Ancestry has quite a mess on its hands right now, and genealogists are losing their collective minds. I have some information here to help.
You are always welcome to post links to my articles on other sites, but this article in particular may help many people – so please feel free to pass it on.
I’ve been trying to write an article on ThruLines, but the Ancestry site has been experiencing so many issues that I can’t manage to actually get through my ThruLines to evaluate them and write the article.
There are two different scenarios:
- You’ve never had ThruLines and you aren’t sure if they have been rolled out to your account yet. They will be rolled out to everyone through the month of March.
- You’ve had ThruLines, but now you don’t and your account has reverted back, meaning ThruLines no longer shows and the Circles placard has returned, or the Ancestry site simply doesn’t work and says the pages are no longer present.
Scenario 1 – Never Had ThruLines – Does My Account Even Have Them at All?
If you’re never had ThruLines yet, or aren’t sure, you need to do the following in order to qualify for ThruLines and to make sure they work.
For ThruLines to work, you must be sure:
- Your tree is connected to your DNA.
- Your tree is either public or a private searchable tree. Unsearchable trees won’t have ThruLines.
- Your tree is at least 3 or 4 generations deep.
- You only have one kit for any individual person connected to that person in the same tree. If you have multiple kits for the same person connected to one tree, only one kit will have ThruLines. If this is your situation, you can create a “twin” to yourself in your tree and attach the second kit to that person and both kits should get ThruLines. There aren’t many people like me who have tested twice with AncestryDNA, so this shouldn’t be a problem for most people.
You can have multiple kits attached to the same tree, but each kit must be connected to a different person in the tree
Do the following:
At the top of your Ancestry DNA Summary page, you’ll see “Extras.” Click there and then on Ancestry Lab.
To enable Ancestry’s new features, you’ll see the following screen.
I’m not positive you need to enable to active ThruLines, but if you want the other new features, you definitely do, so enable just to be sure.
If you see this next “we’re sorry” screen instead of the one above, you’ll need to move to the Scenario 2 and clear your cookies, but read the instructions all the way through, first, please – to save yourself a lot of grief.
Do You Have ThruLines on Your Account?
If you’ve already had access to ThruLines and now it’s not functioning correctly, move to the next section, Scenario 2. If you’ve never had ThruLines, read this.
If you don’t have access to ThruLines, you’ll see this screen with Circles showing to the far right:
If you have access to ThruLines, but you don’t have any ThruLines, you’ll see this placard, below:
You do have ThruLines if you see the next screen, with the green “Explore ThruLines” box at the bottom of the ThruLines box. Click on that green box to view your ThruLines.
Scenario 2 – You Had ThruLines But Don’t Now or They Don’t Work
I had ThruLines on one of my two accounts. They were present and I was working through them one at a time – right up until they stopped working a couple days ago. Initially, it was flakey, like the Ancestry site was having problems, but then, the old screen showing the Circles placard in place of ThruLines reappeared and ThruLines were entirely gone.
This, on top of the issues with the ThruLines themselves is proving incredibly frustrating. I’ve called ThruLines an array of not-very-complimentary names derived from Thru…but I’ll be the better person and not print those here:)
I waited, not so patiently I must admit, but today in the Genetic Genealogy Tips and Techniques group of Facebook, Paula Williams posted about how to clear specific cookies. Not ALL of your cookies and not your cache – just the Ancestry cookies. I was very skeptical, since “clear your cookies” is always the “go to” answer when the answer is unknown and it almost never works. It’s kind of the last resort and won’t hurt anything, but will make it so that no “memory” functions if you have sites that remember your preferences, for example.
However, Paula’s instructions tell you how to clear specific cookies for one site only, and they aren’t destructive to other cookies.
Best of all, this actually worked to correct the “disappeared” ThruLines issue.
I have no idea why Ancestry is having so many problems right now, but these suggestions should help you restore your ThruLines if they have disappeared or the Ancestry site is acting flakey.
Good luck and thanks to Paula. Instructions reproduced with permission, below.
Deleting Specific Site Cookies
Many of us have had issues with Ancestry in the last day or so. Deleting your Ancestry cookies should fix problems such as not being able to load pages. This particular issue is in the cookies, so you’ll need to delete your **cookies** and not your cache.
