GEDCOM import from Pedigree

Post by **Guest** » 29 Aug 2004 20:37

I am a new convert from Pedigree 2.6 to Family Historian. I was amazed how easy it was to migrate my data!. However, there are a few liittle things which are puzzling me. The Occupation and Residence fields should be populated with data which actually appears in the TITL and DWEL fields in FH. I think this is because the tags in Pedigree not match the tags in FH. Can anyone advice me how to edit the GEDCOM file to get the data across correctly. Here are some examples from one of my GEDCOM files:

1 OCCU
2 TITL Labourer

(Surely Labourer should be in the OCCU field?)

1 RESI
2 SOUR @S7@
2 FROM 1841
2 DWEL Courthouse Green, Foleshill

(surely the Address should appear in the RESI field?)

I am happy to send an entire file to anyone who is willing to help.

Apologies if this came twice - I fumbled the controls!

ID:520

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 29 Aug 2004 20:47

You can probably do this with a simple search and replace in a text editor. It really depends on the number of occurrences of the problems.

I don't mind taking a look at the file for you, but it may be a few days before I can look at it.

If you e-mail me the file to Jane at taubman.org.uk, with details of the known problems.

FROM is not a valid tag either, a sample from my file looks like

Code: Select all

1 RESI
2 DATE 1950
2 PLAC Sydling St Nicolas, Dorset, England
2 ADDR Hit or Miss House, Sydling St Nicolas, Dorset, England
2 SOUR @S18@

Please do not start to correct the data manually as it makes it almost impossible to correct all the problems if they occur only on certain records.

Ideally a straight export from Pedigree would be best

alanthwaite · Post by **alanthwaite** » 13 Mar 2006 15:24

Hello Jane,
I've just seen this old message - but it is relevant to me as i am about to transfer from Pedigree.
I've tried the demo and get the same sorts of results as John Athersuch.
What is the position now - I tried the demo with Pedigree import 2 days ago and still wonder what I'll need to do to sort the problems out if / when I get FH.

Any help appreciated.
Thanks.

Alan T

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 13 Mar 2006 16:08

Many of these problems can be sorted with an advanced text editor if you understand the raw gedcom.

If you detail some of the unrecognised data, I can make suggestions as to the changes needed, alternatly when you are ready to migrate if you send me your file I can try and write a little program to fix the problems.

I would also double check to see if Pedigree exports a variety of formats of GEDCOM, to see if some are better than others.

alanthwaite · Post by **alanthwaite** » 16 Mar 2006 15:56

Thanks for that Jane, I''l take you up on the offer when I've got the FH V3.

I have tried importing XXX.GEd from Pedigree and changing some of the attributes, in a similar way to your suggestion, but fail to get MS-Word to save the edited file as a .GED file. (Well I can call it that but FH doesn't seem to find it in the directory list under 'Open')

The options on saving are .txt (and all of the other irrelevant Word doc types), MS-DOS and Other-Encoding (which list contains US-ASCII.

as i say, i'll contact you again once I've got FH-3.

Thanks,
Alan

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 16 Mar 2006 17:07

You are better editing the file with a program like Textpad or PSPAD. PsPad is free and can be downloaded from
http://www.pspad.com/en/

I suspect Word is being helpful and saving your gedcom file as a .txt file or a .doc file.

alanthwaite · Post by **alanthwaite** » 21 Mar 2006 15:02

I think the problem has been solved, with the help of Murray Kennedy of Pedigree.
It is necessary to be familiar with Pedigree and its later versions to fully understand the following.
Pedigree has had different database formats, i.e. 'Families', 'Census' and Elton55'.
Data can only be saved as Gedcom 4 in, say, Families DB format. It needs then to be imported to a new database in Elton55, which allows saving as GEDCOM 4 and 5.5 formats. Elton55 format is then used to export under a different name as GEDCOM 5.5 and this can then be imported into FH - and it all seems to work and put all the information in the correct places with the appropriate FH 'labels'.

I hope this of help to others and to you Jane. Thanks again.

Alan T

alanthwaite · Post by **alanthwaite** » 21 Mar 2006 15:06

I should have said that Elton55 is used with the Windows-like version of Pedigree - PediTree - and it is via this route one gets to the Export as GEDCOM 5.5 - it cannot be done from the earlier DOS based versions of Pedigree.

Alan T

dbidgood · Post by **dbidgood** » 15 Apr 2008 01:25

The earlier versions of PediTree for Windows used the GEDCOM 4 format and were compatible with Pedigree which was DOS based.

The later version of PediTree uses a modified GEDCOM 5 format. It differs from the earlier version of PediTree in the names of some Events. So that although it will both export and import in both GEDCOM formats any attempt to import from the earlier PediTree version will require something like twelve changes depending on the Events that are in use.

A PediTree 5 GEDCOM export will require further changes before and during FamilyHistorian import. Some of these are handled by FH, but others require user modification. These may include combining long lines which have been split, and changing certain Event names including NICK.

A FH GEDCOM output will need to have these changes reversed if it is imported into PediTree.

It is possible to use WordPro macros to automate individual changes, which is a necessity if you are dealing with some 30,000 individuals as I was.

If anyone needs additional help, they are welcome to contact me off list since this is a rather specialized problem.

Don Bidgood.

Family Historian User Group