I have a family tree that was posted to Ancestry.com a couple of years ago. Since then, I have many updates to my main file, which is maintained in PAF5. Does anyone know how I can upload either just my changes to update my tree on Ancestry.com, or upload a complete new file and REPLACE my old file with it??

I just don't get it - Ancestry.com, that is. But, because of my file posted there, I have made contact with lots o' cousins!! So Ancestry.com it is until I can find something better.

Thanks. Cheers!

Bob Hendry -
Southern Maryland -

bhendry@cheerful.com

Hi,

I've asked myself the same question.

You can download your online tree as a gedcom and merge it with you local tree. You can then delete your online tree and upload your merged gedcom to ancestry. In the PAF program click help, select lessons and take the merging lesson online. It is time consuming.

Another idea is to export your local Paf file to a gedcom and upload it as a new named tree that you own and merge individuals to your original tree. That too is time consuming.

Source/Citations, media, photos and comments...etc will be your major problems. Ancestry & PAF may handle those differently.

Before you do anything BACKUP your local PAF file. Download or export your current online tree as a gedcom to your local system in case something goes wrong and you can return to where you started.

Tyronne

The reason I have a number of trees here on the site is that each update seems to need a new tree. Useful though I guess, in case one gets a problem and losses some data.

Not really a PAF specific issue though.

I thought I could save time & Keystrokes, especially for 1850/1860/1870 census records, by getting FTM2009. Wrong! Ancestry and FTM 2009 do not work together as "I" expected. I "do" understand why! They must follow Gedcom specifications to be compatible with as many software packages as possible. I keep returning to PAF. Less Windows "Eye Candy"!

I will continue to basically do double entry for now. I enter data once on Ancestry.com and duplicate it with PAF. Every 3 months I download my online tree as a gedcom and import it to a PAF file. Though I have local access to all my documents and media/Photos, I do not link them locally. I'm more interested in being able to create quick and dirty reports locally with sources and citations, along with PAF companion, to distribute to family when needed.

I had to learn the "hard way" to only use Ancestry's online tree hints as a starting point to begin OR verify my research. It amazes me to see the number of unsourced trees that others, including me, get suckered into merging into my tree because I thought I could save time. Soon you realize it's the same wrong data merged over & over again to create 11 separate trees. How can someone have children with "one" spouse after his or her death? Come on people! they married again or had a relationship with someone else.

You should delete the old trees and export the updated trees, if you continue to share with family, to Ancestry. Outdated trees, especially online, can return to bite you!

Tyronne

My experience with uploading to Ancestry.com using Family Tree Maker 2009 is that you will have to delete the old tree and upload the new if it is the same tree. If you have multiple trees for different branches of the family, then you could leave them alone.

If you are updating one that is already online, deleting the old and uploading the new seems to be the only way to go unless you want multiple versions of the same tree. They might have improved this since I last did an upload several months ago so this suggestion might not be useful.

I'd be very careful merging anything into your tree. Do a backup first and perhaps download it to a GEDCOM file. I never merge information from anywhere including Ancestry.com unless I have absolutely researched the names to the extent possible. This is why there is so much wrong information out there. User's information is always highly suspect.

For instance, I have found information on other's trees that pertained to my direct lines--people that I knew personally--and the information they had was dead wrong. When I contacted them to give them the correct information explaining that I knew these people personally and had better sources (they had none) that I would provide them, they refused to change it.

So much for online information. With Ancestry.com, at least you usually have digital images where you can verify transcribed information.

Personal trees--forget it. They're good for leads and nothing else. I spent 10 years following a bad lead until I found out recently the person had a different surname than what I was searching.

Bob Hendry from the east side of our BIG POND wrote:

"I have a family tree that was posted to Ancestry.com a couple of years ago. Since then, I have many updates to my main file, which is maintained in PAF5."

I am in that category, and proud of myself being a bright young man in my 80th year of age still maintaining my PAF records since ?1980s thru DOS then Windows then WIN XP and of course PAF5 the best ever!!

But now near the end of a road I get scared of wrecking my records thru carelessness or brain slowing. I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH "ADOPTED" status.

PAF5 Help options, do not seem to provide a clear idiot-proof route for me to switch 9 of the ten children of a married couple (each one having just one spouse/partner) who are showing on screen as ADOPTED, into BIOLOGICAL.

Will you dear reader, pls write me a recipe for achieving that switch?

Thanks, from Bundanoon NSW, one of the few towns which has banned the sale of bottled drinking water!

Cheers, Alistair M. Cameron

Direct reply to acameron@hinet.net.au would be appreciated.

Alistair:

Highlight one of the children you want to change from Adopted to Biological. Click "Edit" (next to "File" at the top of the window). In the drop-down list, click "Parents." In the box that pops up, you'll find a line that starts "Relationship to parents." To the right of that line, you'll find a box with "Adopted" in it. Click on the arrow next to the box and choose "Biological" from the drop-down list.


Then click "Save" at the bottom of the box.

You'll need to do this for each of the nine children.

I just replace the online data with the updated data from my local computer. Not difficult, albeit time-consuming for large files, and the previous file no longer appears online to confuse the unwary.