What's New

A plain-language look at recent improvements to Family Tree Analyzer.

23 August 2026

Added a Breakdown by census button to the new By Person view on the Website Sync page, matching the one already on the By Lost Cousins entry view — click a number to see just those people.
Clicking through to a person's facts from either view on the Website Sync page now opens in a new browser tab. Previously it navigated away in the same tab, so pressing Back afterwards lost your results and needed a fresh (often slow) "Check My Ancestors" run to get them back.
Fixed a crash on the new By Person view for trees where the same person could be counted more than once for a census (e.g. a blended household) — this also corrects some over-counted totals on the Lost Cousins Report page.

22 August 2026

Added a new By person in my tree view to the Website Sync page's Check My Ancestors results. Alongside the existing list of your Lost Cousins entries, you can now switch to a list of the people in your own tree instead, showing whether each one has been matched — much easier to scan than hunting through a large My Ancestors page for the handful of people in a small tree.
Tightened up wording on the Website Sync page so it's always clear which direction "not matched" means — Not in GEDCOM on the Matches by Census breakdown, and Not on LC on the new By Person view above.
Fixed a bug where, if checking your My Ancestors page failed partway through (e.g. a network hiccup), the results could be left looking exactly like a genuine "nothing matched" with no indication anything had gone wrong. A failure is now shown clearly, and any previous results are kept rather than being replaced with misleading zeros.

21 August 2026

Fixed an inaccurate tooltip on the Website Sync page's Name link — it said the link would open on the Lost Cousins website, when it actually opens the record on the census provider's own site (the same link Lost Cousins itself uses).
Fixed a Lost Cousins matching bug affecting households sharing one census reference (e.g. a parent and an adult child still living together): the wrong household member could sometimes be matched instead of the person actually named on the website entry.

19 August 2026

Added a new 1911 Irish Census Helper under the Census menu. If your tree has old citations linking to the National Archives of Ireland's now-retired per-record page (rather than a reel number), this tool finds them, looks each one up, and builds a ready-to-use replacement citation you can copy into your tree — with a downloadable list. The menu item only appears if your tree actually has any of these older-style citations.

11 August 2026

Family Tree Analyzer can now recognise and match the 1911 Ireland census on Lost Cousins. If your source citation is a link to the National Archives of Ireland's own census viewer, the reel number is picked up automatically — whichever of the archive's two viewer addresses (its current one or its older one) you happen to have. A ready-to-paste Suggested Reference Note is now offered for this census too if matching still fails.
On the Website Sync page, clicking a person's name now opens the same census record Lost Cousins itself links to, in a new tab.
Fixed a Lost Cousins matching bug: a woman recorded on the census under a married name, but corrected on Lost Cousins to her maiden name (or vice versa), could fail to match even with a perfect reference — Family Tree Analyzer now checks both.

8 August 2026

Fixed a Lost Cousins matching bug affecting households where a parent had remarried: if that parent was living with a new spouse elsewhere by the time of the census, other household members' own correctly-cited references could be silently overridden by the parent's unrelated one and fail to match — even though their own citation was exactly right. Family Tree Analyzer now falls back to a person's own reference when this happens, instead of giving up.
Fixed a display glitch on the Website Sync page where the results grid briefly showed everyone as "not found" (each with a suggested reference note) right after clicking "Check My Ancestors", before flipping to the real results a moment later. A progress bar now shows while the check is running instead. Also widened the Census column so the year isn't cut off, and shortened the "Added by FTAnalyzer" column header so it displays properly.
The Upload page's "View Dashboard" and "Upload another file" buttons now also appear at the top of the page once processing finishes, in addition to the bottom — so you don't have to scroll down to find them.
Added a tip to the Instructions page pointing out that you can use your browser's own search (Ctrl+F, or Cmd+F on a Mac) to quickly find a topic — it works even for text inside a collapsed section.

