Unknown Spouse in Ancestry which of course is replicated in FTM

[Tim]

You didn't say where you downloaded to.
If it is FTM you can do as I did, run the Marriage report then export to Excel and use the filters. That is how I found out how many I have.

Yes I ran the Marriage Report in FTM, how did you export it to Excel from FTM?

 

[Tim]

I found it, I clicked on the share icon and created a .csv file. I have 654 to fix.

Interestingly, I have 91 entries with marriage dates but no wife.

The report only seems to use the husband as the base, are we missing errors if the report was run the other way around?

 

[Helen7]

The report only seems to use the husband as the base, are we missing errors if the report was run the other way around?

I don't think so, as the wife would appear alongside several husbands if she was married more than once, in the same way a husband is on several lines with different wives if he was married more than once. It's just that the husband is on consecutive lines whereas the wife isn't.

 

[At home in NZ]

I found it, I clicked on the share icon and created a .csv file. I have 654 to fix.

Interestingly, I have 91 entries with marriage dates but no wife.

That's a lot of manual work if Ancestry can't find a solution.
I have just looked the spreadsheet for one of my trees, I have 21 men without a spouse which led me to believe the report includes every man in the tree who has a 'partner'. I did a spot check, it has my own (ex) husband and my son-in-law.
Of the 21 men with no wives, 2 of them have marriage dates. Must look into those, later after I have answered Ancestry's inquest.

I have received a response form Ancestry asking me for full chapter and verse along the lines of what I was doing and which op system I use and is it up to date, how many devices I use, ete., etc.
I will endeavour to answer it without losing patience.
I will re-iterate that there are other users who have the same issue.

Watch this space, patiently

 

[Tim]

I don't think so, as the wife would appear alongside several husbands if she was married more than once, in the same way a husband is on several lines with different wives if he was married more than once. It's just that the husband is on consecutive lines whereas the wife isn't.

I was only talking about the blanks. The report shows husbands with a marriage date but no wife. Therefore there must be wives without husbands? I'm assuming it would give the same number of results? But I can't tell.

 

[Helen7]

I was only talking about the blanks. The report shows husbands with a marriage date but no wife. Therefore there must be wives without husbands? I'm assuming it would give the same number of results? But I can't tell.

Oh I see. At the start of my Marriage Report I have a list of wives with no husbands (that column being blank, hence it comes at the top of the alphabetical list), but they don't have marriage dates. These all appear to be women who had a child out of wedlock, and I don't know who the father was, hence the blank. In most cases these women did marry at some point so they appear alongside their husbands further down the list.

I also found a number of husbands with no wife but a marriage date. On investigating these, I found that there was an 'Unknown Spouse' in their record on FTM. Deleting that cured the problem.

 

[canadianbeth]

Where do you find this Marriage Report? I have looked at everything at the top of my FTM and do not see anything. I also do not see anything in my Ancestry tree.

 

[Helen7]

Where do you find this Marriage Report? I have looked at everything at the top of my FTM and do not see anything. I also do not see anything in my Ancestry tree.

If you click on the 'Publish' icon at the top of the FTM window, then look down the Publication Types listed on the left (under the Collection tab) and select 'Relationship Reports'. 'Marriage Report' is one of the reports offered.

 

[At home in NZ]

I have received a response form Ancestry asking me for full chapter and verse along the lines of what I was doing and which op system I use and is it up to date, how many devices I use, ete., etc.
I will endeavour to answer it without losing patience.
I will re-iterate that there are other users who have the same issue.

Watch this space, patiently

Having given them chapter and verse, this is the response:
We thank you for more information provided and are happy to help. For the profile you provided a screenshot for we did make a modification, to show you that the issue you are facing can be easily solved by editing the relationships. Please follow this article for more instructions:

Fixing Relationships in Trees (doesn't work)

I have no alternative but to provide this: https://support.ancestry.co.uk/s/article/Fixing-Relationships-in-Trees (still not working)

They have told nothing I do not know and they obviously do not know the quick fix for an individual is via the Edit Relationship drop down in the Profile.

During the last 10 or so years of my working life I had a stint as a Help Desk analyst and if an issue had been raised like this where large numbers are affected I would have escalated it to an analyst programmer with the expectation of a fix, even if they had to go 'behind the scenes' and manipulate data using whatever tools are appropriate.

