at this point – to get their attention.

I am not buying this explanation. I only joined Ancestry because I had FTM before that. I have spent 33 years the old way of collecting records on my family by making trips out of state, going to courthouses, state and local libraries, etc. I have on my FTM original records of my family such as wills, deeds. And many more records that I type in. I did not get that at Ancestry..FTM is where I do my work. Also, before Ancestry started their DNA testing, my family did our DNA testing at Family Tree DNA based in Houston with great results.

Ancestry is not the only act in town nor will you be. My data belongs to me.. Comparison Paying Customer 3 Key Points FAQ: 1.

The backlash is now a trickle. Example: Amazon FTM product reviews today.

We as paying customers, should “explore” how many of the WDYTYA esteemed public figures were actually assisted by serious family researchers using/connected to FTM vs. Shakey leaf clickers. We, as paying customers, should “explore” how many of the people portraits/photos/CDV’s used in ACOM advertising are from FTM users vs.

Shakey leaf clickers. Kendall, like your 3 Key points, only one is known reality today. If I were on the due diligence research team of a potential suitor/investor for ACOM, I would now have another “To Research Further” item on my list.

Will be interesting to see mainstream news investigative reporters filling time slot fillers with the hornets nest just poked. “The emperor, ACOM, has no clothes” live at 5. Cheers and Merry Xmas to you and any ACOM team members who are listening/watching. Time to speak up and help keep ACOM stay truly “connected” to not just the broader market but your foundation of researchers and family story tellers who make ACOM a great leader vs. A worldbase repeat.

Laughing if not so sad. One of my favorite parts of business school are the case studies. Looking back at companies and putting yourself in their shoes at a key point in their history.

Assessing their products, their services, their customers, competitors, etc. Examining their options — diversify, merge, sell, — and what decisions they ultimately made. I am 100% certain that some prof. Will soon be teaching his/her future MBA students about ancestry at this moment in time and what they chose to do, and how their actions this week contributed to the demise of the company. It is hard to imaging how a company of this size and importance can be so unbelievably brash as to cash in on the massive amount of good will and passion given to it by this community. Maybe it’s our fault for not seeing this coming sooner.

They have been out of touch with their customers. Not just with this most recent decision but in the trends of late. Ancestry has shown no desire or willingness to interact with users on planned new features — either on their design, or even if they are wanted. No effort to participate in community message boards w/ regard to users input on how to make ancestry better. It is only about the $$$. And in that regard, I have to give props to their current owner, Permira.

They found a company to buy whose model was to implement a software platform over a massive set of valuable data, collected and organized by volunteers, then effectively charged these same volunteers a significant amount of money to access it. Meanwhile, stripping the costs of business by making only minimal investments for “improvements”. No doubt they will negotiate a nice sale with a very tidy sum — that takes a lot of moxy. Congrats, to those precious few investors who were able to monetize and cash in our all of our time, passions, and contributions to genealogy. Why don’t you go buy yourself a nice boat. You earned it.

What disturbs me is that much of what you have stated above should have been a part of your initial statement when you announced you were discontinuing FTM. I really question whether or not you had any intention of pursuing the options you listed here before a substantial portion of your membership expressed their ire about this situation. Therefore, I can only take your vague exploration of other options with a degree of pronounced cynicism.

I don’t know if you are just stalling us for another year, or you actually intend to explore other options. I will wait and see, but as of now my trust in Ancestry is pretty much gone. I’ve loved and enjoyed Ancestry for years. I’ve recommended Ancestry to many friends and family. However, this who incident has left me questioning the direction the company is headed in and if they truly have their membership’s best interests at heart.

I understand that you have to make a profit, but you also have to provide a service. You can’t just expect your customers to put-up with whatever it is you decide to do when they are giving you money. Ancestry is a Christmas gift that I have been getting every year since 2007. My subscription was just renewed for this year two weeks ago, so I am stuck with Ancestry for another year. However, the joy I have take in my Ancestry membership has been seriously soured by some of the business practices Ancestry has been practicing. I don’t like feeling scammed and I am starting to feel that way about Ancestry.