Here are some links that explain how to delete your cookies. Do note that many of these sites also explain how to delete cookies from just one site, so you can delete just your Ancestry cookies if you’re afraid to delete any others.
Chrome (note the Computer, Android, and iPhone/iPad tabs just above the words “Clear All Cookies”) :
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95647…
FireFox:
https://support.mozilla.org/…/clear-cookies-and-site-data-f…
Safari (Mac):
https://support.apple.com/…/manage-cookies-and-website-…/mac
Safari (iPhone / iPad):
https://support.apple.com/lv-lv/HT201265
Microsoft Edge:
https://support.microsoft.com/…/4027…/windows-delete-cookies
Internet Explorer:
https://support.microsoft.com/…/windows-internet-explorer-d…
If I’ve missed your browser, go to Google and search for “delete specific cookies” (without the quotation marks) and your browser or device – for example, delete specific cookies Samsung Galaxy.
I’ll still be writing about ThruLines as soon as I can actually finish the review.
Other Options
With or without ThruLines working, there are other DNA comparison options you may want to consider.
The MyHeritage Theories of Family Relativity tool is working fine and you can transfer your DNA file easily.
Both GedMatch and FamilyTreeDNA, although they didn’t make any announcements of new products recently work just fine too. You can also compare your segments at all three sites which you can’t do at Ancestry.
I wrote about how to transfer to MyHeritage here and FamilyTreeDNA here.
Have fun, enjoy!
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I looked through the Thru Lines on a couple of accounts. Unfortunately, this process pulls in all sorts of bogus trees and then asks if you want to add these people to your tree. They apparently base their suggestions on the number of people who have these bogus connections in their trees thereby perpetuating the copying of error-prone trees! I see people who never existed, children attached to the wrong parents, etc (you know what I mean). That’s bad enough, but then to have them ask if I want to add these bogus things to my tree just makes it WAY too easy to perpetuate these mistakes. It even ignores my own tree and tries to get me to take someone else’s bogus stuff – I suppose to override what I already have documented. Overall, while I like the general concept, the execution leaves a great deal to be desired.
We can look forward to even more people copying bad info. Ancestry has made that process FAR too easy. And I don’t see any way to reject the bogus people or connections that show in my Thru Lines. That is another disturbing part.
Exactly, it’s the same garbage in/garbage out, and Ancestry again perpetuates wrong information from those too lazy to do original research, and just copy from one tree to another.
FAKE GENEALOGY
And they have the nerve to ask if we agree that,
“Seeing DNA Matches that have descended from a common ancestor provides good evidence that I am genetically related to that ancestor.”
ABOLUTELY NOT
I’m scenario 3… have had them, haven’t lost them, and I’m working my way through them! Have added over 200 DNA cousins after proving them, and at least 90% have been accurate. Almost finished working through 3rd great grandparent connections!
I finally got them working and most seem to line up with what I already know is correct. I do like that it automates grouping matches from the same lines together that I was laboriously trying to figure out using “Shared Matches.” However, and this is a BIG one, there is a whole group of ancestors of my half-cousins, definitely correct on my tree and our son’s tree, that ThruLines says we descend from. They have my greatgrandfather as the second husband my half-cousins descend from, NOT my real greatgrandfather, the first husband. There are at least a dozen of these people (who are all in my tree, but not as my ancestors). Any DNA I share with our half-cousins came from my greatgrandmother and her ancestors, not from any of these people unrelated to me! How is Ancestry, with all their fancy computer ability they are charging us so much for, getting this so mixed up?
I apologize that I thought I was adding a new comment, not under this one unrelated to my comment. There doesn’t seem to be any way to delete it and readd it where it should be.
😁
Thanks for this update. I was amazed at the info and how it has organized various family tree info of DNA 2nd-3rd cousins I knew of but not exactly how we were related. Really expands the ‘hints’
OK I have lost them. Exactly as described here. Surely ancestry.com has to fix this rather than expecting users to edit the cookies…thank you for the post.
Fingers crossed.