Ancestry's biggest drawback for me is the lack of ability to run a report for analysis of data, I might have found this issue when there was only a small number of people in the first tree I ever built. I did not have FTM in those days and we shouldn't have to rely on an external programme to find errors.

 

[At home in NZ]

I am now going back to Ancestry to see if I can actually get blood out of a stone.

 

[jorghes]

I've been having serious problems with FTM/Ancestry for a while (finished with me deleting my main tree and recreating it, which means I lost all the comments and other information that was attached).

Are we talking about FTM's habit of creating an "unknown spouse" when something means that the marriage fact doesn't properly attach to both individuals?

 

[At home in NZ]

I've been having serious problems with FTM/Ancestry for a while (finished with me deleting my main tree and recreating it, which means I lost all the comments and other information that was attached).

Are we talking about FTM's habit of creating an "unknown spouse" when something means that the marriage fact doesn't properly attach to both individuals?

Sorry to hear about losing your tree, you must have been devastated I know I would have been.

We are talking about 'unknown spouse' in Ancestry which appears to be an Ancestry glitch.
FTM is only mentioned because it creates a report which Ancestry is incapable of.

 

[jorghes]

Sorry to hear about losing your tree, you must have been devastated I know I would have been.

We are talking about 'unknown spouse' in Ancestry which appears to be an Ancestry glitch.
FTM is only mentioned because it creates a report which Ancestry is incapable of.

Well, I have had a backup version, but I have to re-add all the sources etc etc etc. It's beyond annoying - it had refused to sync for months, then I merged it and it trashed it's sources (attached a single source to up to 1000 different people) and I couldn't get it to sync to fix it...

I wonder if it's the same error that occasionally detaches biological children from their parents and suddenly they have an "unknown relationship". I only notice it every so often and haven't figured out a way to find all the problems.

 

[At home in NZ]

I wonder if it's the same error that occasionally detaches biological children from their parents and suddenly they have an "unknown relationship". I only notice it every so often and haven't figured out a way to find all the problems.

I can't say I'm familiar with that error however I think you'll find the Parentage report in FTM will show it. Taking a brief look at that report for one of my trees I can see the Unknown error.
That's all I need !

 

[peter]

Has anyone asked MacKiev if they can fix the problem? I'd have thought they have the biggest incentive to put it right.

 

[At home in NZ]

Has anyone asked MacKiev if they can fix the problem? I'd have thought they have the biggest incentive to put it right.

We don't yet know if there are Ancestry users who do not have FTM but have this problem in their Ancestry trees, have you looked at yours?

 

[peter]

We don't yet know if there are Ancestry users who do not have FTM but have this problem in their Ancestry trees, have you looked at yours?

I wouldn't know what to look for - my tree looks normal to me. But whether it's an Ancestry issue or an FTM issue, surely MacKiev have a strong incentive to find a fix?

 

[At home in NZ]

I wouldn't know what to look for -

Try looking at Profiles to see if you have Unknown spouse, there is a screen shot in thread 9 which demonstrates what to look for.
If you read the whole discussion you will see that it has been agreed that it is an Ancestry problem.
I am waiting for another response from Ancestry, depending on what they come back with I will explore the McKiev option. I have looked at the Help in FTM, there is nothing about this sort of error.

 

[Pauline]

We don't yet know if there are Ancestry users who do not have FTM but have this problem in their Ancestry trees

It's much harder for us to find out, though. As yet I haven't found this problem in any of the Profiles I've looked at, but that doesn't mean it isn't there in ones I haven't looked at. I've checked quite a few but I can't check them all. (Not today anyway! )

 

[At home in NZ]

It's much harder for us to find out, though. As yet I haven't found this problem in any of the Profiles I've looked at, but that doesn't mean it isn't there in ones I haven't looked at. I've checked quite a few but I can't check them all. (Not today anyway! )

I found out because I was attempting to clear my Hints which entailed going into Profiles to check to see if I already had the information or, if it was a bogus Hint. After noticing a few profiles had Unknown spouse I decided to use FTM as a reporting tool.
As I have said/intended to say earlier in this discussion, lack of reporting in Ancestry has always been a personal bugbear. Because when I enter data i expect to be able to extract it and examine or analyse it.