I suspect most people don’t like feeling that way either. Some of the sneaky stuff with the renewals, the weird updates nobody really likes that make it LOOK flashy but don’t help at all with research, it’s all starting to add up to something I don’t want to participate in. I feel really foolish trusting Ancestry as much as I did. I thought this was a reputable company, but the past six months has made me question my trust. As far as I am concerned, you have a year to make this right. Otherwise, I am done with Ancestry.

Shame on you ancestry!!! I have been a loyal customer for forever. Now what do I do?? I have 5 huge trees, thousands of names, pictures and documents. I have spent thousands of dollars on my trees and this information and I don’t know what to do.

Definitely wont be renewing my deluxe subscription that costs $299.00 a year. My subscription runs out in May, guess I better get to work looking for a replacement. Can’t believe you would hang us all out to dry like this. SHAME ON YOU.

Hope you loose all your customers and end up bankrupt. Yesterday, I purchased the full versions on CD-ROM of both RootsMagic 7 and of Legacy. I will try them both out and then decide which program to rely on beginning 1 Jan 2017. If Ancestry does not tree sync with either of these programs by 1 Jul 2016, I will remove my 60,000-person tree from three continents from Ancestry.com. I will have to have a really great experience during the next six months using Ancestry’s on-line original records collections if I am to convince myself to renew my annual World Deluxe subscription. After all, there is always findmypast, Find A Grave, GenalogyBank, familysearch, and ever more state-focused digital collections.

For people interested in continuing any genetic genealogy they have going on Ancestry, there are options. For $35 – or free if you get friends to transfer – you can easily transfer your results and your tree to FTDNA. I have my issues with their site, but those are more about website glitches, rather than the WTFery that Ancestry has just become. Less simple, but not too much of a stretch, is GEDmatch. GEDmatch is free, with some amazingly robust tools available for a small donation. That will allow you to match 23andme, Ancestry, and FTDNA results that others have uploaded, and they support GEDCOMs as well.

There’s also the nascent DNA.land (yes, that’s the URL). It’s a Columbia University project not deeply focused on genealogy, but they’re in their infancy, and also free. Any of these – or better, all – combined with the other genealogy resources others are mentioning, will allow you to continue to find those connections.

Not as handy as “Circles”, but also not prone to the same kinds of error. There are Facebook and Yahoo groups for all of these, with nice people who are incredibly helpful with getting people up to speed at those sites. Some of those people you will have seen on different Genealogy TV shows, and/or you’ve read their blogs. They know their stuff. Good luck to all – hope to see you at GEDmatch! Retiring Family tree Maker is the worst thing Ancestry can do. Firstly I want my family tree on my PC.

Secondly it is good to have it on a family history website as well. With “Tree Sync” it is brilliant but I can do without it if need be. Hints facility is good but I can do without that too.

So If they go ahead with this I will clearly have to look elsewhere. Whatever else they decide to do to soften this blow just won’t wash with me, they could cancel that too!!!!

Or come up with nothing in a years time. There is a serious risk of me losing my data if I can’t keep ftm working. If all else fails, I can type it all in again but that would take a long time so I must look for an alternative now!!

To keep my data safe. I can’t afford to wait for Ancestry to come up with something else or possibly nothing at all in a years time. Ftm still seems to be on sale??

Kendall, your additional comments demonstrate that this has not been fully thought through. You are now exploring relationships options All of which needed to be done before announcing the retirement of FTM. Maybe your board of directors think you know the genealogy market after adding the little flashing leaves but wait until they see the mass exodus of loyal customers from Ancestry.

I’ll bet many of the board members will take the time to read ALL or MOST of the comments as opposed to the Many which you personally read. Let’s see how long it takes for Ancestry to drop from number 1 to the bottom of the list. Retaining and continuing to support FTM is the only hope you have of redeeming yourself. Every other genealogy company is now nipping at your heels and offering special deals to your ex-customers. This reminds me of the young man who recently bought the rights to a medicine that is used for aids patients that used to cost only in the mid teens per dose. When he bought the rights to the meds he raised it to seven hundred fifty dollars per dose!

