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Is it possible to export data from Ancestry without Family Tree Maker?

I am in the very frustrating situation of having bought Family Tree Maker twice before. The latest version I have is FTM 2010 for the Mac.

Both versions now won't connect to Ancestry and all the support relates to later versions and upgrading. Because of this I started using just the Ancestry website directly, but realise now I am locked in, and can't get at my data without buying yet another copy of FTM and this is the only place all my data exists.

Apart from the unnecessary expense, the reviews are awful: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/family-tree-maker-mac-3/id871254880?mt=12

Does anyone know of any other snazzy ways of getting my data out of Ancestry?

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    As Rusty said, you can download a GEDCOM from your online Ancestry Tree. It will be ugly, so you may want to just keep it for reference and enter your data in a new clean file. I also recommend going in and capturing all your notes, because some people say the notes don't transfer cleanly, and to save copies of the images for all the sources, so you can have them to reference when you aren't online. It isn't snazzy, but at least you'll have your data.
    – Jan Murphy ♦
    Dec 26, 2014 at 17:37
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    I will also add I ran into the situation where even PC Based FTM would not open the latest Mac FTM. I contacted support and they did the conversion for me. I also was pretty disappointed with it (several years ago) and moved to MacFamilyTree (MFT) after getting it exported. The nice thing is MFT has a lot of tools to help you find those errors, if any from the conversion. I don't even use Ancestry.com for my actual tree management anymore, just upload stripped and private name tree for hint purposes.
    – CRSouser
    Dec 29, 2014 at 0:02

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You can export your tree as a GEDCOM file.

In Ancestry click "Family Trees", then choose "Manage tree" for the appropriate tree. This takes you to the "Tree Settings" page. Scroll down to the bottom right of the page, and there is a button to "Export Tree"

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  • Great thanks Rusty, I couldn't find this before! Brilliant.
    – Magic Bullet Dave
    Dec 26, 2014 at 17:54

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