Uploading my gedcom file

Question

I uploaded my gedcom file to GEDCompare and it has around 450 people in it. Question 1. If I skip the beginnings of my tree (my oldest ancestors) and upload the ones further down the tree, will it seem as though they do not have ancestors? Question 2. Would it be wise to intentionally create a duplicate of the older ancestors to merge later?

Answer 1

Hi Dennis,

I'll answer question 2 first. It's not okay to intentionally create duplicates.  This is something we try very hard to avoid at WikiTree. For more information on that see here: http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Duplicates

To answer question 1, I took a look at your GEDCOM.  The oldest date in there is 1798 so there's not really a reason to skip the beginnings of your tree unless while you are reviewing the suggested matches you find that they already exist.  In that case, you'd skip them and once your GEDCOM is imported you'd be able to connect the older ancestors who already exist on WikITree to the more recent family members created in your import.   You'll also want to be sure to skip anyone who doesn't have at least a birth or a death date.  Those people are easy to find if you sort your GEDCompare report by "Birth".

If you have more questions let me know.  Thanks!

Comments

So you are saying if I already have a profile of a person on WikiTree  who is also on the gedcom I am preparing to upload then I should skip those people?

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When you look at the GEDCompare report you'll see all the suggested matches.  If any of them are  a match, whether they are a profile managed by you or someone else, then yep you should skip them.  

The exception is, if you have a lot more information in your GEDCOM for a person (ie sources, parents, etc) then what currently exists in their profile.  In those cases, you would mark the person as a match and then uncheck the Skip box.  When your GEDCOM is imported those people will be set as Unmerged Matches with the existing profiles and you'd be able to merge the two profiles together at that point.  You can only do this up to 10 times in one GEDCOM import though and it's really not recommended unless you do have significantly more information than what already exists.

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Cool, I'll just skip them and then I can add more details later. Thank you!

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You betcha :)