Greed based sales with not thought for what brought you there as a company will only bleed customers. Cutting of the nose to spite the face comes with a lot of pain and loss. I’ve yet to read a favorable comment. The web based stuff they have is just plain clumsy and to only hint they will fix it in the future is not realistic. This always happens after a company goes public – all the shareholders care about is the bottom line, not one bit about the customers. It is pretty obvious that is what is going on here.

Has anyone tried MyHeritage? That is who FTDNA recommends using. And BTW, FTDNA is far superior DNA testing than what Ancestry offers.

Yes, you can upload your tree to FTDNA but it is not a site where you make notes or have photos. It’s for DNA matching only. After reading a few comments about Roots Magic I am not at all eager to go over there either – not without a month free trial or something. Their discount is a bit misleading as well. Such answers do not deal with the fundamental issues: (1) those, like me, who are uncomfortable placing digitized birth certificates, marriage certificates, personal photos, etc. In the cloud have no “solution” — I say this with the complete understanding that I can designate them as “private”.

(2) Even if I synch my 35-years worth of digitized records — nearly a quarter terabyte of data — into the cloud, I will be able to access my content only so long as I pay annual subscription fees regardless of how high those fees become. I understand I can “export” my tree but, obviously, I risk not having functional software in the future to access my export meaningfully.

(3) I am extremely uncomfortable with mere statements in a corporate blog that much of the reporting — and other functionality — that is available in the software but not in the online version will, at some point, be generated. In any event, I suspect that subscription fees will merely have to be increased to pay for the wok necessary to replicate such functionality in the online context — functionality that we users already have within the software. I also am uncomfortable with such assurances given that the company waited until only three weeks before it will stop selling the software to disclose its intention to stop selling the software. I understand why the company did so, of course. Otherwise, no one would buy the software....

I in fact, have made my choice and have already purchased replacement software to be delivered to me in two days. I plan to allow my subscription, that I just renewed less than two weeks ago, to expire next year. I use FTM 2011 and was about to upload it onto the “online tree”. That’s on hold now until?? This will mean the someone somewhere will miss out as I have info that “only I am in possession of” as there are about 30+ people in my FT that the links are broken / missing. In one case the birth, marriage & death would be impossible to find as there were 11 different or variations of her name.

Added to which there were similar problems to both her mother and her daughters. I only found out due to an “almost” death bed conversation I see that in one the comments above the you are going to impose this “New Ancestry” “New Look” or whatever on us. I hope that that is completely wrong. I would leave Ancestry if that occurred.

I tried it back in Jun/Feb/Mar/April and passed comment then!!That it was a load of codswallop. Also please get it into your and your companies head that REAL family researchers USE DESKTOPS or LAPTOPS. Tablets, i pads etc. Are just a convenience tool that takes photo’s and does other Bits.

They are not and never will be “research tools”. Complained to customer service about NOT getting the email notice about FTM cancellationNOW my Ancestry.com tree is inaccessible! So did everyone else get the notice via email, or like everything Ancestry/FTM did you have to figure it out by yourself.? This “change” is a horrible idea/plan. There is no way to “mine”or export usable data from the Ancestry site, or get personalized reports.

If it had been easy they would have done it BEFORE dropping FTM. I am sure it will become another PAY-FOR-IT system. They can’t even get relationships right! Not going to waste time here-no one is listening, going to get my data cleaned up & backed up. Please, as you all find other places to go and work-ability information, share it with a link to access it. I have been using Family Tree Maker since it was owned by Broderbund.

I do not use any of the link features or the online tree. I think the merge feature and hints have resulted in the huge number of inaccuracies that plague the online trees. I have only upgraded my Desktop program three times in 20 years. I understand that the $300 annual subscription price to use the online tree functionality is a lot more profitable than $79 three times in 20 years.

I have never contacted support. I imagine I will be using Family Tree 2014 well past the year 2020. I do appreciate my subscription to the record archive and recognize Ancestry as a leader in genealogy records. I eagerly watch the new and upcoming databases. I just prefer my personal data to be offline and appreciate the advanced reporting features that are part of the standalone program.

