FTM to be Rendered Useless

Post date: Apr 3, 2017 4:40:04 PM

Even if you don't sync your FTM tree with Ancestry, it appears that it may be necessary to upgrade to FTM 2017 anyway.

It sounds as if Software MacKiev (MacKiev) may be rendering your version of the Family Tree Maker software (FTM) largely or possibly completely useless unless you upgrade to its new, still bug-filled version, FTM 2017.

You may have missed the small print, but in a statement issued by MacKiev on Saturday regarding their failure to have a stable release of the FTM 2017 ready in time for the scheduled launch date (FTM 2017 was supposed to have been launched the day prior to this statement), they said:

"In the meantime, all those with existing FTM editions may continue to work until we ship. At this point, only syncing has been disconnected and Ancestry has agreed to temporarily maintain all other connection functions that will be replaced with FamilySync in FTM 2017. That means that Ancestry hints, search, merge, maps and the Web dashboard will all keep working until FTM 2017 is released."

The implication here is that, at a minimum, not only will previous versions of FTM no longer be able to sync with Ancestry (this feature was discontinued on 29 March), but once MacKiev are confident enough to release FTM 2017, you will no longer have access to Ancestry "hints", search, merge, maps, and Web dashboard in any version of FTM prior to 2017! Basically, all records and/or citations that you want to add to your tree on FTM will have to added manually. As of this writing, it is unclear if MacKiev plans to disable this function as well. I expect, however, that, if they had the ability to completely disable previous versions of FTM, they would.