Family Historian User Group

I want to upload a GEDCOM tree to GEDMATCH to look for DNA matches that help me sort out the identity of my 4th-great grandparents. I'm also reluctant to publicly share details of my more recent ancestors, living or not, so I took what I thought was a guaranteed way of scrubbing my tree of personal details. However, when I uploaded the file, identifying information was still present in the public tree. I'm wondering what I did wrong. Here's what I did:

• I used queries to flag myself and my ancestors back to 3rd great grandparents as private

• I exported individuals based on a query for my ancestors.

• I opened the GEDCOM file in FH and removed all facts from my recent ancestors through the 3rd great-grandparents. people. I flagged everyone through my 3rd great-grandparents as living.

• I changed all names to first name initials and resaved the GEDCOM

I thought this would give me a tree with the proper tree structure but with placeholders (and not much info) for generations through my 3rd great-grandparents and a normal export of names & dates of my 4th great-grandparents onwards. Imagine my shock when I looked at my tree on GEDMATCH and saw that everyone had their proper names. I thought maybe I had uploaded more detail in GEDMATCH previously and forgotten about it, so I checked the GEDCOM file by importing it into Rootsmagic. Sure enough, everyone's proper names are there.

What did I do wrong? Where are the names coming from?

I can only assume you did not execute some of the steps in the way you describe or you uploaded the wrong GEDCOM file.
If FH is not displaying the Names of Individuals then those Names are not in the GEDCOM file and won't be in any export.

Instead of all those manual processes, I suggest you use the Plugins provided to remove those details.
See FHUG Knowledge Base Exporting a Family Tree with/without Media and in particular the Export to Website Without Sensitive Data section.

The initial Export > GEDCOM File... step can use a Query for your Ancestors. Standard Query called Ancestors should be OK.
I suggest you Exclude all Media Records and all Source Records as they are not needed by GEDMATCH.
In FH v7 it does not offer to open the exported GEDCOM file so you must do that manually.

Then use the Clean Living Persons plugin to remove all sensitive details from Individuals with the Living flag.

Finally, use the Export Gedcom File plugin to create a GEDCOM file without all the FH extensions.
Select the GEDCOM Export Mode (Std) Standard GEDCOM Release 5.5 or (Str) Standard GEDCOM Release 5.5.1 but select the (-) Brief Data mode to the left. Otherwise, keep the default settings and upload the exported GEDCOM to GEDMATCH.

Thanks, Mike! I like the plugin idea much better than relying on my manual steps. I'll have to try that this weekend when I get a chance to turn my attention back to genealogy.