Do you realize what a bad business decision this is? I have yet to see one positive comment yet. I agree with the majority. I have put a lot of time, effort and money using FTM and Ancestry. I think more information about what has happened to cause Ancestry to make this decision needs to be known. The fact that thousands of people have used FTM and depend on it’s working with Ancestry should be important to the future of your business that you would reconsider.

Something smells and you are not telling us everything. You are not giving any hopeful alternatives, just maybe’s.

I can understand maybe discontinuing the software, but why would you leave thousands of members hanging by removing TreeSync? Still so many questions.

I’m pretty sure you will see negative ramifications from this action. A huge drop in membership and more. Tell us the truth, give us some hope, something before you ruin what thousands of people have worked so hard on. We, your members, made you, Ancestry, popular, and a lot of money I am sure. Think very carefully before you move forward. As with any consumer driven business, the consumer can make or break you. I agree with others.

These “answers” aren’t anything other than rewording what was already said. This is the exact kind of garbage that we get from politicians. I don’t like it when I hear it from them and I like it even less when hearing it from you. For me, I guess it comes down to a fewf basic things.

I want to continue to use my FTM that I have used since it came out. I like the way it works, it’s easy to use, I know where everything is, I can create, print and share with others, reports, charts, trees and a large variety of other items. It allows me to search and merge information I’ve found on Ancestry.com. I can keep my private information private and share what I want to share. The internet and cloud services are not safe.

As we have seen many, many times, things get hacked constantly. Not exactly a good place for my personal and private information. Obviously, you are in business to make money, but it seems like you’re trying to force us into a relationship we might not want or cannot afford.

What it looks like to me is that you want us to put everything into Ancestry and then we have to continue to pay the fees in order to access our own information. I’ve run into this with other companies. Cricut (die cutting machines for crafters) has a handy gimmick where I can purchase designs thru their web based program and, for my convenience, they keep it for me in the cloud. The problem with this is that I cannot download it onto my computer.

I can only use it in their program and if I choose to change to a different machine, I lose the design that I “purchased”. It’s not really mine. They just let me use it as long as I use their service. Sounds like what Ancestry is going to be doing.

I feel ripped off and lied to. I can understand if you don’t want to continue with Famiy Tree Maker. We all like to change things up after awhile. But, you purchased FTM from another company, why don’t you sell it to someone else so that we may continue to use it. Otherwise, to me, it sounds like it all boils down to what’s in it for you and that you don’t care about your customers. Ancestry.com is convenient, but expensive. People have been researching their family histories long before you came around and they will continue to do so long after you’re gone.

Just remember the old saying “don’t bite the hand that feeds you”. You have created a hardcore group of users who are hellbent on causing you the same kind of grief that you have caused us. You only hope of keeping our subscriptions to your database is to arrance for a viable desktop solution WITHIN THE NEXT 3 MONTHS so we will have a chance to try iy out before 1/1/17. Otherwise plan on loosing those subscription fees for good.

I suspect that you will find out that the millions you claim have downloaded the mobile app will not pay you huge subscription fees. The mobile app does not support serious genealogy. Also, no serious genealogist is going to rely on having their data only in the “cloud.” Especially when that cloud is managed by a company that has “shafted” them in the past. I wish that I had a button that I could press that would make your head explode. On the initial blog with over 7,000 posts, there were several posts from Kristie Wells, Head of Global Social Media Marketing for Ancestry. I am glad to see that other officers of Ancestry are following this disastrous decision.

We need you and Rob Singer, Chief Marketing Officer, Karen Peterson, VP Marketing at Ancestry.com, Jay Eyunni, Director, Global Digital Media, and Eduardo Pretell, VP Global Consumer Marketing to step in and recognize what this decision to retire FTM will do to your standing in the genealogy marketplace. Please reverse this decision before any more longtime members cancel their subscriptions or make the family trees private. First response.

Don’t know if your interested but this is a disaster to me. I have been using Family Tree Maker for I guess 20 or so years.

