Family Tree Analyser - A new paradigm

[Tomb]

As a New member I probably am raking over old ground, but I need to say that I have been a very happy user of FTM 2006/16. It served me well for some 10 years and a necessary adjunct for the production of my own family history books. I thought I had no need for newer technology. I have been an avid reader of the Lost Cousins Newsletters which have often advanced my techniques for discovery of missing information. I did dabble with FTM 2011 but was put off by its commercial overkill. The mention of Family Tree Analyser in Lost Cousins Newsletter suddenly opened up possibilities of tidying up all the loose ends one accumulates in a family tree. This magic box of tricks is an awesome tool and a little frightening to a raw recruit like me. This is in addition to succumbing to the powerful syncing mechanism of FTM 2014.

Although I had imported my FTM 2006/16 data files into FTM 2014 I was in for a rude awakening when trying to use Family Tree Analyser! In the past I did not record the actual source citation references because I knew I had image copies of Source Citations for Census data etc in appropriate family folders. In the source citation panel for each person I stuck to minimal references, preferring to place interesting details about each document, so at a glance I could see in a census for example, who was in the household their ages, occupation and where they lived.

For the Family Tree Analyser to work properly it needed the full reference facts, clearly an absence in my case! I tried using the 1881 census for a Roland Eastlake Butt - RG11; PN: 397; Folio: 46; page: 24 - the format as entered on the Lost Cousins site. FTA refused to recognise it!

What followed next was an induction (thank you Tim Nicholls) into the use of the online FTM 2014 version (Private) and adding the census to each person which generated the correct code. Through the wonderful mechanism of syncing, my FTM 2014 was able to add the new reference of Class: RG11; Piece: 397; Folio: 46; Page: 24; GSU roll: 1341086. Wow what a difference! FTA recognised it immediately!

You might get sick of me extolling the virtues of this wonderful program but already I am unlocking more offspring of my direct ancestors siblings. The most seductive FTA tab for me is the Colour Reports tab. It shows in various colours your progress in entering censuses and whether they have been entered on the Lost Cousins site.

I have a lot more to discover from this program and maybe I should go through the issues and pains in another post.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

For the Family Tree Analyser to work properly it needed the full reference facts, clearly an absence in my case! I tried using the 1881 census for a Roland Eastlake Butt - RG11; PN: 397; Folio: 46; page: 24 - the format as entered on the Lost Cousins site. FTA refused to recognise it!

What followed next was an induction (thank you Tim Nicholls) into the use of the online FTM 2014 version (Private) and adding the census to each person which generated the correct code. Through the wonderful mechanism of syncing, my FTM 2014 was able to add the new reference of Class: RG11; Piece: 397; Folio: 46; Page: 24; GSU roll: 1341086. Wow what a difference! FTA recognised it immediately!

Interesting Tomb. I've tried to get FTAnalyzer to recognise most reference formats, although to be honest it does precious little with them other than display them on some reports. In particular it couldn't care less if you have a census ref or not for ANY of the census reports. What matters is whether you have a census fact (or residence fact if you have that option turned on). Census references are a late addition to help people enter data to Lost Cousins. They are NEVER used to determine if a census fact is valid or present.

In fact you could have a tree with NO census references and FTAnalyzer would work just fine, all the colour reports and census reports would work as normal with absolutely no difference visible other than a blank reference column.

That said to be honest I'm surprised your quoted census reference wasn't recognised, as it is so close to the other format. I'll need to investigate as really it shouldn't complain with what you'd entered.

Can you paste a sample of the exact text of a rejected reference and I'll see about adding support for that.

 

[Tomb]

Alexander, I am into the rhythm now of using Ancestry to save my Census and Lost cousin facts and all is working well.
Re - 'Can you paste a sample of the exact text of a rejected reference and I'll see about adding support for that'.

I replicated similar circumstances as my previously stated case (imported census references from FTM 2006/16)) and came up with the same result. That is - the FTA Colour Report did not acknowledge my census reference. Here is what I did. I entered the 1871 census reference into the attached source citation and exported FTM 2014 to a gedcom file. The Colour Report remained red for the 1871 census.



However if I use Ancestry to save the file online to my tree and sync it to my PC FTM 2014 tree and export via gedcom the FTA colour report will show green.

 

[Tim]

Hi Tom/Alexander, the problem Tom had was that he had not been creating a Census/Residence fact. As you can see from Tom's image above, the census ref data is in the Name Fact. FTM does also add the census ref data there.

I just took Tom through the steps for adding a census record to a person in FTM. These steps also add the census ref data by default. By creating the Facts this way, we were able to get FTA to see the Lost Cousins Facts and the census facts and the reports are now working for him.