7 August 2026

Fixed "Check My Ancestors" silently losing the ability to match nicknames (Fred/Frederick, Maggie/Margaret, and similar) after the very first tree loaded in a session — so a Lost Cousins entry recorded under a nickname or full name could be missed even when your GEDCOM's own census reference for that person was perfect. It's fixed for good now, and should noticeably improve match rates for anyone who's uploaded more than one tree.
The Lost Cousins Report page's per-census table now splits "entries to add" into Has Reference (your census citation already has everything needed — ready to add as-is) and Needs Reference (a citation needs adding or fixing first), instead of one combined "missing" count.
The Website Sync page's Suggested Reference Note can now offer a ready-to-paste note for the Scotland 1881, England & Wales 1841 and US 1880 censuses too — previously only four of the seven censuses Family Tree Analyzer can match got a suggested note.
The Suggested Reference Note column is less cluttered: the repetitive "Add this note to their citation:" text on every row is gone (replaced with a header tooltip explaining what the column is for), and the note text now wraps so it can be copied straight out without needing to export to Excel first.
Fixed a display glitch where a dash in some exported reference text could show up as garbled characters when opened in Excel.
Fixed a rare case where a "&" already correctly written in your GEDCOM file could show up on screen as the literal text "&", if the software that created the file (e.g. Family Tree Maker) had over-escaped it.

6 August 2026

Fixed a "Check My Ancestors" bug where a possible-match suggestion could point at a completely unrelated person elsewhere in your tree who just happened to share a first name and exact birth year, instead of correctly finding nobody — the suggestion now also has to share a matching surname.
The "Check My Ancestors" results grid and CSV export now show two separate reference columns instead of one ambiguous "Census Reference" — Lost Cousins Reference (the value stored on the website) and GEDCOM Reference (what's recorded in your own source citation) — so a mismatch between the two is easier to spot and understand.
Fixed Lost Cousins matching for households split across two census pages: Lost Cousins always records everyone in a household against the head of household's page number, even for people whose own citation correctly captured the next page along — Family Tree Analyzer now matches (and will upload) using the head of household's reference for the whole family, instead of each person's own page number. See the census reference format guide for more detail, including the one case this can't help with (an unrelated boarder or lodger recorded on the same census page).

5 August 2026

Canadian 1881 Lost Cousins matching is now automatic for most entries: where your source citation names the place (e.g. "Woodlands, Marquette, Manitoba"), Family Tree Analyzer works out the census District number for you using Library and Archives Canada's own district records — you no longer need to look it up and add a note yourself in most cases.
Fixed a display glitch on the Places map page where two maps could appear stacked on top of each other, with the wrong one showing zoomed all the way out to the whole world.
Fixed a rare server error that could interrupt loading a tree when several people were using the site at the same time, most noticeable right after a site update.
Fixed Scottish and English census reference matching, which had stopped working correctly on the web app since it moved off the desktop app's underlying code — Lost Cousins matches for these census years should be noticeably more accurate now.
Added an "Open My Ancestors page" button to the Lost Cousins Website Sync page, so you can quickly open your My Ancestors page on the Lost Cousins website in a new tab alongside Family Tree Analyzer.
"Check My Ancestors" on the Website Sync page now does a second, lower-confidence check: if an entry can't be matched by census reference, it also looks for a same-name, same-birth-year person in your tree who simply has no census reference recorded at all, and flags them with a blue question mark. This helps you find exactly which of your uncited census facts to go and add a reference to, to get them matching properly.

4 August 2026

The Lost Cousins Website Sync page's "Check My Ancestors" results are clearer: the matched tick is now a brighter green, a summary line shows how many entries were matched to your tree versus not found in your GEDCOM, and the Matched and Added-by-FTAnalyzer columns can now be filtered like the rest of the grid.
All three lists on the Website Sync page ("Check My Ancestors", "Ready to upload" and "Invalid census references") now show 50 rows per page instead of 10, and each has its own "Export CSV" button to download the full results.
The "Last updated" date shown at the bottom of the sidebar now displays in your own local time instead of always showing UTC.
Fixed the "Check My Ancestors" matched/not-found summary line on the Website Sync page, which could show a slightly different total than the exported CSV — both now count the same way. A new "Breakdown by census" button shows those matched/not-found counts split out by census year, and further split into entries you added yourself versus entries Family Tree Analyzer added for you.
Improved Lost Cousins matching accuracy for Scottish and 1911 England & Wales census entries, where a reference format mismatch could cause a correct match to be missed. Canadian 1881 entries can now also be matched if you add the census District number to the fact (see the format guide below) — most citations for this census only have the microfilm roll number, which isn't enough on its own.
Added a census reference format guide to Instructions, explaining exactly what reference fields Lost Cousins needs for each supported census year — useful if "Check My Ancestors" shows an entry as not found in your GEDCOM when you're sure it's there.

