No weekly change emails
My notification settings are set to ON for “FamilySearch Information/Discoveries about My Ancestors” but I have never received a single email with changes to my “following list”. I have emailed support numerous times over the years and received no response. Any ideas? Thanks.
Answers
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You will see a red dot on the notification bell.
Click on that to see the recent changes:
You can also check for any changes at any time at https://www.familysearch.org/tree/following/
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Thanks Áine. Re: the red dot, there are no notifications there regarding changes, only the occasional notification for record hints or a message. Re: the Following list, that is what I have to monitor regularly now. The FS settings say there should be emails sent and other users do receive emails, so that's what I’d like to receive. Unfortunately I get no response from Support.
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If there are no notifications of changes, in your list under the bell, then there have not been changes. I get that notification every week. I tend to check my following list more often than the notifications arrive.
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TY. To make sure it was the notifications process not working properly I've followed a couple of profiles that have 10 to 30 changes made per day and I still get no notifications of any type but the changes are visible on the Following page. As a test I've followed profile LYXS-JQ2 which has +30 changes per day, and I still get no 'red dot' or email notifications, but the changes are all listed on my Following page so there is definitely something not working with the notifications side of their system. ty for your help.
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@J Gillies I was having the same problem. I had been getting the red dot notifications on the bell icon for the people I was following, then it quit.
For me what I found was - after I clicked on the “notification bell” icon I saw another bell icon a little below and to the right of the “notification bell” icon - that bell icon, toggles between mute and unmute. After I toggled it to unmute I started getting the red dot notifications again.
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TY Alex, I just checked and it was not muted, so I toggled it a couple of times and maybe that will reset something in the settings. There were only 5 notifications showing under the bell icon going back to 2022 so I've cleared them off just to reset that as well. ty again.
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@J Gillies, If you do not get any notifications in the next two weeks, please let us know.
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Thank you Maile.
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Hi Maile, as requested I'm letting you know that I've received no emails/notifications related to PID's that I follow since your message on Jan 5. I received one email from FS entitled "2023 Year in Review - Discover the accomplishments of the past year" yday and 2 notifications in my acct on the site, one record hint on the 10th and a memory hint on the 25th. One PID I follow (L1HN-PRR) had about 40 changes on January 15/24 alone, but I received no notification. I have to login daily to see all the changes to my following list. So, my email address appears to be working for some FS purposes, but clearly not the 'following' function. Thanks, Joanne
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@J Gillies Just checking: your email is correct in your settings, the emails are not being sent to Spam or Junk or whatever, changes are being made and you have notifications in your account?
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Hello Maile, my settings are set to receive emails, not texts. No, the emails are not being directed to my spam. Questions 3 & 4 please see my last message regarding PID's I follow and notifications/emails I have received in the last 3 weeks. thanks.
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@J Gillies In your original post you mention not getting “email” notifications for changes to your “Following List”.
The answer as to why you’re not getting “email” notifications is probably because FS stopped those notifications in 2020.
See Link:
Excerpt from link: (July 13, 2020 paragraph)
“Notifications of changes made to people you are following will now appear only in FamilySearch messages or notifications, rather than in an email. This change helps avoid excessive messages and unnecessary cluttering of your mailbox.”
While this info is in the current “Following” - Learn More tab, it seems fairly old and may not be current. Maybe @Maile L can confirm that.
It seems to be a bit overreaching on FS’s part to have made this change as some users may not mind these messages and would not consider it clutter!
Regarding the red dot notification next to the bell icon, for me the red dot doesn’t show up until the week following the change. For example changes made say on 29 Jan 2024 won’t show up until 7 Feb 2024. For me it seems these notifications are weekly and show up on Wednesdays. However I can see the changes in the “Following List” right away.
Hope this helps.
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Thanks very much, I would never have noticed that sentence in the blog. Unfortunately I've never received a notification for 'following changes' via the bell icon either. Many users still get the emails while others appear to just get notifications, so it's hard to know what the site should be doing. I'll just go back to checking the list daily. Thx again.
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