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| Ancestry's instructions for downloading a family tree |
One big reason I use RootsMagic7 genealogy software is to be able to sync with the family trees I've created on Ancestry.
Although I back up my RootsMagic trees every month or whenever I make major changes, I also like to download my Ancestry trees periodically.
It's easy to download a tree as a gedcom, as you can see from the above Ancestry screen shot. I give each downloaded tree a distinctive name AND date, so I can distinguish the "Wood" family tree download of February, 2020 from the "Farkas" family tree download of December, 2019.**
Keeping my family history safe is a top priority. Multiple backup processes (both RootsMagic and Ancestry trees backed up, stored on two hard drives, and stored daily in the cloud) may seem like a lot of duplication, but it offers me more options for restoring my trees, if ever the need arises.
Backup drives and cloud storage are relatively cheap -- carefully researched and documented family trees are priceless and deserve protection.
**RootsMagic will also download an Ancestry tree for me, including all media attached to the individuals--very convenient! I do this as well, but also like to keep a separate gedcom downloaded directly from Ancestry in case I need to recover.
I'm with you on that...I do the same as you and then open the gedcom in Family Tree Analyzer and export the families to an Excel file. It won't have everything, but at least I'll know, God forbid, if everything else fails that I have that. I also use multiple hard drives for backup. Which reminds me, time to do my monthly backups!!!
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