2 August 2026

The Family Structure breakdown's "Marriage Recorded" measure now explains that anyone who genuinely never married can be left out of the count entirely — add a Custom Fact called "Unmarried" or "Died Single" to them and FTAnalyzer already recognises it and excludes them, rather than counting them as a missing record.

1 August 2026

The Locations Map, Timeline Map and Lifeline Map now show a place at the nearest geocoded region or country when its exact address hasn't been geocoded, instead of leaving it off the map entirely — shown faded with a dashed outline so you can tell it's approximate. Prefer to only see exact matches? Turn this off under Locations in Settings.

28 July 2026

Tree Health's "blood and direct relatives" population no longer includes spouses who married into the family — they're related by marriage, not by blood or direct descent, so counting them was overstating how much of your tree the scores actually cover.
Added a "Back" button to every report and detail page, alongside the existing "Dashboard" button — it returns you to whichever filtered list you drilled down from (e.g. a Locations or Individuals search), instead of only being able to jump all the way back to the Dashboard.
The Lost Cousins Website Sync page's "Ready to upload" list now has a "select just the first N" option, so you can try a small test batch first — handy for a practice run, or just to see how it works before committing to uploading everything.

27 July 2026

Fixed the Instructions page's "On this page" links not opening the section they jumped to, leaving you looking at a collapsed heading instead of the content you clicked through to read.
Fixed a scoring bug that could push the Tree Health Date Precision score above 100%.

26 July 2026

On the Colour Birth/Marriage/Death report, a missing Baptism or Burial record is now shown the same way as a missing Birth or Death date — clickable so you can search for it — instead of a grey "no record" cell you couldn't act on.
Fixed some Tree Health bars on the Dashboard not lining up vertically with their neighbours.
Tree Health's Date Precision score no longer counts a missing Baptism/Burial record against you (unlike Birth/Death, not everyone has one), and Family Structure no longer penalises missing parents or marriage records for ancestors born before 1800, where record survival naturally drops off.
The Dashboard's Family Structure score now breaks down into its two measures — parents found and marriage records found — each shown with its own real count and a direct link to the matching list, instead of one combined percentage linking only to the parents gap.
Fixed the Locations page and Location Quality score wrongly marking many correctly-geocoded locations as "not yet geocoded".
The Locations page now has an "Export KML" button, matching the desktop app — download your geocoded locations as a KML file you can import into Google Maps, Google Earth, or similar mapping tools.
Fixed the Locations page showing extra confusing rows (with a blank GEDCOM location) that didn't match the count shown on the Location Quality breakdown — it was counting internal place-hierarchy bookkeeping entries alongside your real recorded locations.

25 July 2026

The Dashboard's Location Quality score now breaks down into its five separate measures — known country, known region, birth location, death location, and geocoding — each shown with its own real count and a direct link to the matching list, instead of one combined percentage that could look confusing.
The "reconnecting" message you might briefly see during a site update now explains what's happening, instead of looking like an error.
The Colour Birth/Marriage/Death report's Filter list now includes "No Record (Grey)", so you can build a list of individuals with no baptism, no burial, or any other missing record type — not just missing dates.
Signed-in users can now ignore a Data Error that isn't actually a mistake (with an optional note explaining why), so it stops cluttering the list. A "Show ignored errors" checkbox lets you review or restore them later.

24 July 2026

Added a free historical map for the United States (USGS topographic surveys, 1884-2006) to the Locations Map, Timeline Map and Lifeline Map, alongside the existing historical maps for Scotland and Great Britain. A year slider lets you narrow it down to a specific era once you've zoomed in to your area of interest.

22 July 2026

Fixed the Error Type filter on the Data Errors report needing two clicks outside the menu to close after picking your error types — one click now closes it as expected.
The Dashboard's summary cards, deep-dive cards and Top Countries panel now correctly respect your chosen relationship-type filter (e.g. Direct Ancestors only) when you click through to a detailed report, matching the behaviour already used elsewhere on the Dashboard.
The Data Errors report now has a link on every row to jump straight to the facts for that person or couple — handy for errors like "Children Status Total Mismatch" where you need to see the family to work out what's wrong.
Fixed the Colour Census report wrongly marking some people as missing from a census when they were actually abroad at the time — this happened when someone had two location facts recorded in the same year (e.g. leaving one country and arriving in another), where the wrong one could be picked as their location on the census date.
Added a new Parent Age Report (under Other Reports) showing the spread of ages at which parents in your tree had children, as a chart plus a numeric table, split by the child's gender and filterable by relationship type.

