Family Tree Maker won't sync with Ancestry
A Family Tree Maker sync that hangs or fails is almost always one of five things: an Ancestry-side outage, an expired sign-in token, a bloated tree file, oversized media, or a broken link between the file and the online tree. Work through them in that order. The first two solve most cases.
- Applies to
- FTM 2024 · 2019 · 2017 · 2014
- Platform
- Windows & Mac
- Time
- ~25 min
- Updated
Your research is not gone. Failed syncs never delete a tree. You have two separate copies: the file on your computer and the tree on Ancestry. A sync failure only means the two are not talking to each other. Nothing below will put either copy at risk if you do the backup step first.
What a failed Ancestry sync looks like
Sync problems present in a few recognisable ways. Any of these lands you on this page:
- The sync progress bar reaches a percentage and stops, sometimes for hours.
- The spinning indicator never resolves, and the window becomes unresponsive.
- Sync starts, then fails with a message about not being able to connect.
- Family Tree Maker asks you to sign in to Ancestry over and over.
- Sync appears to complete, but changes you made don't appear on Ancestry, or vice versa.
Why Family Tree Maker stops syncing
Syncing is more fragile than it looks. Family Tree Maker has to authenticate you with Ancestry, compare every person, fact, source and media item on both sides, and reconcile the differences. A failure anywhere in that chain stops the whole process. In practice the cause is nearly always one of these, and they're listed here in the order we actually encounter them:
| Cause | How it shows up | Which fix |
|---|---|---|
| Ancestry-side outage | Sync fails for everyone at once, often briefly | Fix 1 |
| Expired sign-in token | Sync asks you to sign in, or fails immediately | Fix 2 |
| Bloated or damaged file | Sync starts, then stalls or errors partway | Fix 3 |
| Oversized media | Sync hangs on the media stage and never finishes | Fix 4 |
| Broken file-to-tree link | Sync option greyed out, or it syncs the wrong tree | Fix 5 |
Work down the table in order. The first two cost nothing and account for most failures, so ruling them out first saves you from compacting a file that was never the problem.
Do this first Back up before you change anything
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In Family Tree Maker, open .
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Tick the option to include media files. A backup without media will restore your names and dates but none of your photographs or documents.
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Save it somewhere outside your Family Tree Maker folder: an external drive, or a cloud folder. A backup stored next to the original protects you from a file problem but not from a drive failure.
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Note the date in the filename. If a fix below makes things worse, this is what you come back to.
Fix 1 — Check whether the problem is even yours
Most common Rule out an Ancestry-side outage
If sync worked yesterday and fails today with nothing changed on your machine, the odds strongly favour a server-side problem. Family Tree Maker has a built-in indicator for exactly this, and most people have never noticed it.
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Look for the Sync Weather indicator in Family Tree Maker. Introduced in FTM 2017, it reports the current state of Ancestry's sync servers as a colour: green, orange or red.
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Red means an interruption with Ancestry's sync servers right now. These are usually brief, from seconds up to around five minutes. Stop and wait. No local fix will help, and unlinking your tree while Ancestry is having problems is how people create a second, worse problem on top of the first.
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Orange means service has just come back, and it stays orange for an hour before returning to green. You can sync during orange, and usually it is fine, but connections drop mid-sync occasionally, so it is not the moment to start a large one.
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Green means no known problems. Green can also flag planned maintenance coming up, which is worth checking before you begin a long sync.
Green means no known problems, orange means service was interrupted within the last hour, and red means an interruption right now.
Fix 2 — Refresh your Ancestry sign-in
Fixes most cases Sign out and back in, inside Family Tree Maker
Family Tree Maker stores a token proving you're signed in to Ancestry. Tokens expire. When one lapses, the software rarely says so clearly. It hangs, or asks you to sign in again and again. Signing out properly and back in forces a fresh token.
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Find your Ancestry account status inside Family Tree Maker and choose to sign out. Do this within the software. Signing out of Ancestry in your web browser is not the same thing and will not help.
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Close Family Tree Maker completely and reopen it. On Windows, check the system tray; on Mac, quit properly rather than just closing the window.
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Sign back in with your Ancestry username and password. If you have two-factor authentication enabled, have your phone to hand.
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Try the sync again. Give it a genuine chance to run before deciding it has failed. See the timing note below.
Don't mistake "slow" for "frozen". The first sync, or one after months away, can legitimately take an hour or more on a large tree with a lot of photographs. Leave it running overnight before concluding it has hung.
Fix 3 — Compact the tree file
Often overlooked Rebuild the database indexes
Your tree is a database, and databases degrade. Years of adding, editing, merging and deleting leave behind fragmented indexes and empty space. A file in that state can sync perfectly well for months and then start stalling partway through with no obvious trigger. Family Tree Maker includes a repair routine for this that most users never run.
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With your tree open, go to .
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Accept the offer to back up before compacting if you're prompted. Yes, even though you already backed up. It costs nothing.
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Let it run without interruption. On a large tree this can take half an hour. Don't cancel it partway.
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Reopen the tree and try syncing again.
