Exporting Data as GEDCOM files

[Geoffrey Barber 0]

Has anybody had problems with GEDCOM files created from TMG7 where "Anecdote" tags have been used? I looked at my GEDCOM file using a GEDCOM viewer program called GENviewer and TMG7 seems to have done some strange things with the memo field from my Anecdote tags, particularly where I had two principals nominated for the Anecdote tag. In one case, the Anecdote memo field ended up in a GEDCOM marriage record note.

 

I had noticed that when I upload my GEDCOM file to Ancestry.com that the Anecdote tags never seem to display properly and the text in the Anecdote memo field is often found in Anecodote citation fields on Ancestry.

 

I use Anecdote tags for my general text (which I put in the memo field). I use the Note tag to keep my research notes and ideas. When I run reports I can then easily exclude the Note tags.

[Terry Reigel 0]

Geoffrey,

 

GEDCOM only allows for two-person events as "family" tags - that is, tags associated with a couple who is married or has children together. Further, only certain types of tags (the GEDCOM tag type, not the TMG tag type) are permitted as family tags. TMG does not export two-person tags unless they meet the GEDCOM specifications, so you may find many of your two-person tags do not export.

 

Since two-person tags that do export are considered to be family tags, the importing software will treat them however it treats family tags, which, depending on the software, may result in them looking like marriage notes.

 

In my tests in exporting GEDCOMs to an Ancestry tree, all the memos appear as citations. So far as I can tell, Ancestry Trees have no provision for associating Memo text directly with events.

 

In short, TMG offers flexibility for managing your data that is very useful, but may not be well accommodated by transfer via GEDCOM. If GEDCOM transfer is very important to you, you need to learn it's limitations and significantly restrict your use of TMG's features accordingly. My choice is the opposite - restrict GEDCOM transfers to the basic data which it is designed to accommodate, and use other means for transferring data beyond those limits.

[Virginia Blakelock 0]

Geoffrey

 

Also see the information here in the TMG mailing list archives.

 

Virginia

[Jim Byram 0]

Anecdote tags (like all custom tag types in TMG) are exported as 1 EVEN / 2 TYPE GEDCOM tags. The reason is that GEDCOM has no direct support for these TMG tag types like Anecdote and 1 EVEN / 2 TYPE is a useful catch-all for exporting such TMG tags.

 

The TMG Anecdote tag is exported to GEDCOM as...

1 EVEN

2 TYPE Anecdote

 

GEDCOM 1 EVEN / 2 TYPE tags can be individual or family events.

 

If the tag has one principal, it's exported as an individual event.

 

If the tag has two principals and the two principals are married or are the parents of a child, the tag is exported as a family event. This is apparently what you are asking about.

 

If the tag has two principals and the two principals are neither married nor are the parents of a child, the tag is not exported since GEDCOM has no provision for such a tag.

[Neil Smith 0]

I have TMG V7.04 Gold on Windows 7 and export my family frequently in GEDCOM V5.5 format to upload to RootsWeb. I have found that the marriage tags show up in RootsWeb in the order the marriage tags were created, rather than the date of the marriage. The children are connected to the correct parents, but this is very confusing to some people who see the first listed wife who is really the man's second wife chronologically. A good example is found at http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/ig...ns&id=I3607

 

Is there any way to make these marriage tags sort properly when exporting using the Export Wizard?

[Jim Byram 0]

GEDCOM has no specification for event tag sorting. This is an issue that the importing program (Rootsweb in this case) must deal with.

[Michael Hannah 0]

Hi Neil,

 

I have noted this issue not only for marriages out of marriage date order, but also for the list of children not in birth date order. As Jim notes, the (many, many years old) GEDCOM specification does not require exported events for an individual to be output in any particular order, and says that the order displayed of GEDCOM events is up to the importing program, in this case RootsWeb. (That is one of the many reasons why I like SecondSite, which creates web sites with all such events in appropriate order.) I don't use RootsWeb, but a little testing of a small tree might determine how RootsWeb picks its order. It probably simply uses the order that the events show up in the GEDCOM file. I know of no way to cause TMG to create the GEDCOM file with these events in tag Sort Date order, as that is not a GEDCOM requirement. But if this is a real issue for you, you could manually reorder the marriage events in the GEDCOM file. And if you know how to write computer programs, you might write a small program to do only that.

 

Sorry there is not a better answer, but hope this gives you ideas,