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"Common ancestors" not working

B

BarbaraL

Member
Many people on my match list show the link "Common ancestors" in the third column, but when I click on it, I get just the person's tree (if it's public) and the message on the left "How are you and XX related. Common Ancestors. We can't find any common ancestors ..." and the box below is blank. This happens with every person marked "common ancestors", even with several first cousins. We (the cousins) all have public linked trees and the connection should be obvious.
Today I logged in as if I was one of my first cousins (she gave me her password) and I see what I should see, named common ancestors which click through to a drop-down tree showing all the links on the way.
I text-chatted to someone at Ancestry yesterday who told me a load of rubbish and was no help at all. (He said it wasn't working because I didn't have full details of three of the 16 g g gp. He also said the common ancestors are shown as green on the tree, but that is just shared surnames.)
Anyone else had this happen?
How do I contact Ancestry without a live "text chat"?
 
Have you got a screenshot Barbara?

Don't you see a box like this to the left of the tree?
upload_2022-8-15_14-42-45.png
 
Common Ancestors is working fine for me. Can I suggest that rather than logging-in as your cousin (which is not something I've ever done) you try managing her DNA test from your own account?
 
I don't want or need to manage her account, she manages it fine herself. I only did that as a one-off to see if Common Ancestors was working for her, and it is. It also eliminated the possibility that it was some problem local to my computer.
 
In the DNA settings, have you linked the tree to yourself? If you are getting no common ancestors with anyone then it must be down to your setup.
 
BarbaraL said:
I don't want or need to manage her account, she manages it fine herself.
Click to expand...
If you don't manage her DNA, hopefully you allow her to manage or collaborate on yours? Collaborating with cousins is incredibly important - working independently you'll miss out on key insights.

Have you always had this problem with Common Ancestors, or have you only just got your DNA results? The background processing usually takes a few days. Is ThruLines working for you?

Also, have you updated your tree recently, or only just attached your tree to your DNA results?
 
I got my DNA results several years ago, for just one purpose, to confirm an Irish link with a probable distant cousin who I already knew. That worked. And at that time I just said "Oh that's interesting, there's AA and BB" and so on and didn't delve deeply. Common ancestors was working then. I haven't added anything to my tree recently, as it just shows direct ancestors, to give the DNA some data to work on. I keep my detailed tree off-line. It's only in the last few weeks, seeing all the talk about how to get more out of it, that I have started looking at all the matches, sorting into "shared match" groups and trying to work out how people are connected. And then I noticed that I wasn't seeing what I remembered seeing on Common Ancestors. ThruLines is working.
 
Have you tried getting your cousin to log in to your account on her computer to see if the common ancestors work for her? This should help confirm if the issue is related to your account rather than to your browser or computer. The more you can confirm you’ve ruled out the obvious, the more chance you have of getting something useful out of Ancestry.
 
BarbaraL, I think you're right that Ancestry is doing something that should be impossible. If it is putting up the "common ancestor" flag then it must have working links for your tree and other data. All I can suggest is that a particular internal link to your DNA test or to your linked tree has got mangled, and without it Ancestry can't find your common ancestors or can't generate the link diagram.

You can't do anything about the DNA data, but you could try reloading and linking the tree, to force Ancestry to regenerate those links. Ideally the current tree should be deleted first, but if you've added anything within Ancestry that would be lost. Unlinking it and possibly renaming it is not quite such a full reset.
 
Stuart said:
You can't do anything about the DNA data, but you could try reloading and linking the tree, to force Ancestry to regenerate those links. Ideally the current tree should be deleted first, but if you've added anything within Ancestry that would be lost. Unlinking it and possibly renaming it is not quite such a full reset.
Click to expand...
I agree that something like that may be the only answer if Ancestry don't take the issue seriously or do anything to rectify it. But I think before doing anything too drastic it may be better to see if the cousin can log in and test the common ancestor feature from her computer, as I suggested above.
 
BarbaraL said:
I got my DNA results several years ago, for just one purpose, to confirm an Irish link with a probable distant cousin who I already knew. That worked. And at that time I just said "Oh that's interesting, there's AA and BB" and so on and didn't delve deeply. Common ancestors was working then. I haven't added anything to my tree recently, as it just shows direct ancestors, to give the DNA some data to work on. I keep my detailed tree off-line. It's only in the last few weeks, seeing all the talk about how to get more out of it, that I have started looking at all the matches, sorting into "shared match" groups and trying to work out how people are connected. And then I noticed that I wasn't seeing what I remembered seeing on Common Ancestors. ThruLines is working.
Click to expand...
From what you've said it's clearly not an urgent problem, though it is an intriguing one. Pauline's suggestions are worth following up, but do bear in mind that after uploading/linking a new tree it may take a few days for things to happen behind the scenes.

Please let us know how it works out in case anyone else experiences a similar problem in the future.
 
Thank you all. I followed the advice from Pauline and Stuart, and Common Ancestors is now working.
Sorry it's taken a while to get back, but I went on holiday in the interim and couldn't get back onto the problem until I got back. I checked my cousin's account, and HER Common Ancestors was working. So I took a deep breath, deleted my tree and waited a few days. Then I made a Gedcom from my off-line tree and uploaded it, made sure it was linked to my DNA and waited. Yesterday evening both ThruLines and Common Ancestors kicked in. Phew!
Thanks to all.
 
Have noted this morning that the Common Ancestors filter has stopped selecting all my cousins with Common Ancestors flags. Not investigated but 50% are not being selected. Temporary glitch? - must have been, seems to be back to normal
 
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I seem to have a little glitch this morning as well. When I logged on I saw a new match and one that actually had a linked tree. Most of my new matches have either no tree or an unlinked one. When I clicked on her name her tree showed my 2nd great-grandfather listed yet on the side it states 'we cannot find any common ancestors for you and ***". I will be adding her to my common ancestors anyway.
 
They must be keen, it usually takes a few days for new arrivals to link their trees, and most of them only have a few, private, names to start with. Not that we would know, if you click on them to look at their unlinked tree, or who you share as close cousins, they disappear from the unviewed selection so unless you have made note of their names they get lost amongst the thousands of others.
 
Yesterday using the Unviewed and Common Ancestors filters I was given a DNA match to a match with a Private Tree - when I went to their DNA record Ancestry said they could find no Common ancestors, even though their record had the Common Ancestors tag.
Today the same pair of filters produced no matches (I had viewed yesterdays in checking it)- Taking the Unviewed off I went through the Common Ancestors matches (to see if any of those I had already looked at had matched) and have found more than one Unviewed match with the Common Ancestors tag, so 'no matches' was a false return. On going to their DNA panels, again Ancestry said they could find no Common ancestors ??
And the number of DNA matches with Common Ancestors has dropped from 183 to 71!!
A glitch or two to be aware of.
 
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