Fix 4 — Track down problem media
If it stalls at the same point Find the file that's blocking it
If your sync reliably stops at roughly the same percentage every time, that's a strong signal. It is not a general failure. It is hitting one specific item it cannot process. Almost always that's a media file: an enormous scan, an unusual format, or something with a character in its filename the sync doesn't like.
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Open the media workspace and sort your media by file size, largest first.
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Look for anything unusually large, such as a 200 MB TIFF scan. High-resolution scans of documents are the usual culprit.
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Resize the offending file to something sensible (a 300 dpi JPEG is ample for genealogy), and re-attach it in place of the original. Keep the high-resolution version safe elsewhere.
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Check for unusual file types too. Stick to
.jpg,.pngand.pdfwhere you can. -
Sync again and watch whether it moves past the point it previously stalled at.
Fix 5 — Unlink and relink the tree
Last resort Rebuild the sync relationship from scratch
Read this before you start. Unlinking does not delete either copy of your tree. But you will have to reconcile by hand any changes sitting on one side and not yet synced to the other. If you've done a lot of work since the last successful sync, this step can cost you time even though it won't cost you data. When in doubt, have someone look at it with you first.
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Confirm your backup from earlier actually exists, and that it's a sensible file size. An 8 KB backup is not a backup.
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Note down what you've changed recently on each side, so you know what to check afterwards.
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Unlink the tree from Ancestry in Family Tree Maker.
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Close and reopen the software, then link the tree to your online tree again and allow a full sync.
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Spot-check ten or fifteen recently edited people on both sides to confirm everything reconciled.
When the pre-sync report says thousands of sources will be deleted
This one stops people cold, and rightly. You open the pre-sync report and it lists two thousand sources for deletion. You deleted nothing. The detail view repeats the words "deleted source" for pages without explaining any of them.
The usual cause sits at Ancestry rather than in your tree. Ancestry updates and consolidates its record collections periodically. When a collection changes, the sync re-points your citations at the updated source, and the report describes that swap as a deletion. Experienced users make the comparison to merging two people in Family Tree Maker: the merge reports one profile as deleted, though nothing was lost.
| What you see | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Thousands of "deleted source" lines | Ancestry consolidated collections and the sync is re-pointing your citations |
| A large citation count changing too | Part of the same collection update |
| The same number every time you retry | A consistent server-side change, not a random fault |
| Only your own recent edits listed | A genuine deletion you made. Read this one carefully. |
Back up before you decide. A verified backup turns this from a gamble into a reversible step. Nobody should approve a two-thousand-item change without one.
Read the change log rather than the summary. It runs to hundreds of pages on a large tree, so print it to PDF and keep it. It tells you which collections moved.
Spot-check a few named sources in your tree against Ancestry. Collections that recently changed, Find A Grave among them, explain most of the count.
Sync, then verify. Open several people who relied on the affected sources and confirm their citations survived.
Cancelling the sync indefinitely carries its own cost, because the gap between the two copies widens every time you work. Back up, read the log, then proceed.
Two-factor authentication blocking the sign-in
This one solves a large share of stubborn sync failures, and it is the fix users pass between themselves most often in genealogy groups. Two-factor authentication on your Ancestry account interrupts the sign-in that Family Tree Maker performs in the background. The program has nowhere to show you the code prompt, so the sign-in fails and the sync never starts.
The symptom is distinctive: the website works perfectly in your browser, and Family Tree Maker still refuses to connect.
Sign in to Ancestry in a browser and turn two-factor authentication off temporarily in your account security settings.
Sign in again inside Family Tree Maker and run a sync.
Turn two-factor authentication back on as soon as the sync completes.
Switch it back on afterwards. Two-factor authentication protects an account holding decades of family research. Turning it off is a diagnostic step for one sync, not a setting to leave disabled. Re-enabling it also restores access to features that depend on it, including DNA matches.
When it cannot reach the internet at all
A sync that fails instantly, rather than starting and stalling, usually means the program never reached the servers. Family Tree Maker reports this as a connection problem even when your browser works normally, because the block sits between this one program and the internet rather than across the whole machine.
| Cause | Test | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Firewall blocking the program | Browser works, sync fails immediately | Allow Family Tree Maker through the firewall as an exception |
| Antivirus intercepting traffic | Started after a security update | Add the program to the antivirus exclusion list |
| Wrong system clock | Date or time is visibly off | Set date and time to update automatically |
| VPN or work proxy | Works at home, fails elsewhere | Disconnect the VPN and retry |
A wrong system clock is the one people never suspect. Secure connections fail when the computer's time is out by more than a few minutes, because the security certificate looks invalid.
The known Ancestry sign-in fault in FTM 2017 and 2019 for Windows
If you run FTM 2017 or FTM 2019 on Windows and cannot sign in to Ancestry at all, this is a documented fault in the software rather than anything wrong at your end. It affects both web search and syncing.
| Edition | Status | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| FTM 2019 (Windows) | Fixed | Apply the free 24.2.2 update or later. This resolves it. |
| FTM 2017 (Windows) | No fix released | The publisher's own guidance is to upgrade to FTM 2024 or wait for a fix. |
Check your build number before assuming this applies. Anything below 24.2.2 on FTM 2019 is out of date, and the update costs nothing — see where FTM 2019 stands now.