Clearing the cache was the first thing I did when the problems first cropped up. I even did a Virus scan to make sure things were running smoothly. You can never be too careful. Thanks for the tip, Roberta!
I should note that Crista Cowan aka the Barefoot genealogist was very helpful to me on Twitter. So much so that she even checked up on me later to see if things were working after our initial conversation. She didn’t have to. But, she did. And so did whoever runs the Ancestry.com Twitter. To say I was surprised is a bit of an understatement. I’ve never had that kind of customer support in my life for any kind of technical issue. Kudos to them!
As of now, Ancestry’s working fine on my Ipad. The mobile site loads and it loads fine on Safari. It seems to break every once in a while on the desktop version of Ancestry. That’s where I do most of my genealogy work. I use both Chrome and Firefox.
Right now the tree search, Thrulines, DNA matches and DNA summary for me are broken. I’ll be clearing the cache again as it seems to clear things up.When it happened the first time, I cleared the first day or so. The worst thing I had to do was re-log into YouTube and Facebook.
Definitely a good tip to go at it with surgical precision. I told her that I don’t envy anyone who works in IT. My brother does IT for the University of Virginia. It can get pretty crazy. Good luck to them. Best thing to do is be patient and keep on keeping on.
Update: I managed to fix all of the errors in Chrome for the moment. I used your tips to clear everything and it works well. Now I can properly examine the thrulines. I found one potential ancestor I am following up on. I talked to the owner of the tree and we both agreed that it was worth looking into because the dates for my ancestor match up with his person.
The last names are spelled a little differently. But, I am still going to check things out. This, at least, went well. I have no problem with that and it is a distinct possibility because of the closeness of one town in Italy with another.
The one thing I really want to do is remove a couple really erroneous Thruline/Potential ancestor. Especially for this guy:
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cadran-9
That’s my 2x great-grandfather and a few potential ancestor hints for him have been really wrong. How do I solve that problem? Or can I? I know his parents are correct after seeing the death record and Quebec parish registers.
Just wondering how to fix that.
No, we can’t fix or dismiss things, unfortunately.
Okay. =) Well, if anyone asks questions, I’ll be sure to correct them.
This needs “Ignore” or “Dismiss” buttons like they have for records.
Thank you for this helpful article, Roberta. When you say “If you have access to ThruLines, but you don’t have any ThruLines, you’ll see access to this placard…” please could you clarify why someone with a big tree and many Shared Ancestor Hints wouldn’t have any ThruLines? I have that screen and had assumed it meant I didn’t have access yet. I fulfill all the necessary conditions as far as I know. Many thanks, Judith
I don’t know why. The system is buggy. I’d wait a few days and call support.
Buggy is a good word for it! Even Before ThruLines I was noticing that new matches (whose same thumbnail photos show up on the DNA Summary page) for both our son and me were many times coming up with the message “You have no shared matches with this person.” How does that even make sense?
I think Ancestry has grown beyond its ability to deliver on its promises, plus infuriating many of us by their recalcitrance in refusing to provide us the chromosome browser we need and every other company gives us.
I had a brick wall in my 4 x GGF William Micajah Williams born About 1740 in Wales. Thru the DNA Big Y Test. It was determined by FTDNA that I was a Davis not a Williams. What can I do, if anything.
ps: I sent the raw data to YFULL in Russia and they verified the info.
Both Williams and Davis are fairly common Welsh surnames. The Welsh used Patronymics (ie Williams means son of William, Davis means son of David) until fairly recent times.
Have you read up about Welsh patronymics? Do you understand that the surname could change EVERY GENERATION?
So William Williams could be the son of William Davis who could be the son of David Jones? and so on.
Roberta, I think you should have mention that ThruLines are a BETA project – which means it is *not* fully tested, they are soliciting input from those willing to try it. Complaining about it is not helpful in refining the product. Software developers no longer test their products exhaustively, it’s just not cost effective. So they release it when it doesn’t crash their system and let the customers identify and other issues. The tradeoff is we get the product sooner. And, the younger generation actually likes that approach because they played video games since they were kids and love finding suprises!
We are not “complaining” when we write them about what is going wrong so they can fix it! That is exactly what Beta testers are supposed to do, abd I am letting them know what needs more work.
