Are there any limitations to the size of the GEDCOM file?

Question

I have been researching my family for over 25years and have accumulated
> over 20,000 descendants of the "1st" couple, spaning over 5 countries
> (Scotland - namely the Orkney Islands, Canada, USA, Australia and New
> Zealand). This is just my father's paternal side. This number will surely
> increase as I expand my research to include my father's maternal side as
> well.

Answer 1

Hi Jim,

There are very few technical limitations, but there are many practical limitations.

There is an explanation on http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/GEDCOM_FAQ but to give you the basics: We wouldn't recommend uploading more than one or two thousand people in a GEDCOM. Otherwise you risk being overwhelmed with the number of profiles you'd need to manage.

Since on WikiTree every person should only have one profile, the Profile Manager has a lot of responsibility. Many of these 20K people are probably not of great interest to you and would be better managed by another WikiTree contributor.

Chris

Comments

Unfortunately, I seem to be the only one in my family (that I know of), that wants to research my roots. SO, it looks like it's up to me to maintain the records for everyone. Most of the older records (200+ years ago) are static and won't need updating unless a discovery is made --- so I think I can handle it.

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Jim, take a look at that GEDCOM FAQ for more of the details. Twenty thousand would be way too many for any man. Besides all the responsibility, which would tend to increase over time, some WikiTree functions would run very slowly when your Watchlist gets about five or ten thousand. That's as many as I'd recommend for anyone. And when you're just getting started, you'd want to start small.

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i've done a bit of research into my findings and it looks like I'll have to break the family up into manageable chunks for uploading. but eventually, once the "dust" settles, the whole tree will get there. It just may take more time than I figured.