Ancestry.com and Third Party Add-ons

[DBT]

This might be an off topic question for this forum but I thought I'd ask. Does anybody here use third party tools like Family Tree Maker or RootsMagic with your Ancestry trees?

I'm looking for a way to identify and fix errors in my tree and pull custom reports. For example, cleaning up inconsistencies in place names and dates, isolating "orphaned" records (ie, clusters of people not associated with me) and bulk edits. Also, query and/or report tools to better understand my history like pulling a list of all ancestors in a particular county at the time of the 1860 census or plotting the migration path and time line for a particular branch of my tree. I find Ancestry to be pretty weak and cumbersome in these areas.

I understand that FTM and RootsMagic are desktop tools that sync with Ancestry and kinda, sorta, maybe do some of these things. But googling hasn't really answered my questions so far ...

Thanks!

Dave

 

[lupaglupa]

I have Family Tree Maker and use it to print trees and reports. I used to use it more for inputting data and checking for mistakes but I find I'm faster using Ancestry for that. I've never tried to do a bulk edit - I'd probably make things worse!

I don't often print things out so I don't get into FTM very often. When I do I have to do the big sync which is a pain. But Ancestry is terrible at producing print outs so I make the effort.

 

[donna]

I use Family Tree Maker. I am still working on ancestors for my tree. I do sync with ancestry.

 

[Mustang Man]

I have used FTMaker for several years.If you use Ancestry and Family Search.com you can enter either of those sources from your FTM data and compare data from you have collected vs what Ancestry or Family Search has collected.Remember the important rule in accepting new data from any source is to look for a valid source

 

[DBT]

Thank you all!

Your comments confirmed my suspicion that more people probably use FTM than RootsMagic, probably due to their past ownership by Ancestry. Having spent most of my work career working with relational databases, I wish Ancestry was better from an end-user perspective with queries, reports, data visualizations, edits etc. Maybe FTM is a way for me to baby-step into that on my tree.

Dave