Ancestry is cancelling MyCanvas and other services as of September 3.

[DebJ]

I went to their Facebook page, as did many others, to pitch a fit, and did so repeatedly.
What happened is that in late 2012, an investment company bought them. So now, they
are doing the usual investment company thing, stripping everything they can to make a
short-term profit and then they will dump Ancestry back on the market.

Makes me sick.

I was hoping to produce a rather detailed book next year. Now doing so will be a gigantic
pain in the butt, cost likely months of extra effort, and so less likely to get done at all.
Meaning 10 years of work go capooey pretty much.

I'm just sickened.

Maybe if enough people gripe they will change their minds.

[JimDandy]

1. What is MyCanvas and why has it's demise set you back 10 years?

[DebJ]

4. It hasn't set me back ten years, but it has made it much much more difficult

to publish my research, and that's really the point of those 10 years of research. Really nice genealogy
books, with as much or as little detail as you wanted, many binding options, nice paper.

MyCanvas was a wonderfully simple way to publish, since it drew from Ancestry files I have already
created. No need to learn other programs, or to buy new computer hardware to handle my enormous
files. Everything was just online.

Now I'll have to update my hardware and software, learn how to use all that stuff, and THEN get to publish
by looking at other options.sources which will require me to do an enormous amount of work with other programs
I've not even used before.

[JimDandy]

5. I'm so sorry - can hear your frustration coming through. n/t

[csziggy]

2. Print whatever you have already produced

I just looked at the info about MyCanvas and printing seems to be the only way to download or back up what is in there. I'd never even heard of My Canvas before this so I'm not at all familiar with it, just the info that is currently on the site about its demise.

See if you can use something such as CutePDF (http://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/writer.asp) and print to PDF files. You should be able to - I "print" Ancestry pages with CutePDF all the time to save them to my computer. Then at least you will have copies of what you have already developed and not have to save paper copies right now. You can take the PDF files to any print shop to be printed later on.

Export your data from Ancestry to Family Tree Maker or another program. Family Tree Maker will link to your existing Ancestry trees and the data you have for each person. Then you can try to finish your book from there. While Family Tree Maker is not my favorite genealogy program it does interact with Ancestry pretty well.

[DebJ]

3. Thanks but my tree is so enormous I will need an extra hard drive to copy it all.

I have over 7000 people, almost 21000 records, over 4000 photos.

But I guess its time for me to look into updating my entire computer system, which is 7 years old this spring.

Unfortunately I'm not sure where I can get $1000 bucks...when I buy a computer, I buy a fairly advanced one
(except gaming technologies don't interest me) so it will last as long as possible.

But I guess I am at that point.

[csziggy]

6. Yeah, I just upgraded my computer

With my family and my husband's family, I've got over 20,000 people in my data base. I haven't counted the records or photos, but it's a lot and I'm not finished scanning stuff. I've got eight boxes of records, pictures and files from my MIL, and my Mom only lets me have a few things at a time to scan, but she's got boxes and boxes and files cabinets of records and pictures.

I ordered my parts through NewEgg.com and a local shop assembled it for me. I could have done it but had carpal tunnel surgery and arthroplasty in November and did not have full use of my thumb. And yeah, it was just over $1000. Then I added a 4 terrabyte hard drive to supplement the 3 terrabyte drive I moved over from my old computer.

Mostly I upgraded for scanning - the old computer just did not have the capability of handling large high resolution scans. I'd scan a picture or document, then couldn't save it because the computer "didn't have enough memory." It's lovely with the new computer, the scans are faster and saving the files.

My specs:
ASUS M5A99X motherboard
AMD FX-8320 Vishera 3.5GHz (4.0GHz Turbo) Eight-Core Desktop Processor
32 GB DDR3 1600 RAM
ASUS GT640-2GD3 GeForce GT 640 2GB Video Card (not really needed, but I wanted duo monitors)
Windows 7 Pro (Had to get Pro to support the 32 GB RAM)
Two 120 GC solid state drives, one for the OS and one for a PhotoShop scratch drive
And the hard drives I mentioned above. Oh, new case & power supply, new DVD burner.

Then I went and bought two monitors which makes scanning and editing images so much easier. And I found a 11" x 17" all in one printer/scanner so I can scan the oversized documents and scrapbooks. I'm now broke!

My summer vacation this year is scanning, editing, and burning to DVD!

For now, just to save your data in MyCanvas, you could "print" it in batches as PDFs, burn those files to DVD. Then download the documents and pictures and save those. I backup everything to DVD. When transitioning from one computer to another, I don't rely on moving a hard drive, I back it all up first. The more times and ways I can backup data, the better!

If you don't have a DVD burner, let me know - I have a perfectly good IDE one I can't use I could send you. I took it out of the old computer to put in the new one and the new one doesn't have that kind of connection.

[DebJ]

7. Thanks that's kind of you. I do have a DVD burner.