I like having Family Tree Maker on my computer. It is easy to work with and I like all my options which are not available on the internet under ancestry.com. This will completely change the way I have been working on my family tree for all these years. I will certainly re-think my future with regards to what program I will use going forward. Looks like I will not be a renewing customer of ancestry.com. Thousands of sources, census records, birth, marriage, death, photos, etc., just came to a screeching halt. All my records, names, future research, etc., not gone but stopped.

These words cannot express the complete and total dissatisfaction I have right now with ancestry.com. Over the years, I have made a lot of contact with family members through my research. I can promise you that I will do everything humanly possible to let everyone I know how utterly dissatisfied I am with ancestry.com. No more recommendations from me. Consider me a STOP sign on ancestry.com’s road to wherever they are going.

I certainly know one direction I like to send them. Completely Dissatisfied Long Term (soon to be previous) Customer. Despite all of the support for FTM, I seriously doubt Ancestry would rescind this horrible decision. I often work off line and use this software to accomplish my goals. However, Ancestry might have to admit they made a mistake if they keep FTM. Since they are perfect in their own minds they will never admit this is a big error.

Oh, and by the way, fire upper management, starting with Kendall and the rest of the idiots that put out the “New Ancestry” that they say they are so proud of. They are clueless individuals who are only in this for their own salary and not for genealogy. Don’t ask me to recommend them because it isn’t going to happen. And their corporate comments of “we understand why you are leaving Ancestry and wish you well” is so patronizing it is sickening. Wake up Ancestry! Do the right thing — admit you made a mistake and keep FTM!!!

At least the “New Ancestry” is palatable with FTM. I read the announcement yesterday and commented on my discontentment.

Today, my mind is not changed. I too bought Rootsmagic7 at their intro price but I’d truly prefer FTM. I’ve used it since it was with Broaderbund, floppy disks, and continued through the upgrades. Just because there is a decline in software purchase doesn’t mean we, the long term customers, don’t use it regularly. My tree on the website has always been private. I will not share it because the people on the website are mostly copying and pasting and really don’t read the records. They are not true genealogists.

Feel free to take their money and run but I value my work and have never liked your website. I hate the look of it, it doesn’t function well at all, there are no reports I can use and I don’t need the fluff pieces of what went on at the same time of my ancestors.

I studied history. I’m quite aware of that already. As a long time customer, I’m very disappointed. The people who bought and invested in your software are the ones who allowed the website to exist in the first place. We are the ones you should be catering too.

Rootsmagic has looked into syncing with Ancestry but I have no idea if you’ll respond to them. I’d really rather prefer, FTM get sold off so someone can continue it’s software upgrades and improvements. Truly bad decision making on your part and I’m afraid, as I said yesterday, you’re going to lose the most valuable customers you had and they are taking their decades of trees and DNA results with them. Kendall, the fact that you have followed up your ominous first post with one that seems a little more conciliatory tells me you had no idea that customer reaction would be so fiercely negative. This reinforces my belief that Ancestry does little research or polling of its customers to determine future directions for the company. I have several times submitted lists of “nice to have” features with no feedback whatsoever. I’m sure many others have gone through the same fruitless exercise.

New Search and New Ancestry are other examples of major changes that many customers were not prepared for and still have difficulty with – particularly older, less technically inclined persons. The only glimmer of light I see at the end of this long tunnel is that you have not yet defined a date when Tree Sync will end.

With now almost 7,500 replies to that first post (and 17,000 shares) I hope that you and your management will realize that FTM and its superior features is not something that can just be flushed down the drain. No I am not reassured.

When you spend many years of your life researching, at great cost, much of which has been to Ancestry you are looking past one year. Just repeating the same rubbish does not help. The only way to reestablish your customers trust is to retract your decision. Else most of us are off to your competitors filling their bank accounts with our hard earned cash. Stop thinking we are missing the point. We will not switch to a rubbish online interface, or trust our data to the cloud.

You are not the only solution and I will not renew if this goes ahead. I don’t know if ancestry is a public or private company, but if there are share holders I suspect that several peoples jobs will be at risk. Hulet’s comments.

