07/07/2024
**Not to be perceived as anything other than personal experience**
Sorry, this is a very long post
I use Family Tree Builder through MyHeritage for my family tree, and have used MyHeritage for YEARS. I personally LOVE FTB, but like any software, it has its faults. I was almost in tears a couple days ago, and then realized it was because of a program feature I had used...which made it even worse.
I use the software in spurts, as I have time. Like many, I tend to be like the memes of doing research for HOURS AND HOURS. My day job is working from home and I haven't had work available...sucks for money but yay for research! So...I started TRYING to dig in to DNA branches I still needed to connect to the tree. I have them labeled so I can find them. But...I couldn't find the ones I was looking for, and couldn't remember the name. So, started looking at other resources where I might have saved it, and silly me, I hadn't saved anything at resource one. Resource 2? Yay...still there. But...where's the tree branch? No where. I pulled up the DNA match and started searching every name from their tree...finally found ONE match.
I first found 2 people sourrounded by "unknown" people. I was seriously gutted. I knew I had previously entered over 50 people, more than the DNA match had, and it all appeared to be gone. Thankfully, because of the rarity of the sources I had kept at least one easily accessibly and didn't just put them all as source listings. I found more and more "unknown" blank and random people as I started filling in the blanks. Not only did this help my memory, but it helped me "fill in the blanks" as I went along.
As I went through my source material and starting restoring, I did one of the huge no-nos and put very few sources back in. This was for two reasons...I was saving them on one of my other favorite places (FamilySearch), where I should have saved them to begin with, and I was in a hurry to get this tree rebuilt.
I say this...you should ALWAYS have sources for your tree. What I did to restore and rebuild this was a major no-no. What I lost had sources...every single person. I do plan to go back through and fill in sources.
With that being said, I have restored nearly all of the people from that branch that were lost. Now that I know the problem, I also know there was a lot more lost, and I'm not sure how much I can find to restore it.
The cause of all of this? A feature found in a couple spots in the sofwtware that allows for privacy of information or indivuals. In this case it was "this person is private(do not sync to family site)" in the notes section, there is "this note is private (do not sync to family site)". Normally this privacy feature would not be a problem. However, syncing to the family site is also considered by MyHeritage to be the correct form of backup for the tree. Herein lies the problem. I had a software issue that started several months ago...there were a couple family members in the great granparent range that I could not open, and I mean a couple people became consistent. Others were sporadic, but it was a huge problem. The software was freezing or kicking me out when I tried to do anything with those family members. After months of that happening, I contacted tech support and they were awesome (I'm not knocking them for this). It did take a while, but eventually we got it solved. After weeks or months of emails back and forth, they had me essentially delete my tree and all versions on the computer (multiple times), and download it fresh from the online version. What I didn't realize at the time was I lost all the little "private" things would be lost. Some of it didn't click in until I was writing this very long post.
As much as I love the tools with MyHeritage and FTB, there has GOT to be a better way. *Also, please note, MyHeritage TOS states users essentially must preserve privacy of the living, which makes this extra important (and I personally believe in protecting privacy as well)*
With all of this being said, take a look at the tools you use, and make sure you understand what they do. It's always a good idea to have an offline backup (which I previously did). I am also going to shoot a message to MyHeritage suggesting they find a way to make those privacy sections part of the online backup but still private.
Thanks for reading.