Many Ancestry features never leave beta. At some point, beta becomes nothing more than an excuse.
THANK YOU! I was going nuts. And then Chrome has a bug where it will repeatedly crash when you try to search cookies (the cure is to just ignore the settings tab for a minute or two when you first get to the search page – before typing in your search term).
That affects over 15,000 people in SC, NC and GA PLUS
Haven’t been able to use Chrome since last night – Edge works fine. I didn’t think I would like the through lines but my Dna circles for all my mom’s family (Scotland/England) would be available for a day and disappear never to return. With the through lines l’ve been able to see possible cousins-even found three descendants from one of my mom’s great uncles that the family lost track of when he left Scotland in the late 1800’s. Can’t wait to pass along that info to cousin in Australia.
Yes Chrome seems to be part of the problem – Google Analytics hangs, and they want me to « sign in to Chrome »?
I use Safari on my iPad and can see everything fine.
Now the product. More intuitive than the circles, although I have been able to fill in one whole line of « cousins » with it.
The sheer number of thru lines presented to me is daunting (of course with over 50 000 genocousins, and a tree complete to at least 8 generations sometimes 12, what else to expect?). Neat to see the number of cM shared over the segments. What would be useful is to see who else has the SAME segments. They presume that they have been inherited through the path shown, but I know from experience that there are often many links.
That’s the reason we know we need a chromosome browser on Ancestry, too, but they must think we are too dumb to use it (or it’s too much effort and expense to add it when they’re going to rake in all those kilt/lederhosen testers anyway).
oh
Oh
OH =:) !!
I have never explored my “extras” tsb at Ancestry, and ThruLines looks like an awesome adventure 🙂 !
More Cousin Matches 😀 !
Do I care if ThrulLines is perfect ?
Nope.
I’m forewarned now so I’m ready-freddy!
*Thank you for your detailed info and troubleshoots ! *
Then there is scenario 4: You are seeing a declining number of matches via “through lines” and the matches still exist in you regular list of DNA matches. Users are now making their trees private and not searchable and this is disconnecting them and their tree info from “through lines”.
Thanks so much for this!
I can only say that when I did a Firefox search for any cookies that had ancestry . com in them I got some mighty strange looking cookies and wondered where the heck they all came from and what purpose they served. Even though I never visited ancestry.ca or .au there were cookies for those URLs not to mention some that were just plain odd.
I had 73 cookies from Ancestry. That seems really high.
I had maybe 10.
Something to consider with “through lines” is that it is an ideal tool to see if a theory or hunch is correct. You followed the paper trail to ancestor “A” but you have no quality DNA matches to verify. So you have a hunch that maybe person “B” is your correct ancestor. Filling in you tree with some educated guesses may get you the leads you need via the through lines feature. You need to be willing to place potentially incorrect information in your tree and you should expect that others may be doing the same.
Those people can be tagged now as speculative using the new tools.
Thank you, haven’t explored all the tags.
No problems with TrueLines yet? No problems with Chrome either. Yet.? TKU for updates . Indispensable blog. BTW, Ancestry to date can not fix the fact that I am the tester and the owner of my DNA. They seem to think I am two people. Any suggestions?
You’re a split personality? 😁. Seriously, no idea at all.
TKU,,, Just let out the loudest laugh ever.
Thank you for this! I encountered the disappearing Thrulines yesterday. I did not waste my time calling the ancestry help desk because I knew if it was a major problem, you would have a post out right away. Thank you for all you do to keep us informed and provide solutions and advice.
Thanks, Roberta and Paula! My Thrulines are back. I had made my way through most of them, before they got lost. I have been able to attach lots of DNA matches to my tree. I have a large tree. In most cases it doesn’t include the parents of my DNA matches, since they are too young to show up in most available records. If the matches tree agrees with mine down to their parents, I give them the benefit of the doubt that they actually know who their parents are and add them. I’ve found very few that were obviously incorrect.
The problem I am having is that the site will show me that someone is a DNA match, who logged in recently (by displaying their photo) When I click on them it may say that they are a 5th cousin who has recently logged in (I’m easily suckered in when I see a new photo and I get curious) but when I click on their profile, it says they are now suddenly not even on my DNA match list after all.