Most were nothing new. Others appear to be pipe dreams, no concrete plans for anything; likely stating possibilities as a result of all the criticism. But, any “enhancements” they make to the child’s toy they are moving everyone to, will require you to have all your data on their website/cloud. AT THAT POINT ANCESTRY WILL OWN YOUR DATA AND CHARGE YOU TO USE YOUR OWN WORK. They then sell it to Family Search, Google and their new DNA company.

Likely they are anxious to let “researchers”match up your DNA tests with your extensive, genealogical files. BEWARE of keeping any data on Ancestry’s site. I have removed what was there (they have copies which they will continue to sell but they won’t have my complete data).

I will continue to use FTM and download files from Ancestry to my FTM files until my subscription is completed in August. (I’m one of the old Borderbund people) so have been with Ancestry forever. But that will end in August. Then, I will continue to use FTM (unless I find something better) and input/scan data, which I currently do as most of what Ancestry has in their data base is exhausted in my case and does not go back far enough to source the more than 10 generations I have documented.

THIS IS NOT A TRUSTWORTHY COMPANY. If they match up your DNA files with extensive genealogical files and they are hacked, everything about you and your family will be known.

Think about it. We have birth certificates, death certificates, very personal documents attached to our files. CAUTION, CAUTION, CAUTION. What a relief to know you “really do appreciate” and “value” me as a customer. Honestly, I was losing sleep over that point. What are you saying? That if your revenue fell from the sky instead of coming from customer payments, you’d what?

Please, save it. You know what you’ve just done, don’t you?

You’ve done the market research for a third party software company. Ten thousand potential customers have asked for an application, one that comes ready made with a reverse-engineerable user interface and is seriously NOT rocket science, and one that you have promised not to provide a year from now. They will have one year to develop and announce just as ancestry exits the scene.

Just brilliant. No one denies the shift to mobile apps and the cloud. But consider: That fact by itself spells the doom of the desktop computer just as assuredly as TV spelled the doom of radio. A really stupid decision was just made. Would you like a sure-fire scheme to increase your customer base by 10,000 in a single day? Here’s a tip: Undo the decision that alienated 10,000 customers in a single day. Finally, quit believing that more PR drivel from a VP is the answer.

Believe your customer base. Because most assuredly someone else will.

For such a poor decision by the leaders of ancestry.com to drop support for FTM software (the #1 family tree program), they have a link to purchase the program (download only) on the front page of ancestry.com There is indeed a “clarifier” written in white and bordered in orange that states that it will no longer be offered afte Dec 31, 2015. It does NOT say that it will no longer be supported and that the 2014 wonderful tree sync will also be poof gone. Just a little case of fuzzy advertising to get the biggest bang for the buck? Now with ancestry knowing all of this, you would think that they would put it on sale for 50% off, but no, greed has gotten in the way of honesty and it is listed at the full price of $69.99 (oh and with a 14 day trial). Just another shameful way of blindsiding the customer. Hey Kendall, Maybe you should have “explored” and “explored” solutions for users BEFORE you made your decision (stupid) that you will be abandoning FTM.

Many of us do not want all of our information on the cloud, especially if it is ONLY on the cloud. Also, the number of new on-line trees is really irrelevant since many users have multiples of their own trees, and other users just propagate bad info by copying everything in any tree they find, be it correct or incorrect. Due to all of this bogus info that has to be weeded through, Ancestry.com has been much less helpful to those of us who actually want to do real research.

Ancestry.com has become an entertainment center, not a true research tool. Kendall I think you are seriously missing the point. What happens after January 1, 2017 when I can no longer sync my Family Tree Maker database on MY computer to Ancestry.com? At that point I won’t be able to keep my online tree updated unless I have to enter all information twice, once into FTM and once online. I would NEVER trust my many year’s worth of data to only be stored online. I WILL keep it on my computer in some software program.

