FTM and Ancestry - confused and in a mess!

[annesthreads]

Help! I had several family trees on FTM but have lost all the files after a computer catastrophe. My laptop now has a new hard drive and I've put FTM back on there. But when I go to download my  trees from Ancestry, the table that appears says for each of them "not linked to this machine" and "no action available". It is, of course, the same machine, but presumably is being identified as a different one because of all the changes made. I find all the "help" on both Ancestry and FTM very confusing: can anyone explain to me how I can get my trees from Ancestry back onto FTM?

[annesthreads]

Ha - solved it. Did what I should have done immediately and typed my query into Google, which took me straight to a forum post that gave me the answer.

[westdale]

Could you publish the link to the website for the benefit of those that follow ?  :-)

I used to do this regularly because I have a desktop and a laptop - if I update from one then the other gives me the message you saw, and I sync each time I travel (as I don't carry my desktop around with me  .

[groom]

I'd be interested to know how you solved it as well, as I had the same problem when I had a new computer. I ended up downloading a Gedcom from Ancestry, uploading it to FTM and giving it a new name then reloading and linking it back to Ancestry. I then deleted the original tree. It worked but I'm sure there is an easier way.

[smudwhisk]

I suspect the answer was you have to unlink the tree from FTM on Ancestry in the tree settings and they the tree becomes available to create a new synchronisation in FTM.

[groom]

Possibly as it does say:

Unlink this tree from Family Tree Maker. This action does not delete either tree, but severs the link between them.
Warning! This action cannot be undone!

However, I was a bit worried about the warning as I wasn't sure if that meant it might not allow me to link them again.

[smudwhisk]

Once the link is removed, it allows you to create a new one. As you can only sync with one FTM, if it fails this is the only way to fix the problem. I have had to help my Aunt in the past and she had the same concern.

[annesthreads]

I suspect the answer was you have to unlink the tree from FTM on Ancestry in the tree settings and they the tree becomes available to create a new synchronisation in FTM.

Yes, that's it. Quite simple when you know how! Go to the tree on Ancestry. Immediately to the right of the name of your tree, there's an arrow. Click on that, then on tree settings. From there you can choose to unlink your tree from FTM. You get scary warnings that this can't be undone but if you go ahead and unlink, then go back to FTM and select new tree/ download from Ancestry (I had to close and open the program again to refresh the list), you should find you can now link the tree again.

[westdale]

This is really weird.
Some time ago, I used to be able to toggle between my laptop and desktop linked to Ancestry -- effectively just synching on the required machine. I (vaguely) remember that downloading would effectively merge and sync, not requiring a new tree to be created.
I haven't done it for some time as I have retired and no longer travel as much and now , as you describe, I have to do a full unlink and download of tree and media. GRRR.