The word has been out now for a year and time is drawing to a close:

Last December, Ancestry announced that it was ending support for Family Tree Maker, which sent the genealogy world into an immediate frenzy. Yes, Software MacKiev later announced that it had purchased Family Tree Maker and would be updating and selling new versions.

However, the second part of Ancestry’s announcement was that Family Tree Maker-Ancestry syncing, as we know it, full tree to full tree, would END on 31 December 2016.

I have not seen any further information about the abilities of RootsMagic and Family Tree Maker to sync with Ancestry “by the end of the year.” I read the recent newsletter sent out by MacKiev and am not convinced that the new syncing will be up and running by the end of this month. I have seen in print that the full tree sync currently accessible in FTM will NOT end exactly on 31 December, but, on the other hand, I haven’t seen a new “end of life” date for that syncing ability either.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want all my years of hard work to come to an end because I kept my one and only family tree on Ancestry DOT com.

Therefore, if you are one of the people who ONLY have a family tree on Ancestry and have chosen to NOT purchase a software program, you have only a limited time left to reconsider that choice.

Do you realize – if you choose to end your subscription to Ancestry – that you will be given guest status to view the data in your tree, but you will have NO access to any of the images or documents that you have saved in your tree?

If you have a serious amount of work and effort put into your family history research, I would strongly recommend that you purchase Family Tree Maker IMMEDIATELY and do a full sync of your tree to it.

However, you also need to save all the images and documents on your computer so you will have continued access to them. That might be a small job if you only have a few images attached, but for larger trees, you probably need to get busy today to begin the process.

Personally, I don’t understand why anyone would want to make a serious effort to work on his/her family history and not keep control of the work within a software program. I also thought by now most people involved in genealogy and using Ancestry would be aware of the upcoming 31 December 2016 deadline, but apparently there are many out there who aren’t aware of it.

Spread the word to family, friends and especially newbies that they need to save, save, save right now!