Genealogy Chat

Hi all,

I got in contact with someone about a hotmatch and we shared trees with each other. Due to a temporary incapacity, my contact cannot do much typing, so was unable to describe the family link in words, other than a brief mention of two key persons.

When I browsed their tree, I couldn't find my way from them to the key persons, so I used the search button to 'jump' to that position. It didn't seem to lead anywhere except back into their family.

I then 'jumped' to the family name who I link to and navigated around what she had of it but, again, kept coming to dead ends.

I came to the conclusion that my contacts tree was constructed offline, using commercial software and uploaded to Genes as a GEDCOM file. It is in a fractured state and, since the Genes tree software insists that each new entry is attached to an existing entry, it is impossible to 'repair' the disconnected fragments without ending up with a lot of duplicate records to tidy up.

I would like to help my contact rectify this problem in a less roundabout fashion but I do not wish to give out incorrect technical advice which results in their GR tree being ruined.

I do not own a copy of FTM or similar commercial software myself so I am hoping that one of you who does can advise me what needs to be done and I can then pass this on to my contact.


So any help would be very gratefully received.

regards,


Mark

As you say, the tree needs to be tidied up using something like FTM.

FTM has facilities which allow you to repair errors by creating or removing relationships, adding and deleting unwanted entries, merging duplicate individuals etc etc.

The action that needs to be taken depends on the particular circumstances of the file - there is no simple one-stop fix.

Thanks Gremlin.

Well, I didn't imagine it would be an easy task (the repairs, that is).

What I'm getting at is what they have to do at the GR interface. I have never attempted a GEDCOM upload to Genes myself and I don't want to give them inappropriate advice about what to do with the repaired version.

Do they have to delete the existing tree first and then upload from scratch?

Or does the upload procedure automatically overwrite previous data?

Also, are there any data fields in the GR tree which aren't supported by GEDCOM format? (I need some idea of whether there is a risk of them losing data if they do not download the GR tree to their PC, in its current state, before proceeding with the upload of the repaired version).


regards,


Mark

By all means they should download a copy of the existing GR file fist and save it in a safe place, in case it is necessary to refer back to it. All GR fields will go onto the gedcom but the reverse is not necessarily true.

More info can be found on Glen's thread about gedcoms. I'll bump it up.

Uploading a new file to GR will automatically over-ride the previous one, hence the suggestion to secure it first.