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fiddler

Another GEDCOM issue

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I have an issue with incomplete uploading of GEDCOM tree information to the FTDNA site, but a little different from a couple of others previously posted.

 

I'm trying to upload a paternal and maternal line, with simple birth, marriage and death information (date, place, with spouse). When I open the GEDCOM file on my computer after generation, but before uploading, everything seems to be there. However, when it opens on the FTDNA site, the tree has lost all information except for a DOB. That is, the people are all correct in the tree, but all place info, marriage dates, and death dates are missing. Others trees on the site have the types of info that I am missing, so it would not appear that FTDNA is prohibiting it. Does anyone have a thought about how to fix this? Is there more than one way to select tags during the export, for example? And, I assume (once I get this straightened out!) that an exported tag must include memos and/or notes added to the tag sentence structure?

 

Thanks

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Fiddler,

 

You said you "Opened" the file on your computer. How did you do that? Did you Import it back into TMG? Or another genealogy program? Or open it in a text editor like Notepad? You did see the details when you did that? If so it would seem that the data is there. GEDCOM is a pretty simple thing - I don't know how it could be there and be "wrong" somehow. If the data is there the issue would seem to be in how FTDNA is reading the file.

 

At Step 6 of the Export Wizard you have a number of ways to specify which Tags are to be included. You can specify All events, Primary events only, as well as including all or only certain types of Tags be included.

 

At Step 5 you can specify to include the text of Memos or not by checking or un-checking the Memos box. I don't understand what you mean by the reference to Sentence Structures.

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HI Terry,

 

I opened the gedcom file with a program called GEDCOM Viewer, to see if the information I wanted had indeed been exported to the file. With the program, you can look at the tree and at the gedcom text (same if looking at text editor).

 

At step 6 of the export wizard I selected birth, marriage and death tags (primary only), and these dates and places were present viewing the text in GEDCOM viewer.

 

You can add information to a death tag, for example, by adding [M] to the sentence. That information is also visible as NOTE in the GEDCOM viewer, under the appropriate tag, although I really don't want it exported. Perhaps if I can figure out what is wrong, I can just edit the NOTE out of the gedcom file before I upload it.

 

I don't see anything wrong with the file, but then I don't know the internal TMG workings to generate the export, and I'm not an expert on GEDCOM files, so I could be doing something wrong and not realize it. As I mentioned, there are trees in FTDNA that have all the information in them, so it must have worked on their end sometime. Perhaps they are having a glitch at the moment.

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An addendum. I was wrong when I previously indicated that the marr tag was present in the GED View reader. It was not. However, the narrative provided DID include the marriage info (!!?).

 

I imported the file back into TMG, though, and all my birth, death and marriage records, complete with places, were present and correct.

 

I'm at a loss.

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Marriage data in a GEDCOM is in family records (towards the end of the file), not in individual records. GEDCOM BMDB data exported by TMG follows the GEDCOM v5.5 specs exactly.

 

My pedigree on FTDNA does not display marriage data or any other data that the site does not choose to display. Hovering over a person displays the birth and death dates and places. There is no issue in how TMG exports the data. It's simply a matter of how FTDNA displays the data.

 

I made a focus group of my DNA ancestors and their spouses and created a new project. In the project, I eliminated all data except for BMDB and make my DNA GEDCOM from that project (people, BMDB events with dates and places, nothing else - no memos, no citations, no sources, no repositories). This makes the data very clean and contains only those direct line ancestors that should be in a DNA pedigree.

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I actually made another data set within the project and cleaned up the data for DNA, similar to what you described. I only know enough to be dangerous.

 

Thanks for the comments. I just wanted to be sure that there were no known TMG problems. I guess my issue is somehow with FTDNA. They don't give a very good explanation of their expectations or procedures for the GEDCOM files want.

 

Thanks again.

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Apparently, there is a bug in pedigree display on the FTDNA site and they are working on a fix. Check out their forum.

 

I made a change in my data, made a new GEDCOM, deleted the old GEDCOM and added the new one to FTDNA. Now I have the problem that you describe. :(

Edited by Jim Byram

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Hi Jim,

 

Thanks to you and all who responded. FTDNA finally responded to my query and admitted their problem. I tried their forum before bringing the question here, but could not find the subject there. With no promises made, guess we'll have to wait for some results.

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