I ordered RootsMagic yesterday since they were having a sale to use as a backup if I need it. They seem to be invested it keeping their software up to date if/when some day Windows changes their operating system and FTM ceases to work. “After January 1, 2017, features that require connectivity to Ancestry, such as TreeSync, uploading and downloading trees and media, and Web Search, may no longer be supported.” I have at times had issues with my database on my computer and have had to download it from my tree on Ancestry.com to restore it. So now if that ever happens again after Jan 2017, I’m screwed and all my year’s worth of work is gone? I hate your “New Ancestry” website layout, so I could care less if you add reporting capability to it because I won’t be using it.

My main concern is that I have purchased 5 DNA tests. I have found out so much more about my husband’s family than we ever knew before. I never just except what other users have in their trees as gospel, but by being able to verify tree information with DNA matches and other sources I have been able to add to our tree. I want to be able to continue to use Ancestry.com to do my research, but so many angry subscribers are pulling their trees or making them private. Your misguided decision to drop FTM is going to seriously impact the value of Ancestry.com. And unless you allow another software company to sync their trees to Ancestry.com the way FTM does how will I get new leaves to investigate since as I said I have no intention of adding data to both my local tree and online tree, which will make my online tree out of date. The arrogance in your response is mindboggling.

You are NOT hearing what your subscribers want. That’s bad business. You are probably too young to remember the “new coke” fiasco, but go look it up. What a disaster that was. Don’t make the same mistake! 7,525 comments on the original blog post and now that people have discovered this response the comments are starting to pile up here too.

If as you said you “truly value us and customers and our feedback”, then LISTEN to it and fix this mess! Stabbed in the back again? Most assuredly.

BUT did you notice the same day ancestry made their announcement, Roots magic and Legacy offered their software for $20? So the ancestry decision was set in stone already and ancestry has no intention of doing anything we ask. You saw the response to the new web site, didn’t you? I say let ancestry sink. I am going to bet that another site will take over what used to be all the things ancestry did well. The new site won’t be involved in health information you supply to them, it won’t hold your tree research hostage. It will be everything ancestry used to be.

It might take a year; might even take two. But it will happen. Look how much money ancestry has made with the old format. Don’t you suppose some other business will figure that out? And with all the unhappy ancestry customers ready to abandon ship, they will have a built in customer base. Start working without ancestry. You will be amazed at how little you really need it.

I stopped using ancestry for much of anything a few months ago in anticipation of the NEW ancestry being the ONLY ancestry. That was enough for me.

You CAN adapt. It will be a new habit but it can be done. And I have found other information “out there” that ancestry did not have. Two years from now you won’t recognize ancestry anyway. Unlike many of the other commenters here, I am not a current user of FTM but coincidentally had been looking into purchasing new family-tree software, and FTM was near the top of the list. However, I will never consider any option that requires an online connection and will never consider uploading any tree information to ancestry.com. On ancestry.com I’ve seen trees contributed by others for lines with which I am very familiar, and most of the trees on the site are wrong and some are complete garbage.

Attempts to provide corrections to tree owners are usually completely ignored, without even a response from most. There’s a saying in the tech business “garbage in, garbage out”. Data mining the DNA results with the useless trees is only going to generate more garbage – but, having alienated the users who can contribute the most accurate information, the trees on the site will degenerate further as casual users create trees willy-nilly with little idea that by borrowing from wrong trees they are piling further wrong on wrong. Your data mining will FAIL as a result of this and your big data customers will figure that out sooner or later. I have subscribed to the site in the past but am currently using two other sites as the costs of an ancestry.com subscription are getting ridiculously high – especially as the useability of the site declines.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to comment. Kendell, here is the problem. Ancestry says one thing, but it treats its loyal customers to the contrary. You say our voices are being heard, yet I find it hard to believe that in the rooms where this move was discussed, that our voics were ever really considered. Maybe someone said “they’ll come around” or perhaps even the more macho “they need us more than we need them.” In any event, this collosal PR mess that Ancestry has created for itself reminds us that you all do not think everything through, and while I suppose you regret being the one caught in the grinder, I just don’t feel that Ancestry can be trusted as an organization. You all need to fix this instad of simply saying you’ll look into fixing this.