This even happens with my first cousin on occasion, who supposedly, according to ancestry, has no people on their tree that match mine even though we copied some of each other’s tree data, so there are not only a lot of matches that we share, but they are exact, word for word matches, in some cases. Then, when I go to my match list, there he is just fine again, listed as a DNA match and a first cousin as he should be. I wonder if there will be some family feuds caused my some of these misunderstandings.
I’m running hot and cold on the value of ThruLines–and I’m keeping in mind these enhancements are in “Beta.” Right this minute I’ve gone back to the way things were, but I’ve played with it. My biggest observation is this: if a lot of folks who have my same ancestral lines currently have a particular ancestor in their trees that isn’t correct for me (i.e., just not proven) then even though that “ancestor” is now appearing as a potential ancestor, I can ignore the clue. That’s okay with me! If I don’t think that person is my ancestor, I do not have to put the profile in my tree. The very fact that there’s something in place to tell me some trees have adopted the person as their own ancestor, is cool, and just fine with me. I’m not going to be insulted. There may be one to come along that I can use.
I can see why a lot of people like “ThruLines”, because it is an idea with great potential. BUT, I can also see why Ancestry needs to work on it.
In my case, ThruLines isn’t even using my current, linked tree. It’s using an old tree that I deleted over a year ago when I found out that my mother’s paternal grandparents were a completely different couple that she or I believed.
But instead of using this tree, ThruLines has reverted to a tree that should no longer even exist. I wouldn’t mind seeing “extra” people so much, but I’m not seeing the actual people who account for 1/4 of my ancestry — even though they’re in my linked tree, and even though I share DNA with literally *hundreds* of people in this part of my tree. (The closest of who is a 1st cousin once removed, with who I share 344 cM in 18 DNA segments.)
Yes, they are using what appears to be an older tree fir me too. Maybe you and I can finally figure out how we are related now that you figured out your missing grandparent.
Unfortunately, I believe Ancestry’s “improved” DNA Match list is also having a problem using my actual linked tree.
For example, I have a relative who is in at least eight DNA Circles with me — every one of whom is centered on a common ancestor for both of us. We both have public, linked trees. Yet if I filter for “common ancestors”, *no* relative from my maternal grandfather’s side shows up.
Yet I’m in ten DNA Circles on his side. My “circle membership confidence” for a couple of them is “strong” and for others is “good”, and while I don’t share DNA with every other member of the circles, I do share DNA with a lot of them.
One of the circles has over 450 members right now. And the head of the circle is listed as being my 4th great grandfather.
As to our shared segment on chromosome 9, I looked at my matches at GEDmatch at that location and I’m pretty sure it’s through my great grandmother Hannah (Muncy) Babcock’s ancestry. She was born a Muncy, and her mother was a Sizemore. But I think it’s perhaps a Bowling connection that we share — which would be on the Muncy side. However, I have to note that some of these lines crossed … a lot. 😉
ThruLines is NOT listed as an option under Extras tab (then under AncestryLab) yet I got the feature on my newest set of DNA results last Wednesday (6 Mar 2019)
Tonight I created a twin for myself in my tree and attached my original results to the new me. No ThruLines under the Extras tab (under Lab) for either sets of results. I did not opt into the beta for either set of results, so not sure why the article mentions to opt into beta — I do not want the other stuff yet. I’ll wait until they force me in and/or Jeff Snavely modifies AncestryDNA Helper to fit with the new schema or whichever happens first
Do I need to let the shared ancestor hint clear to zero before reattaching the tree to the DNA results?
I have lots of POSSIBLE DNA cousin matches based on trees but why should I care??? Unless I can verify with a Chromosome Browser to see where we match, I’m not going to go anything with this. Plus since most of the cousin matches are based on children or grandchildren of the individual, without some way to see where we match, I have no way to tell if they seem to match the maternal or paternal side.
I see it as a big smoke and mirror with little actual value. Back to MyHeritage.
