On December 26th 2011 I added 25 pictures to my local tree and ran the synchronization process. According to the application everything completed successfully. When I checked my online tree, in place of all the pictures were dummy placeholders. I contacted Ancestry.com support and was told that it may take awhile for media objects to appear. When they still had not appeared after three days I contacted support again. I finally received a response on January 2nd advising me to unlink and deleted my online tree and run the process again. I did this on January 3rd and the twenty-five pictures show up.

Here's the kicker:

The member trees have not been re-indexed since mid-November 2011. If you search for someone in my tree. For example, try my great-great-grandfather, George Talmage Justus. The last match, Justus - Painter Families is my tree. Unfortunately, it is my OLD tree, the one I deleted in January! If you click on the match link you get this message:


"We are currently unable to find the tree you are trying to access. We may be experiencing technical difficulties, or it is possible that the tree owner has removed this tree."


This also means that no one will be able to see your new tree. I have discussed this with Customer Care and they said they are aware of the problem and are trying to fix it. So far I have not been able to convince them that this is a critical issue. I suggested that they should stop telling people to delete their trees to fix problems.

In my humble opinion, the cure is worse than the disease.

I agree the indexing delay is a issue that needs to be resolved, but I think it is also important that ACOM has their site stable before they do reindex.

re: "This also means that no one will be able to see your new tree." Anyone you invite to your tree can find it ok, and all your data in the new tree is there.

With all the changes to ACOM and FTM, the sync issues seem to have mostly resolved. Hopefully ACOM will be able to reindex soon. When they do, there may be disruptions to service as the servers will likely be very busy for a while....

They also have the 1940 census coming out and the DNA project to be announced, so there is a lot going on.

People may also be able to find your tree through hints which may be more up to date. I see changes in my own trees in hints, right away. Also, they may be able to access your tree through your profile here on the message boards. Some people have their trees listed on their profiles. I don't know if accessing that takes you to the most recent tree or an older version. Of course, the above doesn't change the fact that it would be nice to get the indexing updated.

I agree with ginglish1 that is is "important that ACOM has their site stable before they do reindex".

I posted my online tree so that I might connect with others, whom I do not know, who are researching the same lines. If my tree is not in the index and others search for people in it, they will not find them. (Unfortunately, they will find the tree that I deletedand get the error message.) Regarding your suggestion that I invite them to my tree, how do I invite someone when I don't know who they are?

Are you suggesting that it is all right for the current system to be neglected while future projects are being worked on? I disagree. Active systems that are being supported with customer dollars should always be a company's number one priority. Every Friday night on "Who Do You Think You Are?", Ancestry.com is actively and very publicly soliciting new and existing customers to create their own trees on the premise that they might find someone or someone might find them.


The company has issued no notices about the member tree index not being updated. In fact, Ancestry.com support staff are routinely advising people to delete their existing trees and start over as they did to me. My post is simply advising that people not delete their trees. They are better off leaving their old trees online and attempting to fix their problems item by item. If you delete an entire tree, it will still show in searches until the problem is fixed. How would you like to find a thumbnail picture of your own great-great-grandmother and not be able to get to it or even find out who posted it? To add salt to the wound, all trees that have been added since mid-November are invisible to the general public.

scwbcm,

I just checked your profile and you do not appear to have an online member tree. I'm curious about why you chose to respond to my post.

This post was deleted by the author on 30 May 2012 7:21PM GMT

I'm not sure the index is complete. A cousin's tree which was taken private some weeks ago is still showing in the public listing.

While the items may be searchable, when you click on the image for more details, or to add to your own tree, they are still not showing up. Same problem since September 2011. Not a happy Ancestry customer right now.

I emailed ancestry about this today, complete with screen shots. There is way to get to what you are looking for though. From the blank page that loads, delete everything after the number that follows /tree/ in the url. This will take you to the pedigree view of the tree where the item you what is located. Navigate to the person you want and you'll be access to any media/stories attached to the person.