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Importing Gedcom4 from ancient Family Tree Maker

Posted: 15 Mar 2006 20:10
by Trep
I am trying to import data from Family Tree Maker Version 2 (1994 Yes -really!). It exports to Gedcom 4 which I can then read with Wordpad or Notepad. However FH 2.3 can't recognize it and I don't know why it can't recognize it because I am not yet familiar with GEDCOM files.

Would appreciate if someone more experienced could give me a tip or two to solve this problem.

Many thanks.

ID:1441

Importing Gedcom4 from ancient Family Tree Maker

Posted: 15 Mar 2006 22:05
by Jane
I think 4 and 5 were quite different.

One posible option might be to try and load your FTM file into a newer version of FTM. I have version 5 somewhere, but not currently installed which exports to V5 gedcom.

How big is your FTM file? you might be able to e-mail it to me and I can try installing FTW to see if that will read it and convert it to GEDCOM 5.

Importing Gedcom4 from ancient Family Tree Maker

Posted: 16 Mar 2006 16:24
by Trep
Thanks, Jane, for all your help. For the benefit of others who may have this problem the answer proved to be fairly simple. First I had to export to GEDCOM DOS from FTM. Then get a list of all the GEDCOM 5.5 tags off the web, then go through the file in Wordpad replacing all the old long tag names with the new shorter versions ie FAMILY_SPOUSE with FAMS etc etc including HUSBAND, WIFE,TRAILER, ENGAGEMENT and several others.

Every word in capitals you check against the 5.5 list of tags and change if necessary. Nothing apart from tag names needed changing. (NB Leave the @I0 @ numbers exactly as they stand)

Cheers!
Trep

[lol]