Older Gedcom Versions

cjpick · Post by **cjpick** » 04 Oct 2005 10:59

I have been keeping my family database on an old DOS-based program called Trees III. The developers binned it when they decided not to develop a Windows-based version.
I am therefore upgrading to FH but have hit a snag in that Trees is so old it only offers to export as CSV, Gedcom 3 or Gedcom 4. FH will read Gedcom 4, but it gave me a long list informing me of irregularities in the data. These seem to manifest themselves when it comes to displaying baptism data. When expanded on the Record Page, the field appears as a blue dot with 'rays' around it and is named CHRI. It has subfields (also with rays) of DATE and PLAC. The data is omitted when printing narrative reports and I think it is just being ignored.
My guess is that the CHRI tag should have been CHR or BAPM and that then it would work.
I have the best part of 1400 records and need to automate conversion to Gedcom 5.5.
I think I have three options:
1) Export from Trees as a csv file and then use the csv to gedcom utility on your downloads page.
2) Use a shareware program like Cognatio to import as gedcom 4 and then export as gedcom 5.5.
3) Use a text editor to replace CHRI with CHR or BAPM (not forgetting to then correct all the Christophers and Christmases!).
Which is likely to work best? I have some fairly long Notes pages which seem to have come through as Gedcom 4 OK and I don't know if some of the other options will mess them up (cut them short, for example). Also, I don't know if there are other issues with Gedcom 4 which I have not picked up on.
Any help much appreciated.
Regards.

ID:1056

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 04 Oct 2005 17:28

I would go down the search and replace route, making a new copy of your file for each section of work.

I have not used/seen a GedCom4 file, but FH is very effective in identifying the problems.

For search and replace I would recommend TextPad or PSPad as they have advanced search and replace tools.

cjpick · Post by **cjpick** » 04 Oct 2005 17:46

Thanks Jane. I'll try that for sure. In fact I'll try all three options and report back if that might be of interest to others. FH didn't report any other serious problems on reading in the Gedcom 4 file, so I personally would rather try search and replace.
Do you happen to know if FH prefers CHR or BAPM (or perhaps it doesn't matter)?
Regards.

cjpick · Post by **cjpick** » 04 Oct 2005 21:36

I opened the Gedcom 4 file with WordPad and replaced CHRI with BAPM (I see that FH can accommodate either), after which I saved the file and then opened it with FH. This time, no error messages at all. All the data has read in correctly and comes through in the Record Page, Property Page and in the narrative reports.

With thanks to Jane for her recommendation, which coincided with my own inclination. I may try the other two methods to see what happens, but I'd have to say I'm pretty happy with the result, since I have managed to transfer all my data without loss.

Regards

Tombaston · Post by **Tombaston** » 05 Oct 2005 07:50

I don't know how you did the search and replace but if you selected the Find Whole Words Only option in your editor then it should not have had problems with Christopher etc. Also worth putting match case on as well.

Alternatively search for CHRI (including one space afterwards, replacing with CHR or BAPM with one space.

cjpick · Post by **cjpick** » 05 Oct 2005 11:11

Notepad has very limited options, but as you say, with WordPad you can search and replace Whole Words Only as well as Matching Case. Basically, that's what I did. I chose to go with BAPM since I generally use the baptism field as opposed to the christening field.
I think search and replace was the best of my options, given that FH was not reporting any other reading issues with the Gedcom 4 file.
Regards

cjpick · Post by **cjpick** » 07 Oct 2005 23:08

I promised to report back on my other options for converting from my old DOS-based program.

1) Export as CSV, then convert to Gedcom:
I exported from Trees as CSV, then tried to run fix2ged.exe, which I had downloaded from this site. A black 'DOS-like' screen flashed up and disappeared, but apart from that nothing happened. I did this a few times more after reading the documentation, then gave up.

2) Read the Gedcom 4 file into Cognatio (which claims to read Gedcom 4 files) and then export as Gedcom 5.5. Complete failure. Cognatio reported an illegal error and created an error log which read:

Error on line 2: Unknown tag.
1 SYST
^
The following lines were skipped:
2 SOUR TREES
2 DEST PAF

Error on line 6: Illegal line format.
0 @I1@INDI
^

Using Wordpad, I can confirm that these are indeed the first few lines of the Gedcom 4 file. It would seem that the Trees program tries to export a file suitable for Pedigree, so perhaps Pedigree could have read it; I don't know, but it's worth noting that FH delivered on its promise to be flexible when it comes to reading imperfect Gedcom files. Cognatio fell over at the first line: FH didn't stumble and read the whole file in, merely reporting its findings for the first few lines as:

l.2 - INFO ONLY: Loaded uncategorised data (non-GEDCOM): '1 SYST '
l.3 - INFO ONLY: Loaded uncategorised data (non-GEDCOM): '2 SOUR TREES'
l.4 - INFO ONLY: Loaded uncategorised data (non-GEDCOM): '2 DEST PAF'

As previously reported in my post above, once I used Wordpad to replace the old Gedcom 4 tag 'CHRI' with the Gedcom 5.5 tag 'BAPM', the messages above were the only 'errors' reported by FH.

Conclusion: Congratulations to the FH development team for designing such a sturdy product!

Regards

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