Thanks for this Roberta! I’m sure it will be a comfort to people to have your sane summary to hang on to while waiting for things to be sorted out. You are alwasy so careful detailed and reassuring. Also, I have to say I’m enjoying my first pass through thrulines and one path suggests we are related, which makes me very happy. 🙂 Through Sarah Estes Walker, daughter of Elisha (1703-1732). Sarah was (probably) my 5th great grandmother. Hope that line holds up!
There’s a lot of Estes DNA floating around:)
My biggest problem is that ThruLines is picking up matches and suggesting ancestors in my Birth Certificate Father’s line, not my biological father’s line. I don’t know how to fix this. HELP!
And they’re also connecting my DNA matches through him as well.
Yea, sure makes you wonder about the DNA matching doesn’t it.
Unfortunately, I can’t help. Lots of people are reporting this issue so hopefully they will get it fixed quickly.
Hi Roberta!
Thanks for the helpful post. I will say that Chrome basically isn’t working for me. I’ve done all the usual fixes. No way to search the tree at all.
Safari worked after I deleted cookies for about an hour. I deleted them again and it worked again for about an hour. Now I’m giving up.
Thanks for sharing this helpful tip!!! I can see ThruLines again, but more importantly I can search my tree and my DNA matches. I couldn’t do any of that today with the regular browser that I use. Now it is working splendidly.
You are the best!
I have tried it and it listed my first cousin as my great grandfather. What should I do?
There’s nothing you can do except hope that others don’t copy that tree.
Pathetic, isn’t it?
Thank you for this article. I have another situation. For several months I had no shared ancestor hints come up on the newer trees I created for friends for whom I manage DNA. On my own tree where I have more than a handful of DNA profiles attached, I had plenty of SAHs. Since BETA was implemented, all my newer trees have been flooded with the ancestor hints I knew should be there (hundreds of them!) but they have all gone from my own family tree. ThruLines has been helpul for my newer/friends trees but I’d like to see my common ancestors and ThruLines on my own tree. Same account!
No problems at all.
Thank you for the delete specific cookies instructions. I had tried deleting the cache several times today when people swore by it and it didn’t work. This did.
Thank you so much about the directions to clear the cookies. I had just read your post and then went to log on to Ancestry, and poof…no ancestry, just a “this page does not exist”, even if I went to the Google Search line and typed Ancestry.com in. Cookies being removed fixed the problem and I am back in. Thank you!!!
You may have to do it from time to time.
I’ve just done their feedback asking for them to make it evident where matching is only in the DNA pile up area. After doing an exercise of everyone with 7cm or more from Gedmatch Genesis and My Heritage, I found many of my ‘matches’ were far (far!) more distant than suggested.
My ThroughLines gave me a few extra distant cousins, my wife’s absolutely none – obviously as precious few of her relatives have added a tree or put in more people than just themself.
We need a chromosome browser. Ancestry removes matches they feel are too matchy. However, some of these are valid, from endogamous populations such as Acadians.
AMEN, AMEN, AMEN!
I wonder if part of why they won’t release a Chromosome Browser is because their so-called phasing has messed up so much of the data. They already show shorter chromosome strings than anyone else. If they show what data they are using, folks will know how FUBAR their tools really are.
I’ve had several matches where Ancestry shows a total of 8 or 9 cM on two segments. At most, one of those segments can be 6 cM, which seems to be the smallest that they show for one segment. At least one of the segments has to be a really tiny one … or they both are.
That segment count had to be before the Timber downweighting.
Roberta, as always, thank you for sharing your insights.
It seems Ancestry is looking for another revenue stream. I read this new offering could end up being fee-based.
What they have presented to me is downright wrong.
I will not be adding to their bottom line. The only value all of this has for me is its “entertainment value”.
I had ThruLines yesterday but now they are completely gone. I didn’t like the fact that they used my outdated family tree where the info was deleted rather than my latest family tree. It’s a great concept and definitely very helpful. It’s not unlike MyHeritage’s Theory of Relativity and suffers the same setback, namely false information from a few family trees leading to misleading results.
It would be great for Ancestry can also add a chromosome browser.
Thanks Roberta. I removed the cookies and now have the ThruLines back. I have found some new connections and have ignored others that are not correct
I have cleared my cache, 53 Ancestry cookies and all cookies and still do not show Trulines, only DNA Circles. I have tried different browsers, ipad, iphone and husbands PC. Still nothing. Any other suggestions? Thank you.
