Why does the Attach to Tree bar on unindexed catalogs/books not load anymore?
This started happening last week and has made attaching as sources unindexed entries from catalogs/books SO MUCH more work.
What exactly happens is, on any unindexed catalog/book from the available collection, on any page without anything indexed on it, the Attach to Tree button just opens up a white bar on the right side of the page with no text or anything on it. I can close it by guestimating where the close icon would be and it then goes away, but I cannot make it load properly like it used it, so I cannot attach anything from inside that system, I have to manually c&p the link of the page to every single person's sources while typing in all the details over and over (and over and over and over and over) again.
I have been researching my family tree on here for over a year now fairly regularly and this has never happened before. Never. Now the issue persist, checked it half an hour ago and it's still present.
As what's most unindexed in the catalogs/books connected to my family tree are wedding registration books church books, you can imagine how fun just a simple wedding of bride, two parents, and groom, again two parents, is to add to the sources of each of those people. That's 6 sources that need to be added individually and manually for every single wedding!
It's been over a week, why has this issue not been fixed yet??
Info: I use Windows 11 and 7, and Firefox (different versions on the different systems, obviously) and NO, I will quit this site before I quit a browser I've been using for well over a decade as this is the only site and the only issue I have had so far. I have not tried other browsers because I DO NOT WANT TO MOVE. I have all my familysearch bookmarks on these browsers, it has worked fine in the past. And no it wasn't a browser update as the windows 7 version hasn't updated in ages and guess what, still works perfectly fine.
Answers
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And yes I tried reloading, allowing all cookies (so much EW and makes me rethinking staying on this site), clearing cache, etc. All that's happened is I've had to re-log in and some catalog pages lost their place of where I left off because of course yet did.
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Like just now, a catalog/book of weddings that I had made my way, entry by entry, all the way to 1858, just reloaded to 1860. Do I remember where I left off when I literally spent hours looking at entries and paging back through in hopes of finding a pair of my ancestors getting married and failed? No, no I do not. Will I have to page through 10s of pages and over a hundred entries YET AGAIN because now the site even messes up how the browser remembers which page I left off on? Yes I will. This would be another great thing to fix, but first off, please fix the Attach to Tree button!
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@Ashlee C. can you help the OP by raising this with engineers please.
@A.Anna you mention 'It's been over a week, why has this issue not been fixed yet??' I can't see any previous post about this, did you perhaps report it via Support? It would help the mods move this forward if you could provide the previous history. Thanks.
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I didn't report it because it was such an obvious glaring issue that I assumed it had already been reported several times by today. This is my first time on this community/forum thing, I came to see what previous reports have yielded and was honestly shocked I could not find any with my searches.
So the only history I can provide is I first noticed this some time last week, presumed it was due to some new site update and that the old Firefox on Win7 couldn't load it (same as with the 'view all hints' page, still doesn't work there) but then tried it on my Win11 computer with newest Firefox and the Attach to Tree thing was still broken in the exact same way. (The 'view all hints' page does load, though, which again good for people who have new(er) computers with newest browsers, but sucks because I do most of the 'grunt work' on my old computer where it very much only loads an error message, and I don't understand why all these new changes do the opposite of improving things.)
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I do realise that you have tried on Windows 11 and that the fault you have reported here occurs there also, but you may find this page useful:
As FS introduces new functionality (and swaps out existing underlying software and hardware to ensure it remains supported by the relevant vendors) it realistically won't be testing on more than the browsers and client operating system versions specified at the above link as supported. Windows 7 hasn't been supported even by Microsoft for ages. FS have made very extensive changes recently and continue to do so, so I would honestly recommend you consider upgrading your Windows 7 computer or moving some or all of the work to the Windows 11 one.
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@MandyShaw1 Hi, I checked the link you included and it clearly lists Firefox as a supported browser. So everything else you said is irrelevant as the problem I reported - and clearly said so - happens on Windows 11 and newest Firefox browser.
As I work with computers I am not interested in asides, I only mentioned it didn't work on two system because I do know about them more than the average user, and thought if someone who actually might have insight into why this issue was occurring would find it useful when debugging.
So please, I am still waiting to find out the Attach to Tree button doesn't work on Windows 11 and newest version of Firefox. I would very much like a response to that.
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History: Firefox updated today and I just this minute checked the Attach to Tree button, it still loads a clear white bar with no text visible.
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https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-users-windows-7-8-and-81-moving-extended-support
clarifies things as follows: 'Can I still browse safely with Firefox Windows 7, 8 and 8.1? Mozilla is providing critical security updates through the Firefox ESR channel up until the end of ESR version 115, August 2025. After this, no security updates are provided and you are strongly encouraged to move to a supported version of Microsoft Windows.'
The current Standard Release version of Firefox as of today is 139.
FamilySearch's support, as discussed at the link I provided before, takes into account the browser, the browser version, and the underlying operating system. 'The FamilySearch website supports the current Windows and Mac operating system (OS) versions and one version back.'
We may just need to agree to differ on this matter.
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@SerraNola Update: I have had Dark Mode turned on on the records to spare my eyes, I randomly decided to turn it off just now and behold, the Attach to Tree pane has visible text and everything! Basically, I think one of the last updates didn't update that part to work in Dark Mode. I'm glad it works with it turned off it but it would still be nice if it was fixed so it's back to working in Dark Mode too.
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