Critical Data Losses Associated with Family Tree Maker 2008

[jadhunt]

Be afraid – be very afraid -- of losing valuable data when transferring/upgrading to Family Tree Maker 2008 (FTM2008) software. I highly recommend NOT upgrading to this product at this time, and instead staying with earlier versions of FTM or using other vendors’ software. ---------

I am an experienced genealogist with an extensive IT software development and testing background. When I recently attempted to upgrade to the recently released FTM2008 from Family Tree Maker 16 (FTM16), I experienced an large number of problems, the most dangerous and severe being LOSS OF DATA ! ! ---------

Below are my file statistics before and after upgrading to FTM2008: ---------

File Size: (BEFORE UPGRADE) 18.598 Mb (AFTER) 13,855 Mb ---------
Total individuals in data base: (BEFORE UPGRADE) 12,300 (AFTER) 12,300 ---------
Total marriages: (BEFORE UPGRADE) 3,769 (AFTER) 3,769 ---------
Total Text Records: (BEFORE UPGRADE) 194,103 (AFTER) 152,213 ---------

More than 20 percent of my text records were lost and failed to transfer. The lost records appear to be source data documenting events (i.e., birth, death, etc.) and individual notes for individuals. Also, some sources that did transfer appear to have been scrambled and no longer relate to the correct events. ---------

I initiated numerous communications with the technical staff who purportedly supports FTM2008, and, in turn, received comments such as “I do apologize that you are frustrated with the softwareâ€

[nuccia]

jadhunt

Wow, thanks for this information. I had heard there were some problems with the software and that some of the functions that were originally available in previous versions of FTM were no longer available, but I had no idea it was this bad. I'll take your advice and google it..

I also heard that there was a acquisition of ancestry last week..something else to look into..

Again, thanks for posting this.

[jadhunt]

This is a follow-up to my Nov. 3, 2007 posting concerning the potential for data loss while transferring information to Family Tree Maker 2008 (FTM2008).

Although efforts to make contact with the management team of FTM2008 were unsuccessful prior to my posting, two days after the posting, David Humphreys initiated contact which resulted in ongoing communication.

For those who are only “scanningâ€

[JamesBianco]

I just got a new PC this past weekend with Vista and when I loaded FTM 16 I got the message that it is known to have compatibility issues. I imported my GEDCOM and it took (no lie) 2 hours! This PC has 3G Ram, and is new out of the box, everything else is lightening fast.

I am so dissapointed.

[bonval]

Hello all -- I hope the New Year is treating everyone well. I have been absent a bit due to family health issues -- Stepdad 96 broke hip - was in patient and then in rehab, then went back into hospital with pneumonia. He came home and 86 yr old mom went in with pnuemonia -- she was followed by my hubby! So much for warm sunny Florida! Ha!
Anyway, I also bought new laptop with Vista (a ThinkPad with bells, whistles and I love it) but it has issues with the older version of FTM too so I suspect it is a problem with Vista relating to FTM and not FTM fault. Fortunately I saved GEDCOM and FTM files to CD and to external hard drive and I have been able to work around the issues albeit slowly. I am still on a learning curve for Vista at odd times (like I cannot get networked to my main PC for the printer access). I know you folks recommended the program that allows for language changes and I am attempting to learn that program -- it lost some of my data or stored it differently. But I imagine I will get used to it soon enough.

[peggymckee]

when I loaded FTM 16 I got the message that it is known to have compatibility issues.

I'm no computer expert, but Microsoft used to have a way to making incompaticle programs work better. Try googling--that's how I found the part of their website that deals with these issues. I've no experience with FTM however, so my suggestion may not be helpful. Good luck, Peg

[bonval]

That is true -- I did find a couple service pack updates on Microsoft.com that helped tremendously on some of the issues for Vista that were sort of buried issues.