Use incognito mode in Chrome.
THRULINES came to my attention last week. I find it most interesting. I have discovered a dozen or so 6th cousins that share from 6 cm to 24 cm with me. Until now, I was unaware that ANY DNA after 6 generations could be passed to next generation. Well, now I have the proof that it can , even if th ancestor in common was born in late 1600”s.
Yes, I see that often.
If you have an issue where you think you need to clear your cookies to see ThruLines, try opening Ancestry in a different browser, then copying, and then bookmarking the link in your favourite browser. The advantage here is that it is not only quicker, you do it once!
I had the issue with every browser.
Hi again,
I posted here yesterday, because I wad enthused about signing up for ThruLines !
I want to add that I just signed up, successfully 🙂 !
It was easy – I clicked “extras”, tgen I clicked for the 2 extra lab additions, and then I clicked on my main tabs to go to my DNA Results page. My DNA page took about 10 extra seconds to load, and voila, there was my option to use ThruLines!
So I did …
*and now, there’s at least 10 brand new potential ancestors for me to explore !!
This reminds me of when DNA Circles was first available to me, hurrah hurruh 🙂 .
I have both circles and thru lines and have had no issues… but I use Firefox as my browser when on Ancestry because one of their phone rep told me months ago it works better than other browsers with their website and using it it solved the issue I had. I have a MacBook and usually use Safari elsewhere.
I access circles through the main DNA category in black bar at the top of the Ancestry home page, in the drop down menu I click on Circles, and I am taken to that page.
To access thru lines… I click on Ancestry DNA home with arrow, on right top of circles page and it takes me to thru lines. There may be other ways but this is easy for me. I have enabled Thru lines and still want circles, but I use them rarely.
I am rather surprised I still have a membership, since I gave Ancestry H*ll in their survey about how they were encouraging their members to copy trees without any research at all, which generated tons of incorrect trees which keep being copied, and copied and copied. These trees don’t even have applicable documents for facts which tells me their owners are lazy and don’t know how and/or do not bother to learn how to find their ancestors. I have even tested it by adding a bogus new ancestor and within a few weeks that same name shows up in various trees even with a notice of ‘not proven’ in the name. I also told Ancestry I didn’t value either circles or thru lines or any gimmick, they. come up with to gain or keep members. I only value their tree feature with since and their database.
Ive used FTM and Ancestry for years, I remember when ancestry used to be free. LOL.
I use Ancestry circles and thru lines rarely, but with great caution when I do. I mostly use the database of documents they have and the ease of creating trees then syncing them with my FTM program on my laptop, that sync ability is extremely valuable to me. I admit, there was a time when I would have happily pitched FTM out the window over the last couple years, until they finally got the program and the syncing with Ancestry right.
Happy bone digging !
Rosemary
Forgot to say, I tested everywhere.. 23 & me, ancestry, FTDNA, and am on Gedmatch… I use the Chromosome on all but Ancestry to check and triangulate.
Roberta, thank you for your suggestion of using Incognito in Chrome, unfortunately, that did not help. I even tried using the computer in the Gen Room of my local library. Same thing…nothing. The problem has to be with Ancestry since Trulines does not work on 3 different computers, ipad, iphone and 3 different browsers. I have had problems with Ancestry since last May when they decided to start fixing what was not broken.
I have the thrulines. It listed my mother twice. She was my mom and then the second time she was listed she was my stepmother (who BTW wouldn’t be a relative)/
hi wondered if you could advise
thru lines works great for my dna and i found several new connections
My mother in laws dna is a different matter
It shows only 2 ancestors for her – her father and an unknown mother even though all her ancestors are there going back several generations!
I do not want to clear out the cach incase i loose mine what do you suggest?
Not the cache. Just the cookies. Try incognito thru Chrome. ThruLines just isn’t working right. Period.
Yes! I intuitively cleaned out my cookies and cache… everything worked fine!
Perhaps ThruLines will be most interesting for beginners who have very small trees, if the first few generations connect to documented trees. I would be very careful about accepting any conclusions, though.
