Ancestry from a public library

[Mart 'n' Al]

I occasionally use Ancestry from my local public library. You choose a document and you can either save it locally or send it to your email address. I usually do it like the latter. When I get home I then have an email which provides me with the link to all of the documents which I have looked at during that session.

Does anybody know if the links in the email expire? I recently tried to access one from January last year and I got a message saying sm.ancestry.com  server IP address could not be found.

I contacted Ancestry and spoke to a very helpful lady who was actually unable to help. I've also got some links from 2017 which don't work in the same way. Thank you for your help.

Martin

[sarah]

I have just checked an old email with some of my old links (from a few years ago) and they no longer work for me.

Regards

Sarah

[josey]

Do you make a conscious decision NOT to save the document/s from the link straight away to a local folder on your device?

[Milliepede]

Yes as far as I am aware they do expire but I don't know how quickly.

[Mart 'n' Al]

Thanks Sarah.  I said to the Ancestry lady that they should make it clear, and she agreed, saying that they did a lot of server work last October.

Josey, yes, as I am a bit dubious about using USB drives on public PCs.  I have the appropriate checks and securities, but I am still wary (I'm ex IT Support).

I came  across some old downloads that don't have any dates in the text, and wanted to avoid going back to the library.  My procedures are now more disciplines these days!

Martin

[KGarrad]

Sometimes I remember to take a USB stick!

Other times I make use of cloud storage, available free with my email supplier (GMX).
Copy stuff to Cloud Storage in a new folder, which I can then access at home.

[Edward Scott]

You could also use a free account at Dropbox to save the actual document and then download once back at home.

Edward

[Mart 'n' Al]

KG and Edward, thank you.

Until I realised I had some unidentified Electoral Roll documents I was doing alright, until I realised that they are undated.

Martin

[JohninSussex]

Dropbox is cloud storage so that's covered.

To be frank I'm surprised that someone who's familiar with IT would rely on a link to a specific online resource would still be valid a year or more later - given that the link wasn't provided with long term availability in mind. 

If you went back 2-3 years on Rootschat, and found a link someone had posted to an A**y document, I wouldn't be at all surprised that you got a 404 error meaning that the URL structure had changed or similar.

they did a lot of server work last October is probably relevant.