Family Historian User Group

I have a .ged file created in FH v6 and when I try to open it in my FH v4 I get the error message "unrecognised file format". Any ideas?

I have moved this to the General Usage Forum, because it is NOT to do with "Importing from or exporting to another genealogy program".

Yes, in general FH Gedcom files are not fully backward compatible, but especially with FH V6 because it introduced Place records, has Fact Witnesses, and uses UNICODE UTF-16 character encoding by default.

One option is to use Tools > Preferences > File Load/Save and tick Save in UTF-8 file format.
Then next time you Save, the Gedcom character encoding format will change.

If you have used certain accented letters or other Unicode characters then they will NOT be correctly represented in FH V4. Also it will complain about the Place records that it does not understand, and discard their details. Fact Witnesses will become UDF.

Alternatively, use the Export Gedcom File Plugin in (FH5) Family Historian 5 mode, which will produce FH V4 compatible Gedcom, and retain as much data as possible.

Best of all, why not upgrade your FH V4 to FH V6?

I have just thought that perhaps the Gedcom was sent to you by somebody else. In which case they must adopt one of the above solutions before sending it again, but bear in mind the possible loss of some data.

Hi Mike

Apologies for posting in the wrong place. Yes it was sent to me from someone else, so I will have to get them to follow your instructions. And yes I have been thinking to upgrading to v6 so this might just be the encouragement to do so!