 

[Tomb]

Thank you Tim and Alexander for your help in this matter and I can report I am having great fun changing red to green on the Colour Reports!

However there is a wrinkle I cannot get rid of and wonder if I might have to unlink what I have done and start over.
On the lost cousin tab I am informed in red that I have 2 census facts with no lost cousin facts. This is echoed in the Lost Cousin w/bad Census. See below:



Here are the facts:
Both people are shown in green on the Colour charts.
Louis Patrick in the UK Colour Census Report as dark green in 1881 because he was in Ireland and light green in England in 1911.
Mary Anne Fryday in the Irish Colour Census Report as light green in 1911.

Both people had Census residence and Lost Cousin facts recorded in the Individual and Shared facts of FTM 2014.

Both people had Census residence and Lost Cousin facts recorded in their online trees.

So is there a step in this case I am not carrying through correctly on line?

Let me know if you require my FTM gedcom to undo this knot.

 

[Bryman]

I have not been following this discussion closely but I believe there is an error in FTA regarding some of the red statements.
There is an outstanding issue (#13394?) in this area which might make these listed errors go away when implemented. I suggest that you wait to hear more from Alexander before beating your head against a brick wall.

 

[Tim]

Hi Tom,

The issue with Mary Anne Fryday is that you have 2 1911 census facts and 1 Lost Cousins Fact. You need to remove 1 1911 fact. I think Louis may have had the same issue

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Alexander, I am into the rhythm now of using Ancestry to save my Census and Lost cousin facts and all is working well.
Re - 'Can you paste a sample of the exact text of a rejected reference and I'll see about adding support for that'.

I replicated similar circumstances as my previously stated case (imported census references from FTM 2006/16)) and came up with the same result. That is - the FTA Colour Report did not acknowledge my census reference. Here is what I did. I entered the 1871 census reference into the attached source citation and exported FTM 2014 to a gedcom file. The Colour Report remained red for the 1871 census.

View attachment 666

However if I use Ancestry to save the file online to my tree and sync it to my PC FTM 2014 tree and export via gedcom the FTA colour report will show green.

Ok yes, Tim has identified the issue you had a reference against a NAME fact and not a CENSus or RESIdence fact type. What I was trying to say was that the census REFERENCE is not used at all to determine colours the only thing used to determine colours is the fact type. The reference is just a bit of text to help on reports.

The counting issue does sound like the issue Bryman indicated which I still need to publish a fix for. My reticence in publishing a new version comes down to two things. The certificate used to sign the code expired since the last version was uploaded and I suspect a new version will require everyone to uninstall before they install the new version. This will generate a LOT of issues raised. This comes to the second thing, I'm extremely busy at work at present installing new software that will manage the main activity of the business. We anticipate the testing phase will be complete by the end of March/beginning of April though that may slip and we should be live sometime in April. At which point I witake a couple of weeks holiday to recover. Its really only after the holiday I'd have the mental energy to deal with issues arising from an upgrade to FTAnalyzer that generated a LOT of issues from users.

 

[Bryman]

Thanks for the heads up Alexander. The reason why there are a lot of issues is that there are an increasing number of users, all finding FTA a wonderful tool and wanting lots of extras specific to their own way of using it. The frustration has arisen because you are so busy and nobody has known when you might be available to make further changes.

Now that we have some idea of the probable outlook, I am sure that we can all use (inconvenient) work-arounds while we count off the days (till Christmas?) when we get to open our presents and try out any new/improved facilities.

Good luck with your other sideline of third party software installation/testing. I hope that everything goes smoothly and that there are no over-runs which might impact your schedule. There is no rush for me as I am busy with visitors from UK and enjoying wonderful warm, sunny and calm weather so have 'reduced' need for FTA just now.

 

[Bob Spiers]

***NEW POSTING UNDER FT ANALYSER HEADING***

Alexander, I have recently had to move FTA to a different computer (not new just another of my devices running Windows 10). No problems with the download despite having to do via the Microsoft Store. After installing I duly applied an Ancestry Gedcom but keep getting the same error message over and over, which despite asking me to report same to ftanalyser.com/issues draws a blank response and with persistence end up on the GitHub site which refuses to let me proceed without joining and goodness knows what...life is too short to pursue that so in the end revert to a LC posting.

So, please can you tell me what to do when receiving this error message: "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" which I am sure makes perfect sense to you as the FTA author but goes right over my head. I am sure the cure is straight forward despite the riddle of the error message, so what should I do to get the Gedcom recognised in FTA?

Thanks for your help anyway which I am sure will be forthcoming, even if Tim has to remind you of this posting,

EDIT BY PETER: please remember that it is ftanalyZer and ftanalyZer.com

 

[Tim]

I've let Alexander know of the post.
Have you tried any other gedcoms? Do they get the same error?

