Where Are My Old MyCanvas Projects? | FAQ

Why Can’t I find My Project?

If you haven’t logged into MyCanvas since August of 2015 you may have found that your old MyCanvas projects are no longer stored on MyCanvas.com under your account.

How do I know if my MyCanvas projects are safe?

If you have created an account at MyCanvas.com and/or transferred your projects since August 2015, your files are already on the Alexander’s servers and your projects are saved.

Why wasn’t my project saved?

In 2014 Ancestry.com decided to sell the MyCanvas service to Alexander’s Print Advantage rather than discontinuing the service as they originally announced. At the time of the sale, Ancestry.com owned and stored all of the data related to MyCanvas projects. However, the ownership of this data and storage was not transferred in the sale to MyCanvas by Alexander’s due to privacy permissions and laws. Each user’s projects could not be transferred to the new servers at Alexander’s without the express permission of the user to have their projects moved.  Therefore, if you haven’t logged into MyCanvas to initiate the transfer of your projects since August 2015 when the transition of MyCanvas by Ancestry to MyCanvas by Alexander’s was completed, your projects are no longer stored. At this time, neither Ancestry.com nor MyCanvas is able to recover your project. MyCanvas because they never had the data on their servers and Ancestry because they have now deleted the information from their servers.

Does this affect my records at Ancestry.com?

The only data this affects are projects created in the MyCanvas program (photobooks, posters calendars). Your Ancestry.com research remains intact on Ancestry.com

Why wasn’t I notified?

Since the sale of MyCanvas.com was initially announced in 2014, there have been many communications regarding the changes. Best efforts have been made to communicate via website, emails and customer support. Most recently, two final emails were sent out in February and March 2016 to all MyCanvas users by Ancestry.com in an effort to notify customers of the change and provide information on how to transfer your projects by the final deadline of April 4th 2016.

For more information and details about this transition please see Ancestry.com’s FAQ page.

My project was deleted in the transition. What should I do?

First, while Ancestry and our team have gone to great lengths to avoid projects from being deleted, we acknowledge that some projects would be lost in the transition if a user wasn’t able to transfer their projects by the April 2016 deadline. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

If your project was deleted and you’d like to recreate your old projects, our customer service representatives will be happy to help. You can contact them for assistance through our contact page, Facebook page, or online chat.

Stay Tuned! Exciting Features to Come:

Because of the MyCanvas transition, we’ve been hard at work on a variety of improvements which will help our users get the most out of our tool and website. Here are some exciting changes coming to MyCanvas:

  • We are looking to expand our product line! In the future you will have a wider selection of books, calendars, and more to choose from.
  • An improved online tool! We are working on making our current tool easier to use as well as improving its functionality.
  • More templates. With our improved tool, we’ll be able to add additional eye-catching templates for you to better tell your story.

Thank You,

The MyCanvas Team

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