New Tree Tool ???

[Tenn4ever]

I agree with every thing Jim has listed.

This new tool is awful!!!

The format of the tree needs to be to horizontal. Simplify it! There needs to be as much information as possible in a single glance.

I have attached 2 screenshots - one of my tree in a full screen on FTDNA & one on Ancestry. Can you not see which one is more useful?

The screen shot of the Ancestry.com is excellent. That's exactly what I was trying to express. At a glance you can see everything.

[MoberlyDrake]

k.martin has given us a great screenshot of the very useful Ancestry HORIZONTAL Pedigree view. Now has everyone seen the old-fashioned paper version of this kind of pedigree chart? They have the date and place of birth (and sometimes marriage) below each person's name, usually in smaller print. It wouldn't take much more scrolling with that information added and it would save a lot of time clicking. Ancestry displays this info in a pop-up, but it disappears when you try to copy or print, so I prefer to have it permanently visible and put up with a little extra vertical scrolling.

Who did they choose for beta testers? Apparently not group administrators trying to get their work done as quickly and efficiently as possible. I don't consider myself as much of a group administrator, as my group has few members who aren't immediate family. I'd love to know how the administrator of a rather large autosomal project is going to manage with this new tree.

[rivergirl]

All I get is the usual "oops" message.
I have to change browsers again.
Im sick of changing or updating browers evrytime FTDNA make a change.
I dont have to do this for any other sites, just FTDNA.

It doesnt sound like I would like the new tree anyway......

[jbarry6899]

Tree Displays

I have attached 2 screenshots - one of my tree in a full screen on FTDNA & one on Ancestry. Can you not see which one is more useful?

Here is a portion of my tree on Gedmatch.

[MoberlyDrake]

Another thing about k. martin's screenshot. See how the grandparents and great-grandparents line up in a vertical row and the other generations are just a little indented, but not hard to line up. I've asked repeatedly for this kind of chart because if you do find a common ancestor way out on one branch, it's a lot easier to count generations to find out if it's the person's 10th great-grandparent or what.

[MoberlyDrake]

Here is a portion of my tree on Gedmatch.

Gedmatch trees are great! They're definitely not pretty, but they give you all the info with minimal clicking and navigating.

Now, we're hearing from everyone who hates it. Let's hear from some who love it and their reasons. We've heard from one who likes the stories feature.

[Sarmat]

Looks like a good start to me, though there are obviously some kinks to work out.

One feature request: I'd love to be able to link to a profile by kit #.

[phje]

At least diacritical marks appear to work now as opposed to the old version.

[MitchellSince1893]

half sibling

I added a half sibling to my tree but it ended up making it a full sibling.

How do I undo this? EDIT: Found it. You can "delete this person" after you click "view profile"

You will need to add the half sibling's other parent in order to add them to the tree.

[grahcom]

MUCH MUCH better than the old version..Ok needs a few kinks sorting, and add pedigree view, but maintain the current views as I find them very handy ( I didn't like them originally on Ancestry.com or My Heritage but once used to them they are very handy. So overall so far Thank you FTDNA

[prairielad]

One issue I have with new tool is the fact that if no birth date or death date is entered, ancestor is automatically locked when viewed by match. Even when you set the ancestor to deceased in the ancestors View Profile>Edit section of Users Family Tree.

One does not always know these dates. Would be nice if software would recognize that at a certain level of tree it is after 100 years

[prairielad]

One issue I have with new tool is the fact that if no birth date or death date is entered, ancestor is automatically locked when viewed by match. Even when you set the ancestor to deceased in the ancestors View Profile>Edit section of Users Family Tree.

One does not always know these dates. Would be nice if software would recognize that at a certain level of tree it is after 100 years

I do notice however, if you have a birth or death location listed dates are not needed for ancestor to be shown when match clicks on your tree.

[k.martin]

One issue I have with new tool is the fact that if no birth date or death date is entered, ancestor is automatically locked when viewed by match. Even when you set the ancestor to deceased in the ancestors View Profile>Edit section of Users Family Tree.

One does not always know these dates. Would be nice if software would recognize that at a certain level of tree it is after 100 years

The way dates are handled is problematic. In genealogy, it is common to record dates as "before 1815" "about 1815" "after 1815", etc. Date notations such as these get the ancestor marked as private.

[WCoaster]

Getting "private" ancestors to show

The problem with ancestors who show as "Hidden" or "Private" because they lack dates of death came up a couple of years ago, and someone posted the following:

QUOTE (from message board):
GEDcoms are just text files. Each entry looks like this:

0 @I1234@ INDI
1 NAME John Francis /Doe/
2 GIVN John Francis
2 SURN Doe
1 SEX M
1 BIRT
2 DATE 01 JAN 1900
2 PLAC Anytown, USA
1 DEAT
2 DATE 31 OCT 1999
2 PLAC Anytown, USA
1 FAMS @F1357@
1 FAMC @F2468@

The last two tie the person to his/her spouse and children (who will also have 1 FAMS @F1357@ or 1 FAMC @F1357@, respectively) and to his/her parents (as a Child of Family #2468)

To fix the "Hidden" people, just make a list of them, open the GEDcom file in Word, Wordpad or NotePad and use "Find" to locate them in the text. You will see that they don't have a "1 DEAT" statement. Insert it as "1 DEAT Y" "Y" for Yes.

The numbers 0, 1, 2 show which statements are connected. "0" starts the individual entry, "1" is a marker for certain key events (Birth, Death, Marriage) and "2" statements are information relating to the event above.
END QUOTE.

-- I wish I could give credit where credit's due, but I just cut and pasted the instructions into Word for easy reference.

If this doesn't work, or you "built" your tree from scratch (no gedcom), you might try "pre-hiding" names of living individuals (parents, maybe grandparents) by just typing LIVING or HIDDEN into the name field, with no other data. Then you can safely change the settings to "show all" or whatever. That's assuming, of course, that you haven't attached any private stories or pictures.

[efgen]

You will need to add the half sibling's other parent in order to add them to the tree.

Correct. Right now, the way to add a half-sibling is to add the other parent, and then add the half-sibling as a child of that parent.

Adding a half-sibling as your own sibling or as a child of your shared parent will result in the person being shown as a full sibling.

We've already asked IT to work on an easier (more intuitive) way to add a half-sibling, so hopefully this will happen at some point. But for now, please use the above process.

Essentially creating an entirely new Family Tree program is a complicated endeavor, as you might imagine. Personally, I think the team did a great job with a really complicated project. Of course, there will always be room for improvement. So we just need to give them constructive suggestions and the time needed to make those improvements.

Elise