When a sync runs for a long time
The first sync, or one after months away, moves a great deal of data and needs the conditions to hold for the whole run. Two things decide whether it finishes.
- Stop the computer sleeping. If the machine sleeps partway through a long cloud operation, it can cancel the job outright, and the whole thing starts again from the beginning rather than resuming where it stopped.
- Prefer a wired connection. The published guidance is 1 Mbps or better. Large trees with heavy media over patchy Wi-Fi are the usual reason a sync never reaches the end.
Some things never sync, and that is not a fault
Much of what gets reported as broken sync turns out to be sync working exactly as designed. The two trees are held in different formats, so anything that exists in only one of them has nowhere to land. Nothing warns you. The work simply stays where you made it.
These never travel from your computer up to the online tree:
- Every note except person notes. Research notes, fact notes, media notes, relationship notes, citation notes. Also any text formatting you applied.
- Tasks, colour coding, and saved charts, reports and books. Rebuild a chart online and you rebuild it from scratch.
- Person web links, short place names and map coordinates.
- The change log itself, along with sticky notes and relative hints.
- Audio, video and web page archives, and any document over 15 MB.
- Private facts, notes and media, plus anything attached to them.
And these never come back down from the online tree to your computer:
- Comments, stories, albums and photo tags
- DNA results and military pages
- Web links, and the category labels applied to media online
Media attached to a source citation is the one that catches researchers hardest. You attach a record image to a citation online, sync, and the citation arrives while the image does not follow it across. People spend evenings hunting a fault here. There is no fault. The link between that image and that citation is one of the things the two formats cannot carry between them, so it has to be made again on whichever side you want it. Because of all this, an online tree is not a full backup of your file, and uploading then downloading is a poor way to move a tree to another computer.
Where the conflict dialog stays quiet
When the same thing changed in both places, you normally get a Resolve Conflicts prompt. There are documented situations where you do not, and those are worth knowing because the tree changes without asking you:
- You changed which item is preferred on both sides. Choosing a different preferred fact, spouse or set of parents in each place raises no conflict at all.
- You added the same thing twice. Create the same person, repository or picture in both places and you end up with two of them rather than a question.
- You deleted something in one place and edited it on a second linked computer. After the next sync it disappears there too, edits and all.
- Parent-child conflicts cannot be settled with the overwrite-with-desktop-data option, whatever you choose.
This is the argument for reading the change log after a sync rather than trusting the summary. Open the Plan workspace, look at what actually moved, and you catch these while you still remember what you did.
If none of these worked
At this point you're likely looking at either a genuine software fault or a problem with your specific Ancestry account, and neither is something you can fix from your desk. Two honest options:
- Go to the publisher. The publisher of Family Tree Maker runs a free support centre with version-specific articles, a support request form and free live chat around the clock. For anything involving your licence, your purchase, or a suspected bug in a particular build, they are the correct destination.
- Or have someone look at it with you. Some sync failures only reveal themselves when you can watch the log output while it happens, which is difficult to talk someone through in writing.
Still stuck on a sync error?
A 30-minute screen-share is usually enough. We look at the sync log together and find the item that's blocking it. If we can't fix it, you don't pay.
Stopping it happening again
- Sync little and often. A sync of fifty changes almost never fails. A sync of five thousand frequently does.
- Compact the file twice a year. Put it in the calendar. It takes minutes and prevents the slow decay that causes Fix 3.
- Keep media sensible. Attach a 300 dpi JPEG to the tree and archive the giant master scan somewhere else.
- Back up before every big session, not after. Backups made after the damage aren't much use.
- Don't sync over a weak connection. A dropout mid-sync is a common way to end up needing Fix 5.
Frequently asked questions
Will I lose my family tree if the sync fails?
No. Nothing is deleted by a failed sync. Your tree exists in two separate places: the file on your computer and the tree on Ancestry. A sync failure means the two are not talking to each other, not that either copy has been erased.
How long should a Family Tree Maker sync take?
A routine sync of a few hundred changes is usually under five minutes. The first sync, or one after a long gap, can legitimately run for an hour or more on a large tree with a lot of media. Leave it running before assuming it's frozen.
Why does Family Tree Maker keep asking me to sign in to Ancestry?
Repeated sign-in prompts nearly always mean the stored token isn't persisting between sessions. The two usual causes are security software blocking Family Tree Maker from writing its settings, and older operating systems whose security certificates are out of date. More on login problems here.
Is it safe to unlink my tree from Ancestry?
Safe, provided you have a verified backup first. Unlinking doesn't delete either copy. But relinking creates a fresh sync relationship, and anything not yet synced at the moment you unlink will need reconciling by hand afterwards.
Does Family Tree Maker sync automatically?
No. Syncing with Ancestry is something you start yourself. TreeVault cloud backup is a separate, paid service that does run on its own schedule, and the two get confused constantly. If you expected automatic backups and aren't getting them, you're probably thinking of TreeVault.