Why do I see "unknown" individuals in my tree online after I publish from Family Tree Builder?
There are a couple of reasons that you may get ‘unknown’ individuals in your tree online, after you publish it from Family Tree Builder.
The first reason is related to privacy settings within Family Tree Builder:
Please go back into your project in Family Tree Builder, and go into the person that appears as ‘unknown’. Click on ‘edit’ to edit their details. Check that under the Info tab, ‘The person is privatized’ is unchecked, as displayed below.
If the privatize option was checked, make sure to uncheck it, and to republish your tree to your site.
This second reason is related to languages in Family Tree Builder:
In Family Tree Builder, it is possible to choose a DISPLAY language and a DATA ENTRY language.
DISPLAY language changes Family Tree Builder’s interface only and will not affect any information that you have manually entered in the tree. In other words, DISPLAY language corresponds to all the buttons and command names in the program.
DATA ENTRY language corresponds to the information you enter into the tree yourself. Names, places, notes, etc. are considered DATA.
Problems may arise when DATA is entered in one language when the DISPLAY language is different. For example, let’s say I started a tree and chose my DATA language to be Italian. If I set the DISPLAY language to English and start entering information in Italian, at this point I will begin to encounter problems.
The reason for the problem is that when the DISPLAY language is set to English, Family Tree Builder is looking for English characters. If Italian characters were entered, Family Tree Builder won’t know how to read them because it is trying to read according to the encoding characteristics for the English language.
Due to the fact that each language has its own encoding characteristics, this problem can occur between any language pair. Even if only ONE character was entered, the problem can occur.
When this problem occurs, Family Tree Builder shows names as UNKNOWN. It can see there are people entered in the tree, but doesn’t know how to read the names and therefore displays the UNKNOWN title. In order to fix this, please go back into the Family Tree Builder and make sure that you have the appropriate languages selected and translated.
- Note that there are three options here, the Display language, Primary Language and Secondary Language. You will need to have the appropriate languages selected. The appropriate languages would be ones you and your family would use with the family site. For example, my family would have English and Italian selected. This will allow my Mother to view the family tree in Italian and yet, still allow me to view the tree in English.
- Next, please again go to Tools menu > Translation Wizard to translate the names to the Secondary Language. Why must you do this? The original entry of data for the Primary Language must be “translated” or converted into the Secondary Language. The Translation Wizard is a fast and effective way to do so. After this, republish and the tree should show fine.
