It’s official…we’ve converted all my trees to RootsMagic, synced them up to Ancestry.com without issue, and I’m done with Family Tree Maker. My only regret is that we wasted as much time (and blog posts!) waiting for FTM 2017 as we did. Months after we paid $29.99 to pre-order the version of Family Tree Maker, and four months after we were promised the product, we still can’t sync my main tree with Ancestry.com (Family Tree Maker 2017: 110 day (and counting) since we had working software). I tried RootsMagic as a test, and it’s synced first time/every time, and migration was nearly painless (Quick Review: RootsMagic 7.5 now sync’s with Ancestry.com, effectively killing MacKiev’s Family Tree Maker).
In order to pull people from FTM, RootsMagic is offering those of us who have an Ancestry.com subscription the full version of RM 7.5 (which includes TreeSync) and an E-Book with tips/tricks for using RootsMagic for $20 until July 31st!! That’s less than we paid for the FTM pre-order than never worked!!
We’re not sure you can get your money back from Software MacKiev for their failed product, but we’re happy to give you a reason to get out from underneath Family Tree Maker and on to a product that works and is supported, without having to spend more to do so.
So, here’s what we’re going to do: We’re going to buy you RootsMagic 7.5. The first 100 readers that made the mistake of pre-ordering Family Tree Maker 2017 who take advantage of the RootsMagic special (RootsMagic Special Offer) which gives you RootsMagic for $20, by July 31, 2017 will get a check from us for $20. Send us a copy of your pre-order email, and your RootsMagic confirmation email (send to: rick@anamericangenealogy.com), and we’ll mail you check for $20. It’s that easy.
We’re not sure you can get your money back from Software MacKiev for their failed product, but we’re happy to give you a reason to get out from underneath Family Tree Maker and on to a product that works and is supported, without having to spend more to do so. As always we are sponsored by no one, and we aren’t affiliated with RootsMagic in any way, this is just an incentive to help others who love this hobby to get back to using the tools they need.
Speaking of which, we’ll have one more deep dive into migrating from FTM to RootsMagic in the next week or so, and then enough talking about software, and back to talking about our person journey!
Family Tree Maker is so poor…. so sorry that I bought the 3 programs from 2012, 2014, and now this one.. I think I even bought it in 2009
How easy is it to sync Roots Magic to Ancestry?
Anita, it’s very easy. I was not able to convert an FTM tree to RootsMagic, and the have it sync to the Ancestry tree it was synced when Family Tree Maker worked. I had to download the tree to RootsMagic, and I was amazed at how quick and easy that was for our large (~4000 ancestor) tree with lots of media. Once that’s done, we’ve been syncing without issue. I will say it’s a little clumsy because RootsMagic has you confirm every change…it’s not like FTM where you accept every change with one click. I guess I like the control, but I don’t like how long it takes. For now, I’m just syncing more often, so it’s less clicks. But other than that, it’s easy, quick, and I haven’t had a single media error on sync!
If you have an earlier version of FTM you can still bring your file across to Rootsmagic by saving it as FTM 2012 format. RM will directly import this early version then all you need to do is run TreeShare (not TreeSync) to upload the tree to ancestry. If your tree already exists in ancestry then just run TreeShare to download it into a new RM file. There are some limitations but head over to the Rootsmagic website and it will tell you what they are. I also suggest you watch the webinars and join the RM Users Facebook group.
Anne_Marie – Thanks for the walk through, I hadn’t thought of exporting it as FTM 2012 from FTM 3. My first pass through we did what you suggested, and it worked fine, but we ended up with the 2nd tree once we downloaded from Ancestry. Since we was going to end up with two trees (imported from FTM and a separately, downloaded from Ancestry) for our main tree we just downloaded it without migration.
It worked great, and it even included the custom data types we’d created for DNA results. There is a weirdness where Ancestry treats a person/primary name as a single data entity, while RootsMagic treats Person and Name as two different fields, so profile pics from the Ancestry import don’t appear, but other than that, it was just like doing an FTM import.
We’ll get on the RM User group, thanks for the suggestion!
Can you handle trees with 90,000 people? 4,000 is not a large tree.
We don’t work for RootsMagic, or have anything to do with them…so I don’t know what the tree size limit might be. We’re just end-users 🙂
4000 is big tree for us, and a lot of folks, but you’re right….90k is WAY bigger 🙂