At this point, action talks louder than words. Dear Ancestry.com, I wonder if Ancestry.com has lost its way, and have you acquired some management consultants who think in spreadsheets. Potentially, I put it to you, that they have totally failed to understand the user base and that you are dealing with people for whom this is a life piece of work, it never ends – and that is non standard? Your customer base is loyal and committed, but needs to be respected. Applying standard commercial business thinking does not work to the Ancestry.com model, and they maybe about learn the financial impact of this the hard way – shame. Is Ancestry.com about to be come the next.com failure because they failed to put the person first?

Ancestry.com, if you are listening, please listen harder, please come to the table and reverse the retirement announcement of the desktop local application. Lets think of this blip perhaps as just a re-branding opportunity to launch a new greater locally hosted application filled with the rich value of FTM and more. “The Ancestry Desktop Application” has a good ring to it, would you not agree? It would be good to explain why FTM is being dropped. Maybe there are some of us who can help you fix the problem that led to this, and keep a desktop application going.

Contact me, a problem shared and all Warm regards, James Usmar. While you may be considering other options for transitioning, you should be aware that we will be as well. Ancestry is likely to be in that equation to the extent it remains useful. Gone is the loyalty that has sustained it through the years. What you have failed to grasp is that it was the complete integration between FTM, Ancestry and AncestryDNA that put you head and shoulders above the competition. FTM is such an important piece that you are likely to lose support on all the other products with this decision. Who do you think subscribes to Ancestry?

Who makes recommendations about software and testing sources? I would be willing to bet that you don’t have as many individual customers as you think you do. Most family historians and genealogy hobbyists I know encourage and sponsor many many others. The folks you just cast off as irrelevant to the corporate future will likely cause more than a minor blip to your P&L statements. It’s not just their patronage you have jeapardized, but that of their entire family and network of friends.

Yes, I am angry and disappointed, and looking for alternatives for all 3 products I thought I could depend on. I have a few months left on my current subscription after that? I am not sure the intangible promise of things to come will cut it for me. I believe you have seriously misjudged the core of your own market. This decision did not adequately consider the demographics or preferences of your main customers.

When you divorce yourself from the interests of your own community and openly worship at the alter of the allmighty dollar, you have all but ceased to exist. I use FTM 2014, previously had 2005 for ages. I must say I don’t upgrade regularly, as I don’t get any notifications to do this. However I do use ancestry for searches and finding documents, without the sync feature.

Lately was considering uploading my tree to the site as seemed the way to go, but had some reservations. Definitely not doing that now, I was confident in FTM being my main way of storing all my research, including using the notes function extensively and the report functions. Will be furious if these stop working without being offered any upgrades/fixes.

I have noticed the ancestry search function being less useful and lacking accuracy lately, interesting that others have found this too. They are dumbing down I think and losing a lot of loyal paying customers in the process.

Totally agree that the way this has been communicated is insulting to their customers and it is a bad business decision. Just wanted to snivel along with the rest of the disgruntled customers about Ancestry abandoning FTMpersonally I have upgraded my Windows and Mac versions of FTM since at least 2009, and also have upgraded my Ancestry cloud account from USA to World in the past two years.

I will be rethinking this strategy come renewal time in Feb 2016. For sure you will lose me as a World customer, and possibly entirely, as I seek to find some other software to use. My Ancestry customer satifsfaction is at an all time low — good job bean counters! How thoughtless of ancestry to spri9ng on us at the very last minute–their decision to discontinue FTM 2014 at the last minute. NOW they have us all jumping through hoops if we have not previously purchased FTM 2014–BUT when they KNEW what they were going to do quite some time ago NOT to inform their customers of these changes–JUST as they did to us with the NEW and not improved (and often not fully functional) ancestry.com. They should have lined up an alternative program months ago in order to assuage their customers fears–yet they did not–I missed LAST Christmas due to legal disputes with a neighbor and this year I will again lose Christmas due to all the last minute hoops I am going to have to jump through to get 2014, and acquaint myself with the program—I was putting off downloading the newer version (I have 2005 FTM version) until I thought I had uncovered everything possible about my Pilgrim ancestors and their families.