FTAnalyzer - Are you using it yet?

[Tim]

FTAnalyzer (FTA) is a wonderful tool to help you analyze your Family Tree Data. FTAnalyzer can be downloaded here.

FTA can identify many different types of errors in your tree data, such as Births after Deaths, Burials before Deaths, Birth before age 13, etc. In fact there are 14 of these error types that the tool will show you. There are census reports that show you who you still need to find, and a new Lost Cousins report which is colour coded so that you can see who you can or have entered on Lost Cousins.

There are reports on locations used in your Tree which then can be opened on a map, reports on Occupations, family groups and many more.

The new Lost Cousins report is just so useful in helping you determine who you still need to add to the Lost Cousins site.

So my question, Are you using it yet?

 

[Liberty]

Coo, it's a sales pitch!
Tim, I fall into the category of 'other' - probably not, but not because I know everything.

 

[Tim]

Coo, it's a sales pitch!
Tim, I fall into the category of 'other' - probably not, but not because I know everything.

Sales pitch? No, just a top tip.

But you haven't voted yet!

 

[Liberty]

No - which category/answer?

 

[Liberty]

Ok I see you've put in a category for me and those like me. Thank you.

 

[Tim]

Anyone else now thinking of using or have started using FTA?

 

[DavidL]

I'm using it but it has significant gaps for someone like me who does not record information in a "correct" fashion. For instance, I have recorded census sources in notes rather than as a "fact" in FTM. That means I can't check whether I have included all ancestors in Lost Cousins, and with more than 5,000 entries it would be a monumental task to go through them all again. But there are other interesting aspects of analysis and more being added all the time. I will persevere.

 

[Mike]

I'm using it and really like it except it connects to findmypast.co.uk and I am registered with findmypast.com
Also I use Ubuntu so I have to dig out a Windows PC to run it. Well worth the inconvenience though.

Mike

 

[trebor]

Just to keep you happy Tim - I am a user and find FTA really useful for finding errors or inconsistent data entries in my tree as well as highlighting missing information especially in the various censuses (or should this be censusii?)

Bob

 

[Alexander Bisset]

I'm using it and really like it except it connects to findmypast.co.uk and I am registered with findmypast.com
Also I use Ubuntu so I have to dig out a Windows PC to run it. Well worth the inconvenience though.

Mike

Hmmm good point there should probably be an option to select which variant of Ancestry/FindMyPast to use.

Other than .com which other dot something variants of these sites are there?

 

[peter]

Findmypast.com,au and findmypast.ie are the only other findmypast sites at the moment. Use the dropdown menu at the bottom right of the Ancestry home page to find out all the other Ancestry sites.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Thanks Peter, so the full list should be :

• Findmypast.co.uk
• Findmypast.com
• Findmypast.com.au
• Findmypast.ie
• Ancestry.co.uk
• Ancestry.com
• Ancestry.ca - with two language ids
• Ancestry.com.au
• Ancestry.de
• Ancestry.it
• Ancestry.fr
• Ancestry.se
• Freecen.org.uk
• FamilySearch.org

Is that right? I may struggle with the non English ones if the field names don't match up.

 

[Tim]

I'm using it but it has significant gaps for someone like me who does not record information in a "correct" fashion. For instance, I have recorded census sources in notes rather than as a "fact" in FTM. That means I can't check whether I have included all ancestors in Lost Cousins, and with more than 5,000 entries it would be a monumental task to go through them all again. But there are other interesting aspects of analysis and more being added all the time. I will persevere.

I have exactly the same issue. I am going through at the moment adding all the census data I've found as facts.
Then I plan to use the Lost Cousins report which will show in yellow, all the people I can add to Lost Cousins. I've been doing the Beta testing for FTA so I know I have loads I can enter already

 

[Alexander Bisset]

I'm using it but it has significant gaps for someone like me who does not record information in a "correct" fashion. For instance, I have recorded census sources in notes rather than as a "fact" in FTM. That means I can't check whether I have included all ancestors in Lost Cousins, and with more than 5,000 entries it would be a monumental task to go through them all again. But there are other interesting aspects of analysis and more being added all the time. I will persevere.

I feel your pain David. However as you might expect there isn't a lot I can do to read a note and understand what it means and who it applies to. Notes by their very nature are flexible free-hand comments with little structure.

One tip however for Family Tree Maker users. Go to the People view and look at the very bottom right of the window. There is a button called "Customise View..." using this brings up a form where you can customise the regular fields you enter. If you add Census and/or residence to this it makes it a lot quicker to add a census fact to someone.

 

[peter]

Thanks Peter, so the full list should be.......

Looks about right. You're unlikely to have LostCousins members using the non-English sites, but I realise you have plans for world domination (Tim told me).

You might have a problem with the overseas FMP sites as they have a completely different search from the UK site.

 

[Mike]

Yes I tried just changing the url from .co.uk to .com but as you say Peter it didn't work.
If you don't have a .com account I'm happy to help work out the required url, just give me a hint as to what search is needed.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Yes I tried just changing the url from .co.uk to .com but as you say Peter it didn't work.
If you don't have a .com account I'm happy to help work out the required url, just give me a hint as to what search is needed.

Thanks for the offer Mike. What to do is to click on someone that is a US person and have FTAnalyzer search ancestry.co.uk copy and paste the entire URL it took you to for reference. Now click edit search and note the values. On a separate tab login to ancestry.com and manually try a search for the person trying as best as possible to ensure that you match character for character the search on .co.u page with the search on ancestry.com (hence the separate tabs so you can flick between them to check).

Once you are happy the two searches have the same fields populated (note any variances as that will be useful) do the search on ancestry.com and the copy and paste the entire URL.

NB. when you get the URL you MUST NOT click anything between getting the result and copy and pasting the URL as this often subtly changes what the URL was. So it must be as soon as the search page comes up first thing to do is to copy the URL. I found that out the hard way during testing when the result would actually find ancestors on the census I'd not got a census for so I'd get distracted checking the census entry. I learned clicking back doesn't end up with precisely the same URL at times.

 

[Tim]

Have any newer forum members started to try FTA, or are there any out there who are thinking of trying? Don't forget to cast your vote.

 

[Susan48]

Have any newer forum members started to try FTA, or are there any out there who are thinking of trying? Don't forget to cast your vote.

I'd like to use FTA but I'm a Mac user - doesn't this count me out?

 

[Tim]

I'd like to use FTA but I'm a Mac user - doesn't this count me out?

No. It can run on a Mac if you have a windows emulator or host program such as Parallels.

There is a download guide here for FTA, do you use a Windows emulator?