Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Downloading Records from FamilySearch Family Tree

If you ask FamilySearch Support how to download a GEDCOM file from Family Tree, you may get the answer, "You can't". Technically this is correct, but if you use software that can synchronize its own computer database with Family Tree, there is a way that can be done. In other words, FamilySearch does not have a way to do it, but RootsMagic, Ancestral Quest, and Legacy Family Tree have ways of doing it.

If you have a paid version of one of these programs, find out from the program's support system how to do this.

In the past I have been able to do this using the free RootsMagic Essentials software,
http://rootsmagic.com/Products/
For instructions see the free videos at:
http://rootsmagic.com/familysearch/Videos/

Because of the fact that the FamilySearch Family Tree is designed as an open-edit site, your ancestral lines there can be changed by any other user, It can be very useful to have your own copy of your pedigree for many generations. That way if one of your ancestral lines disappears from Family Tree, you have an easy way to locate the change, and correct it if you feel it is an error. (Add a source where possible.)

2 comments:

  1. If folks used GEDcoms correctly I wouldn't object to it. But instead they just upload their GED files, without checking if the records are already on FSFT. And if the person has had temple work done, the ARE already on the tree. Without checking, uploading a GEDcom leads to hundreds of more duplicates that will need to be merged, wasting time and energy.

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  2. Cathy,
    GEDCOM files cannot be imported directly into Family Tree. But too many of them were imported into new.familysearch.org, which provided the data used to create Family Tree.

    While serving in FamilySearch Support, I occasionally saw complaints such as "Surely you do not mean that I have to add these 10,000 names individually!!!"
    "Yes. Since Family Tree depends on having only one record for each person, we have had to take steps to avoid duplicate records. Of your 10,000 names, thousands of them are probably already in Family Tree. You can upload a GEDCOM file to the Pedigree Resource File in our Genealogies area to create a family tree there. Then, if you want, you can go through a one-by-one match and copy process to copy records individually into Family Tree. If you can compare and copy one record per minute this process will take you about 160 hours, which is a lot of time!"

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