Reunion <--> RootsMagic <--> Ancestry workflow

[eN0ch]

Noob question: Has anyone here either personally created, or come across somewhere, any kind of workflow for getting and then keeping a Reunion FF in relative "sync" with an Ancestry tree via RootsMagic? Preferably for those of us in the noob-intermediate skill range. I've found plenty of snippets here and elsewhere about isolated bits of the process. But with so many gaps in my understanding, and so many pitfalls for the unwary (or even wary), I'd really love to get a "do this, then do that, then ..." kind of workflow. Speaking as one who's never really done this before and is still recovering from a gedcom-only match 'n merge years ago.

If someone wants to turn this thread into a kind of wiki on the subject, that would work for me (and maybe others?).

Maybe I'll start with a more specific noob question from where I'm currently stuck. So I've downloaded the data from one of my Ancestry trees to a clean RM database. Which if I understand correctly, means I have a starting db file that's in sync with Ancestry. What I wanted to do then was start on merging into that content from a second RM db created from a Reunion gedcom export. It seemed to be going ok for a while with RM's 'Compare' tool. But then I started finding people records in the Ancestry-RM file I was darned sure I'd already edited. From a bit of investigating it seems I have hundreds of duplicate (or triplicate, or worse) people in there.

Can someone help me out here? Is it likely I do indeed have dupes in my imported Ancestry database? Are there ways to avoid this in future? What do I need to do now? Auto-merge? Manual-merge? De-dupe? One or more of those? In what order? How-to tips for any? Thanks.

[Jerry Nutter]

I'm totally unfamiliar with RootsMagic, so, I'm not sure why you need it as a go-between Ancestry and Reunion. Why not simply download a gedcom from Ancestry and import directly into Reunion? Then when you're done fiddling with the Reunion file, create a new gedcom and upload it to Ancestry. But, this seems like more work than simply updating Ancestry and Reunion separately as you research. It's tedious, but that's what I've settled on. For years, I kept all my research in Reunion, because I found it much easier to visualize the family trees and sort through different people with the same names. Finally, I uploaded a 500-ancestor gedcom to Ancestry, but Ancestry isn't smart enough to match up gedcom sources with their records, so, I felt obliged to go to each ancestor on the Ancestry tree, and search all over again for the records I'd already found! So, that's a lesson learned: From now on, I always copy the URL of each Ancestry source into the Reunion Notes field. So, when I finally decide to add a newly-found ancestor to my Ancestry tree, I'll have the URLs available.

As far as matching-and-merging goes in Reunion, I haven't had much success with it. Seems to me, it worked better years ago in earlier versions. Or perhaps my brain worked better twenty years ago and I can't get the hang of it, anymore? I recall it getting very sticky if you're trying to merge two files with more than one or two common ancestors.

Ancestry doesn't appear to have a way to connect separate trees, so that option appears to be out.

[eN0ch]

Hi Gerry,

Thanks for chipping in. There's a bit to all this. But as concisely as I can -- RU help docs actually recommends doing what I'm trying to do, in the case where you want to import actual media from Ancestry, as distinct from just sources with links (which in my experience are mostly useless anyway). screenshot_356.png
FAQ (leisterpro.com)

You'll note that recommends FTM. RM is another option that serves the same purpose; and though not especially cheap, is significantly cheaper than FTM. (Beyond that, the two have their respective shares of plusses and minuses; meaning one chooses one's poison ). In the end, whichever route one takes, there isn't to my knowledge a strategy for keeping RU in sync with Ancestry that isn't horribly laborious and doesn't require regular data clean-ups between steps. (Hence better to overdo the backups than underdo them. Saves wrist slashing). But RM does at least reduce the carnage, and you do end up with the media items you want, safely stored on your computer; and hopefully also readily linked and accessible through your RU interface.

Since the OP I've made pretty decent progress with the workflow, though still a work in progress. I certainly have all the media files I could want in my own files (and backed up++). The RU clean up is the work in progress part.

For all it's outstanding strengths, RU's import, merge & cleanup functions leave a very great deal to be desired IMHO, as I regularly nag the team about. But I suppose to be fair any large database is always going to be a challenging thing for devs.

[CONLEY Research]

I'm curious if you made any progress on developing a good work flow for this?

My main interest is keeping the people and citations in sync, since I usually download copies of sources when I find them.

I've had pretty good luck with matching and merging. But I do try to import a limited number of people at one time. Maybe pick one branch at a time. I also suspect that after the first few times, when you get most people's names and dates synced up, Reunion will have to do a lot less guessing about whether people are matches.

Jerry, to answer your question about why not just upload a new GEDCOM to Ancestry: Mainly (for me), it's to keep things that are linked still linked. You noticed that uploading a GEDCOM to Ancestry doesn't link all the sources you've cited, even if they have an Ancestry URL. You did a lot of work to go through and linked sources. But if you upload an updated GEDCOM to Ancestry, it would be like starting over. When you upload a GEDCOM to Ancestry you can replace a tree you already have there or create a new one, but there is no way to merge the info from the new GEDCOM into your existing Ancestry tree. If you have DNA matches, sources or anything else linked to your tree, this all has to be re-done.

However, syncing the two saves all the links to sources and DNA matches by enabling you to update rather than replace.