Family Tree Analyser - A new paradigm

As a New member I probably am raking over old ground, but I need to say that I have been a very happy user of FTM 2006/16. It served me well for some 10 years and a necessary adjunct for the production of my own family history books. I thought I had no need for newer technology. I have been an avid reader of the Lost Cousins Newsletters which have often advanced my techniques for discovery of missing information. I did dabble with FTM 2011 but was put off by its commercial overkill. The mention of Family Tree Analyser in Lost Cousins Newsletter suddenly opened up possibilities of tidying up all the loose ends one accumulates in a family tree. This magic box of tricks is an awesome tool and a little frightening to a raw recruit like me. This is in addition to succumbing to the powerful syncing mechanism of FTM 2014.

Although I had imported my FTM 2006/16 data files into FTM 2014 I was in for a rude awakening when trying to use Family Tree Analyser! In the past I did not record the actual source citation references because I knew I had image copies of Source Citations for Census data etc in appropriate family folders. In the source citation panel for each person I stuck to minimal references, preferring to place interesting details about each document, so at a glance I could see in a census for example, who was in the household their ages, occupation and where they lived.

For the Family Tree Analyser to work properly it needed the full reference facts, clearly an absence in my case! I tried using the 1881 census for a Roland Eastlake Butt - RG11; PN: 397; Folio: 46; page: 24 - the format as entered on the Lost Cousins site. FTA refused to recognise it!

What followed next was an induction (thank you Tim Nicholls) into the use of the online FTM 2014 version (Private) and adding the census to each person which generated the correct code. Through the wonderful mechanism of syncing, my FTM 2014 was able to add the new reference of Class: RG11; Piece: 397; Folio: 46; Page: 24; GSU roll: 1341086. Wow what a difference! FTA recognised it immediately!

You might get sick of me extolling the virtues of this wonderful program but already I am unlocking more offspring of my direct ancestors siblings. The most seductive FTA tab for me is the Colour Reports tab. It shows in various colours your progress in entering censuses and whether they have been entered on the Lost Cousins site.

I have a lot more to discover from this program and maybe I should go through the issues and pains in another post.

 

Alexander, I am into the rhythm now of using Ancestry to save my Census and Lost cousin facts and all is working well.
Re - 'Can you paste a sample of the exact text of a rejected reference and I'll see about adding support for that'.

I replicated similar circumstances as my previously stated case (imported census references from FTM 2006/16)) and came up with the same result. That is - the FTA Colour Report did not acknowledge my census reference. Here is what I did. I entered the 1871 census reference into the attached source citation and exported FTM 2014 to a gedcom file. The Colour Report remained red for the 1871 census.



However if I use Ancestry to save the file online to my tree and sync it to my PC FTM 2014 tree and export via gedcom the FTA colour report will show green.

 

Thank you Tim and Alexander for your help in this matter and I can report I am having great fun changing red to green on the Colour Reports!

However there is a wrinkle I cannot get rid of and wonder if I might have to unlink what I have done and start over.
On the lost cousin tab I am informed in red that I have 2 census facts with no lost cousin facts. This is echoed in the Lost Cousin w/bad Census. See below:



Here are the facts:
Both people are shown in green on the Colour charts.
Louis Patrick in the UK Colour Census Report as dark green in 1881 because he was in Ireland and light green in England in 1911.
Mary Anne Fryday in the Irish Colour Census Report as light green in 1911.

Both people had Census residence and Lost Cousin facts recorded in the Individual and Shared facts of FTM 2014.

Both people had Census residence and Lost Cousin facts recorded in their online trees.

So is there a step in this case I am not carrying through correctly on line?

Let me know if you require my FTM gedcom to undo this knot.

 

I have not been following this discussion closely but I believe there is an error in FTA regarding some of the red statements.
There is an outstanding issue (#13394?) in this area which might make these listed errors go away when implemented. I suggest that you wait to hear more from Alexander before beating your head against a brick wall.

 

Thanks for the heads up Alexander. The reason why there are a lot of issues is that there are an increasing number of users, all finding FTA a wonderful tool and wanting lots of extras specific to their own way of using it. The frustration has arisen because you are so busy and nobody has known when you might be available to make further changes.

