Question

I tried to download a gedcom from Wikitree. But Rootsmagic could not read it. What did I do wrong?

Answer 1

Hi Stephen,

First, does the file have a .ged extension?

To open the GEDCOM in Rootsmagic, go to File > Import, choose the option that says "GEDCOM (Other programs)", find the file in your computer, and then choose to create a new Rootsmagic database or merge into your existing one.

Answer 2

Jamie,

Yes, it has a .ged extension. I tried to import gedcom using Rootsmagic, but although the file was in the directory, Rootsmagic did not recognize it as a gedcom (meaning that when searching for the file within the directory, the filename remains pale gray = unclickable, as if it was not a gedcom.)

Comments

typically, that (grey, unclickable) is because of the file extension....otherwise...

open the file in a text editor and post the first 5-10 lines of it here.

Answer 3

The name of the file is ligon.ged

The file type is plain text.

The first character of the file is the 0 below:

0 HEAD
1 SOUR WikiTree.com
2 NAME WikiTree: The Free Family Tree
2 CORP Interesting.com, Inc.
1 DATE 15 Jan 2018
2 TIME 00:41:38 EST

Comments

indeed, looks like a valid gedcom file.

I'm personally not familiar with RootsMagic, you might need to email a copy of your file to someone else to help debug it (or they can generate their own WikiTree gedcom)

Answer 4

Thank you to Dennis and Jamie for your help.

But I'm still stuck. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong and how to create a gedcom from Wikitree that Rootsmagic will recognize? Thank you.

Comments

Can you send the GEDCOM to jamie (at) wikitree (dot) com so I can see if there is a problem with the file?

I have no issue opening WikiTree GEDCOMs with Rootsmagic, but there may have been an error with yours.

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WikiTree GEDCOM files have Unix line endings (newline character only). It is possible that some Windows/Mac programs do not recognize the file as text, and thus not as GEDCOM either.

Workaround: do not save the file directly from WikiTree to your computer. Open it in your browser and save it from the browser.