Ancestry DNA "Common Ancestors" have disappeared

[ozdelver]

Hi,
I am using Ancestry DNA to build a speculative tree to find birth parents of a relative. I have built a tree using the Shared Matches information. Since I began, I have always had a list of Common Ancestors for the five cousins whose DNA I am tracking. They have all been attached to this speculative tree.

For some reason the "Common Ancestors" tab is no longer working, and they also do not appear in the list of matches, where previously they were shown. This applies to all five cousins.

However, my own DNA matches and also my husband's are still showing the Common Ancestors, and the toolbar tab is still working.

Because the tree was speculative, I had it set at locked and unsearchable -I didn't want anyone to start copying what was not documented fact. I have now changed it to locked and searchable, to see if this is causing the problem, but this did not make the Common Ancestors reappear.

Does anyone have any ideas on this problem? Is Ancestry doing work on the Common Ancestors tool?
Thanks for any help, it is very frustrating not being able to use it.

[Nova67]

Mine is private and unsearchable. Common ancestors disappeared with that. I guess that is because if a tree is private and searchable you can still check if it contains a surname you are looking for with your matches.

But you have unlocked yours. Maybe it will take a while to resolve. They say it takes a month when you change your preferences to non-searchable.

[Gadget]

I believe Common Ancestors only works if you have a 'searchable' tree. I had to make my private tree searchable before I could get Common Ancestors or Thrulines.  If others have trees that are Private and not searchable, they would not show up in Common Ancestors.

[ozdelver]

Thanks for the replies.
But I still fail to see why this has suddenly stopped working, when I have been using the "Common Ancestors" feature for a year or more with this unsearchable private tree.

[Gadget]

Are you sure it was unsearchable and private?  I had to make my private tree searchable for Common ancestors to work.

[ozdelver]

Hi all,
Well, I have woken this morning to find that the Common Ancestors have returned for all my cousins' accounts.
I think that the Ancestry system must have at last caught up with the fact that my Tree was Private Unsearchable after all these months, and turned off the Common Ancestors facility. I changed it the other day,  to Private Searchable.
It has only taken a few days for the Common Ancestors to be restored -maybe because all the algorithmic work had already been done and only had to be restored.
Anyway, all good now, and happy to have it all back to normal!

[Gadget]

It does take 48 hours or so to change - I think they use candle power 

[Nova67]

And, you may have seen my other post, one of my major surnames has returned to being searchable within the surname match function. It only took six months!

[Gadget]

I'm not sure what they're doing. My latest ethnicity calculation has me with Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia ethnicity!! None of my ancestors came from US but some of their relatives went there and Canada - but that is definitely not ethnicity. It's just where I might have relatives. Someone should explain to them the meaning of ethnicity.