11 July 2026

Fixed a background check that could repeatedly fail to remember a location should be skipped, if that location's name has an accent — it could keep retrying the same one on every tree reload instead of remembering it was already handled.
Fixed drag-and-drop on the Upload page — dropping a GEDCOM file onto the drop zone now actually selects it, instead of only highlighting the box.
Fixed a rare crash that could interrupt an upload while the progress log was updating.
Fixed some unusually messy locations in a GEDCOM file being able to stop other, perfectly good, locations nearby from being saved.
Fixed the Report an Issue form crashing instead of showing an error message when it couldn't reach our issue tracker.

10 July 2026

Fixed an issue on our new server that could occasionally make the site unavailable or disconnect you mid-session.
Fixed the "Last updated" date shown at the bottom of the sidebar being very hard to read in light mode.
Fixed a background startup check that could log a harmless error when a country name has an accent (e.g. Côte d'Ivoire), and made related startup errors easier to diagnose.
Improved how we deploy updates and apply database changes behind the scenes, making releases more reliable.

7 July 2026

The Lost Cousins Website Sync page is now available to everyone — log in, check what's already on your My Ancestors page, and find records you could add. Uploading records straight to the website is still being tested and remains coming soon for now.
Checking your My Ancestors page now matches each entry against your own tree by census reference and name, showing a green tick (linking to that person) if matched, or a grey question mark if it couldn't find a match.
If you're signed in, confirmed matches from your My Ancestors page are now remembered, so your Lost Cousins reports stay accurate the next time you load your tree — no need to check your My Ancestors page again every session.

4 July 2026

Tree Health's Family Structure score no longer counts spouses married into the family as missing parents — their parents are rarely researched, so this was unfairly lowering the score and cluttering the "missing parents" list with in-laws instead of your own relatives.
Refined how Tree Health scores are calculated to give a fairer, more accurate picture of your tree's completeness.

3 July 2026

Added Lost Cousins reports: see which relatives are already entered on the Lost Cousins website and which are still to add, for each supported census year. A Website Sync page that uploads your census entries directly to your My Ancestors page is being tested and coming soon.
The On This Day page can now show notable historical events from Wikipedia for the selected date, alongside your own tree's events — turn it on in Settings.
Colour Census now explains why a search link isn't available for certain census years/providers, instead of a cell just doing nothing when clicked.
The Report an Issue form now includes the page's current filter/search settings alongside the page address, to help us reproduce problems more quickly.
Colour Census now reminds you to log in to your chosen search provider in a separate tab first, so automated searches work first time instead of landing on a sign-in page.
The Getting Started guide now covers more genealogy websites for exporting a GEDCOM file, plus free options for starting a tree from scratch if you're working from paper records rather than an existing family tree.

2 July 2026

Signing in with Google now lets you choose a different account, instead of always using whichever one your browser is already signed into.
Fixed an issue that could stop some Google accounts from being able to sign in at all.
Your Improvement Plan's census and date suggestions now take you straight to the right search tool for that person, instead of just their record page.
GEDCOM files with formatting problems now upload more reliably — the system automatically retries with more tolerant handling and lets you know when it does.
Fixed an issue where uploading a very large family tree (tens of thousands of people) could fail with an error instead of processing normally.

1 July 2026

Added quick links from the Loose Births, Loose Deaths and Loose Info reports straight to a person's full facts.
Improved the accuracy of the Tree Health census coverage and date precision scores.

30 June 2026

Added interactive Timeline and Lifeline maps, showing where and when your ancestors lived across their lives.
Added a choice of historical map styles.

28 June 2026

Added Census Search, World Wars, On This Day, Duplicates and Loose reports as new ways to explore your tree.
Location matching on the map now works specifically from your own tree's places.

25–26 June 2026

Added sign-in with Google, so you can save your tree and come back to it later without re-uploading.
Added the Privacy Policy, Terms of Service and Instructions pages.