* Ancestry tree problem

[Bundle]

If anyone else also has an Ancestry online tree, it would be useful to know if you have this problem (started happening last night)

On any tree, in any person's profile, attempting to use the ADD FAMILY button on the right hand side brings up a box with an option to either Add New Person or Select Someone in Your Tree. On my Mac (High Sierra OS) as soon as I type into the latter, it gets populated with people from my Mac address book!!! None of these are in my tree. We have tested it on 4 different computers, three with Windows operating systems: 10, 8.1 and XP. Those with Windows operating systems produce no people whatsoever when typing into the box.

You can get around it by using Edit Relationships. Still, a worry what is happening with Ancestry and my personal contacts list!!
Logging out and back in has not resolved it.

I've reported this to Ancestry Support and will see what they say.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying using FH. Still got a way to go to decide on best source methods etc - important to me because I need to produce good reports.

Nicola

[PeterR]

Using Windows 7, the only names that appeared were people already in my Ancestry tree, so seems OK to me.

[Bundle]

Thank you Peter.

[tatewise]

In Windows 10, like you Nicola, the Select Someone in Your Tree option does not appear to work at all.

[PeterR]

The Select someone in your tree option seems to work OK using Google Chrome in Windows 7.

[tatewise]

Nope ~ neither Firefox nor Chrome work in Windows 10.
I open any person's Profile and click Add on right to choose relative such as Son, Daughter, Spouse, etc.
Then Select Someone in Your Tree dialogue is as shown.

AncestrySelectSomeoneInYourTree.png (62.72 KiB) Viewed 9155 times

[PeterR]

Sorry, I was using the Edit Relationships dialog, which does work:

2018-02-07_150251.jpg (30.66 KiB) Viewed 9145 times

[tatewise]

Yep, that works for me too, offering a drop list of matching Forenames &/or Surnames from tree.

[David2416]

The dialogue works as expected for me, Windows 10, chrome both fully updated. Add child for Catherine Smith, selecting from tree, I type in Sar and get a list of all Sarahs as I would expect.

[Bundle]

A slight change now. The dialog box drop down gets populated by, first, people from my address book in a little drop down menu, closely followed by another drop down with people from the Ancestry tree. Progress of a sort! Not heard back from Ancestry. Maybe a blip which they are working on.

[mjashby]

Back to the OP which relates to accessing Ancestry Tree on a Mac.

Virtually every MacOS Application that makes use of names and personal information which of, course, includes any Web Browser in use, requests permission to access to the User's Address Book when it is initially used. If the User gives that permission, then from then onwards the Address Book is automatically searched whenever the system recognises that a name is being entered into an authorised application. So, if you start typing a name and there is a matching name in your Address Book the system will ask if that's the person you are trying to enter and offer to complete the contact details.

This behaviour is replicated by most modern Desktop applications which also offer to add individual contact details if they have been granted access to the Address Book and they 'recognise a match', in just the same way that Browsers do when they recognise that you are entering your own name and address into an online form. Many will also 'helpfully' offer to add new contact entries in the user's Address Books.

I suspect that something in Ancestry Tree's interface might have changed 'recently' so that it fully inherits the local Browser's ability to actively search a User's Address Book, just as most 'contact sites' do when the user is carrying out online registration, purchasing etc. Whether you notice this 'match as you type' behaviour or not will depend on how closely you watch the matching process and how speedy the internet access to Ancestry Tree is.

Users of Windows might well find that their Address Books are also being searched if they enter data directly into Ancestry Tree and their Browser has access, but may simply not have noticed the behaviour.

Mervyn

[Bundle]

Thanks to everyone who has replied. Update. The problem now ONLY happens within Apple's own SAFARI browser. Chrome on the Mac is fine. All the Windows PCs are fine. I note what Mervyn has said, though it is interesting that the Add Family buttons referred to have the problem of initially displaying names from my address book, yet the Find Person drop down (which I use a lot) in Ancestry works without a hitch. No reply from Ancestry Support as yet, though they've obviously fixed the problem for Windows users! Not worth taking up any more time on this post but will let you know if it gets sorted.

Nicola

[RSellens]

Hi Nicola, as Mervyn mentioned this is a feature of the Mac OS and Safari, its not a problem on Ancestry. Safari/OS is detecting the field is a 'name' field (I would guess they look at tag names in the web page), and then tries to be helpful and auto-complete the data entry for you. Ancestry have no access to the information, its the web browser doing it.

Richard