In cases where my ancestors had more than one wife/husband, ThruLines has consistently selected the non-biological mate. Even though ThruLines is in Beta testing, getting the correct biological ancestors should have been a rudimentary condition of the programming.
ThruLines has given me ancestors, as well “potential” ancestors, that have been taken from undocumented trees, most of which are almost certainly inaccurate. Ancestry users have made guesses, put them on their trees, and guesses have been copied extensively by other users, as others have commented in this space. Unfortunately, many if not most Ancestry trees are copies of other trees, which perpetuates errors and lack of documentation. When “Ancestry Trees” is cited as documentation, the referenced tree is not identified for examination.
ThruLines has given me some DNA matches that I didn’t know about, generally in the 6-9 centimorgan category, so not necessarily valid. I’ve already worked on clustering through my 4th cousins. The biggest obstacle in working on genetic genealogy is that so many people do their DNA testing at Ancestry, which doesn’t have a chromosome browser. If I do any more DNA testing in the future, I will use MyHeritage, which does have a chromosome browser.
In ThruLines, I’ve found only one button for e-mailing matches, which is green. In the past, a green button has indicated that the e-mail is sent to an Ancestry mailbox rather than the personal e-mail address of the recipient. Pre-ThruLines, a click on the tan button sent an e-mail to a personal account, so I hope that the green button doesn’t become the only option. Many, if not all, copies of my e-mail communications on Ancestry have been wiped out or otherwise inaccessible recently.
Using DNA triangulation on Gedmatch, it has been possible to predict ancestors two generations back from my brick walls, although I haven’t been able to determine the ancestors one generation back. My ThruLines didn’t find this information and potential ancestors through their DNA matching, although a cluster exists. All in all, ThruLines is a big disappointment, as I had hoped for a DNA clue to ancestors beyond my brick walls, all of which are in the period between 1750-1810.
I was very interested when Ancestry brought out “NADS” a few years ago, but quickly abandoned it as a waste of time. “Circles” were useful for clustering. Unless some big improvements are made to ThruLines – along with a chromosome browser to authenticate conclusions – it’s not useful for my own research.
Although ThruLines disappeared from my Ancestry page, I haven’t had any problems accessing it here: https://www.ancestry.com/cs/product/new-release. Scroll down to find the line that says, “Try It Now.”
I am not sure whats so different with my account but I have yet to lose ThruLines.
It’s extremely frustrating, but it seems to be primarily a Chrome browser issue. I haven’t found any problems using Internet Explorer.
I have manage 19 DNA accounts all attached to my large working tree. I clear the cahe on a regular basis. Three of the DNA page results, ThruLines are not activated. Yes, I have manually turn them on as instructed. This is more than frustrating! For an odd reason, all three surnames of the non working ThruLines are that of the surname Lee. Other Lee’s surname accounts are working!! No, I am not using Chrome. (Firefox & Edge) All the tagging features are working fine. On the non working Thruline pages, the “mutual relative” feature is not working either. Different, individual people, linked to the same working tree. (Only one test result connected to the person in the tree.) Last time I had a similiar issue with Circles, it took a year for Ancestry (with much hounding) to get the feature fixed. Oh by the way, the old “circles” program do work on these three accounts.
I followed all the directions given and I’m still in the same boat. Thrulines has stopped recognizing anything regarding my Mothers paternal line beyond her father. All of the common ancestor hints have also been dropped, even though when you look at the individual dropped, it is clear both genetically and via their tree build, we are related and their is a known common ancestor.
On my fathers side, everything on his Mothers maternal side beyond 2nd gg is no longer recognized. All of those common ancestor hints have been dropped as well.
I am still getting new common ancestor hints via the branches ancestry is still recognizing on my tree, however.
I’m baffled.
I would like to add, that I also tried using another computer and I still had the same issues as listed above. This doesn’t appear to be a browser issue, if it were, then signing into ancestry on another computer wouldn’t be showing the issues stated above.
I’ve used firefox, chrome, microsoft edge, IE.
The ancestors NOT listed in thrulines have the common ancestor leaf when you turn off the BETA and do show as common ancestors. When you turn the BETA back on, everything goes haywire again.
That’s interesting.