 

[Bob Spiers]

I've let Alexander know of the post.
Have you tried any other gedcoms? Do they get the same error?

No not yet but that is something I will be doing and good advice. Thanks for letting Alexander know.

EDIT; Tried my wife's Ancestry Tree Gedcom, and same message

 

[Bob Spiers]

I also had to upload FTM 2019 to a different computer and Mackiev recognised the purchase and allowed a free download. I mention this because the import of my Gedcom into FTM synced perfectly and I now have the Tree in FTM as before but on a different device.

 

[Bob Spiers]

Shush! Tried again mid-afternoon to Open my Gedcom import file from Ancestry - previously failing each and every time - it completed WITHOUT the error message. Same Gedcom as before so methinks perhaps Alexander worked his magic from afar, or maybe the gremlin that prevented it loading earlier has gone off to pastures new.

It still means of course I am none the wiser and would still like to know the probable cause of the error message... but otherwise will now follow through with the things I set out to do now I am able to use FTA again.

 

[Tim]

Is your file saved to the cloud?

 

[Bob Spiers]

Is your file saved to the cloud?

Please explain, what cloud where and how? I have Dropbox for documents/data & photos = One Drive for Excel spreadsheets and Word documents...but Gedcom files just to my PC downloads folder after downloading from Ancestry. Why do I need to cloud save them and how do you go about this. Thanks

 

[At home in NZ]

Please explain, what cloud where and how? I have Dropbox for documents/data & photos = One Drive for Excel spreadsheets and Word documents...but Gedcom files just to my PC downloads folder after downloading from Ancestry. Why do I need to cloud save them and how do you go about this. Thanks

Bob, how can you ask this question? you have been participating in the discussion Family Tree Maker (FTM) - a survey in which you said you use FTM2019, one of the features of that version is cloud storage.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Sorry been super busy and not logged into Facebook or personal emails to see Tim’s message. The object reference not set is what is known as a null pointer exception it means it’s trying to use a data object that hasn’t been setup.
What I’d need to diagnose is the info in the more details button - up to the point where there is a line of dashes and it starts listing loads of version numbers. From that line onwards isn’t useful. Plus I’d need a sample GEDCOM file that reproduces the error so I can test it on my system.

Unfortunately though we are in the process of doing a soft go live of a new finance system at work, it went into live test mode on 1st October with a planned real go live for 1st November or 1st December. So, I’m just too exhausted after I’m done working for the day to even think of looking at the code for FTAnalyzer just now. Sorry.

Of course you may be right and the gremlin has taken a break. Still it would be extremely useful if the program does the same again to copy and paste the info from the more details button as that tells me where in the 10,000+ lines of code the error happened. Without that info it’s needle in a haystack time.

 

[Bob Spiers]

Bob, how can you ask this question? you have been participating in the discussion Family Tree Maker (FTM) - a survey in which you said you use FTM2019, one of the features of that version is cloud storage.

Easy really as I thought I was responding to an FTAnalyser question about cloud saving. I now realise -as you seem to have done - that Tim was asking about FTM so you make a good point even though I take no action to save to the 'cloud', as I explain.

FTM is not my mainstay FH program, that is reserved for Tribal Pages. However I enjoy its many features revealed to me over time by Forum members but my decision to go with it in the first place and with earlier versions, was its ability to sync with my Ancestry Trees. That was the 'be-all and end-all for having it.

I am by no means an aficionado in its use. Indeed all to often I even forget to close it down correctly, because I have moved on to other things and forgotten it remains open in the background and simply close the device. This means the next time I open FTM I face the trauma of the ubiquitous 'FTM did not shut down correctly' message and the need to Compact.

Even when I manually close using the 'x' button which 'auto-saves', I have not taken action to have the file uploaded to (say) Dropbox because I have not seen the need to do so. Perhaps someone will remind why I should, bearing in mind FTM opens in the last Tree viewed and allows the ability to switch to another by clicking on it within the program. Even if there is a problem in opening a Tree, I can always (as I have just done when moving FTM to a different computer) upload an Ancestry Tree -gremlins permitted - and start over.

 

[Bob Spiers]

Of course you may be right and the gremlin has taken a break. Still it would be extremely useful if the program does the same again to copy and paste the info from the more details button as that tells me where in the 10,000+ lines of code the error happened. Without that info it’s needle in a haystack time.

Don't fret Alexander it will wait another day, and besides at the moment the gremlin (or whatever) has decided to take its own time out. Should it return I will do as you ask, meanwhile if the term is still in use..."take five"