Now that we have some idea of the probable outlook, I am sure that we can all use (inconvenient) work-arounds while we count off the days (till Christmas?) when we get to open our presents and try out any new/improved facilities.

Good luck with your other sideline of third party software installation/testing. I hope that everything goes smoothly and that there are no over-runs which might impact your schedule. There is no rush for me as I am busy with visitors from UK and enjoying wonderful warm, sunny and calm weather so have 'reduced' need for FTA just now.

 

***NEW POSTING UNDER FT ANALYSER HEADING***

Alexander, I have recently had to move FTA to a different computer (not new just another of my devices running Windows 10). No problems with the download despite having to do via the Microsoft Store. After installing I duly applied an Ancestry Gedcom but keep getting the same error message over and over, which despite asking me to report same to ftanalyser.com/issues draws a blank response and with persistence end up on the GitHub site which refuses to let me proceed without joining and goodness knows what...life is too short to pursue that so in the end revert to a LC posting.

So, please can you tell me what to do when receiving this error message: "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" which I am sure makes perfect sense to you as the FTA author but goes right over my head. I am sure the cure is straight forward despite the riddle of the error message, so what should I do to get the Gedcom recognised in FTA?

Thanks for your help anyway which I am sure will be forthcoming, even if Tim has to remind you of this posting,

EDIT BY PETER: please remember that it is ftanalyZer and ftanalyZer.com

 

No not yet but that is something I will be doing and good advice. Thanks for letting Alexander know.

EDIT; Tried my wife's Ancestry Tree Gedcom, and same message

 

I also had to upload FTM 2019 to a different computer and Mackiev recognised the purchase and allowed a free download. I mention this because the import of my Gedcom into FTM synced perfectly and I now have the Tree in FTM as before but on a different device.

 

Shush! Tried again mid-afternoon to Open my Gedcom import file from Ancestry - previously failing each and every time - it completed WITHOUT the error message. Same Gedcom as before so methinks perhaps Alexander worked his magic from afar, or maybe the gremlin that prevented it loading earlier has gone off to pastures new.

It still means of course I am none the wiser and would still like to know the probable cause of the error message... but otherwise will now follow through with the things I set out to do now I am able to use FTA again.

 

Please explain, what cloud where and how? I have Dropbox for documents/data & photos = One Drive for Excel spreadsheets and Word documents...but Gedcom files just to my PC downloads folder after downloading from Ancestry. Why do I need to cloud save them and how do you go about this. Thanks

 

Bob, how can you ask this question? you have been participating in the discussion Family Tree Maker (FTM) - a survey in which you said you use FTM2019, one of the features of that version is cloud storage.

 

Easy really as I thought I was responding to an FTAnalyser question about cloud saving. I now realise -as you seem to have done - that Tim was asking about FTM so you make a good point even though I take no action to save to the 'cloud', as I explain.

FTM is not my mainstay FH program, that is reserved for Tribal Pages. However I enjoy its many features revealed to me over time by Forum members but my decision to go with it in the first place and with earlier versions, was its ability to sync with my Ancestry Trees. That was the 'be-all and end-all for having it.

I am by no means an aficionado in its use. Indeed all to often I even forget to close it down correctly, because I have moved on to other things and forgotten it remains open in the background and simply close the device. This means the next time I open FTM I face the trauma of the ubiquitous 'FTM did not shut down correctly' message and the need to Compact.

Even when I manually close using the 'x' button which 'auto-saves', I have not taken action to have the file uploaded to (say) Dropbox because I have not seen the need to do so. Perhaps someone will remind why I should, bearing in mind FTM opens in the last Tree viewed and allows the ability to switch to another by clicking on it within the program. Even if there is a problem in opening a Tree, I can always (as I have just done when moving FTM to a different computer) upload an Ancestry Tree -gremlins permitted - and start over.

 

Don't fret Alexander it will wait another day, and besides at the moment the gremlin (or whatever) has decided to take its own time out. Should it return I will do as you ask, meanwhile if the term is still in use..."take five"