Main Family Tree Maker Notes page for tips on using FTM, helpful links etc.
This page was created to hold notes about FTM 2012 features and updates, in anticipation of the UK release of Family Tree Maker 2014 in Sep. 2013. At March 2017, that is also old hat.
FTM 2012
The final version of Family Tree Maker 2012 was 21.0.0.723 (patch/update released 30 Nov 2012). The update included, per official announcement:
1. TreeSync improvements
2. Hierarchical place names improvements
3. General bug fixes
See Cutlock & Co FTM Sept update article for notes on the update process and comments on recent enhancements, connected with the more significant previous patch 21.0.0.704, released 21st Sept 2012. The official list of improvements it included:
1. Improvements to TreeSync reliability and performance.
2. Private Media – Media items can be marked private and will be excluded from TreeSync.
3. Web Links – Person and citation web links can now be created in Family Tree Maker and can be synchronized between Family Tree Maker and Ancestry Member Trees.
4. Improved Sync Log – The TreeSync Details log can now be printed and now shows the names of people who made each change that is being synchronized to Family Tree Maker from Ancestry Member Trees.
5. Improved Backup & Restore – A synced tree can now be backed up and restored to the same or another computer in a way that allows syncing to continue.
6. Place Name Hierarchies – Place names can now better accommodate addresses and other place detail (such as cemetery, church, hospital, or historical names, etc.). This new capability also allows places to be displayed as part of their hierarchical structure if desired (this can be turned on or off).
7. Copy & Paste Facts – Facts (including date, place, description, notes, media, and source citations) can be copied from one person and pasted to anyone else in the tree. When pasting you can select any/all members of the person’s family and paste to all at once.
8. Updated help for all of the new and enhanced features added during the past year.
9. Numerous other bug fixes and minor enhancements.
Previous patch 21.0.0.580 released 17th May 2012. They have finally fixed the Historical Notes issue (see lower down this page) so you no longer need to manually copy a file if you have tailored these. The FTM upgrade notes say:
This is a major update for Family Tree Maker 2012. This update includes the following:
General Improvements
– Improvements to TreeSync flow, stability, and performance
– Fixed UI layout & resizing problems occurring on some systems (more prolific in Windows 7)
– Better handling of media, notes, and sources in file merge
– Better handling of media in web merge
– Bug fixes with tasks, media, and other areas
– Improved source template support for City Directories
– Support for 1940 US Census source templates
New Features
– New Family View report. Presents the ancestors, spouse, & children of a person (similar to the Family View in the People workspace). My comment: A neat little option.
– Fact Merge. Ability to merge multiple instances of the same fact type for an individual. Comment: sounds useful.
– Support for adding a spouse that is not a parent of the children listed (when adding a spouse to a single parent in the family view). My comment: yippee, I’ve had problems here, ending up with duplicate individuals on Ancestry after sync.
Report Enhancements
– General Report Issues (These improvements affect multiple reports)
– General speed improvements especially in cases where notes and/or sources are included
– Saved charts & reports are now listed alphabetically
– Individuals To Include dialog opens with the current person selected in the list
Relationship Chart
– Father and mother are both included (at top) when relationship goes through a set of parents
– Added option for using short place names
– Added option for automatically resizing text to fit
Individual Report
– Clearer notation in instances where a spouse is listed with no children
– Added option to include/exclude lifespan in Individual Summary header
– Added option to include/exclude individual summary on subsequent pages
Notes Report
– Added support for allowing notes to span across page breaks
Patch 509 released 9th March 2012. Similar text in the upgrade notes to the previous patch (506).
Patch 506 – sync improvements, 31st Jan. The upgrade notes say: “This update includes some important improvements for syncing source citations, relationships, and accepted & rejected hints. It resolves some data issues that were causing sync to fail in some cases. It includes sync stability and performance improvements.”
Patch 466 was 21st Dec 2011 (a fix for image sync?), 21.0.0.452 on 6th Dec, with the UK release version (Oct. ’11) as 21.0.0.388.
Version notes and links
- Article on initial experiences.
- {GONE: See Ancestry help answer 5409 for how to update FTM 2012 (patching version 21).}
Other FTM 2012 specific notes
Historical Events are customisable – more details on main FTM Notes page. Up to FTM 2012’s patch 580, a fresh uncustomised database was loaded by the install routine when upgrading to the latest version. Here’s the previous notes on how to get back to your tweaked history prior to this patch (a bit techie):
Find the <HistoricalFacts.xml> file lurking under the current version/version number sub-folder of Ancestry.com in your user AppData folder*, make a copy and/or rename. Find the old one from the previous version in similar place and copy across. (These files and folders are usually left behind when old versions of the software are deleted.)
* In Windows 7, this is on the lines of OS (C:)/Users/{username}/Appdata/Local/Ancestry.com/Family Tree Maker 2012/20.0.0.388
Tree Sync success and failure
Experiences with the synchronisation feature introduced with the 2012 version are on Sync FTM to Ancestry page.
Related posts
- Family Tree Maker September (2012) update.
- First update for Family Tree Maker 2012.
- Update tree software and Ancestry sub too (somewhat out-of-date now).
- Keeping the family trees in sync Announcing the 2012 version of Family Tree Maker.
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