Master tree on my PC, uploading GEDs to various sites - nice idea, but...

[kob3203]

When I started looking at family history a decade ago I created an online tree at Ancestry including all four of my grandparents. The tree grew slowly

At some point I decided to put my tree on FindMyPast too, so I downloaded a GED from Ancestry and uploaded that to FindMyPast.

However, I only tended to update my Ancestry tree.

More recently I decided to upload my tree to MyHeritage, but since they have a size limit for their free accounts I couldn't simply upload a GED from Ancestry. So I downloaded a free family tree program, Gramps, to my PC and split the downloaded Ancestry GED into four, one for each grandparent. I then exported four separate GEDs from Gramps and uploaded them to MyHeritage. I also uploaded them to Ancestry and FindMyPast.

I kept my original master tree at Ancestry just in case, but I deleted the version at FindMyPast.

My plan was to keep the four master trees in Gramps on my PC, and at appropriate points export GEDs and upload them to Ancestry and MyHeritage. But that's where my plan came unstuck.

1) It appears that you can't upload a new GED to an existing tree. When you upload a GED you create a new tree. Not a problem for myself, I can just delete the old out of date tree. But if anybody else has bookmarked (or suchlike) the older version that'll now be an error 404 page not found.

2) Each website/program seems to have its own proprietary extensions to the GED format that other websites/programs don't understand, so exporting a GED from one and importing to another leaves you prone to losing data. I found a couple of online GEDCOM validators and using a validated, proprietary-extension-free version of one of my trees checked to see what happened when I imported it into each website/program and re-exported it. The main problem for me appears to be that they all handle notes in different ways.

I'm sure that other people have had the same idea.

And similar problems ?

[phil57]

My master tree is on my PC in Family Historian. I upload the tree to various sites periodically as it grows and changes, by exporting to a Gedcom from FH and uploading to the sites. Yes, I create a new tree each time and delete the old one.

The only site I have problems with is My Heritage. I do currently have an account with them (they made me a too good to be true offer after not renewing for 6 months) but I have pretty much given up with amending or uploading new trees there. The last time I uploaded a new tree was a few years ago now. It is only in the last few weeks that their site seems to have synchronised with the "new" tree. I was still getting "Theory of Family Relativity" hints, but even after around 2 years, they were still based on my deleted tree and the hints showed "Deleted" against every individual on my side.

I tried to sort that out with MH support, but it was like banging my head against a brick wall.

A couple of months ago, I logged in to my MH account whilst I was temporarily in The Netherlands. I have been back home over a month now. A couple of weeks ago, they started sending me their regular emails about searches and hints, etc. in Dutch. Just had another one this morning.

But other than that, no real issues. I only upload my tree to the sites to take advantage of the search hints, DNA matches and Thrulines hints or similar. Hints get reset every time I upload a new tree, i.e. those I have previously viewed and which were no longer shown in my Ancestry tree, reappear when I upload a new tree. I can live with that, although a FH user has written a plugin to retain the hint history when uploading a new tree, but it's a fair amount of work to process the Gedcom through it, and I can't be bothered with the extra work because the results really don't bother me that much.

[Biggles50]

I have my master Family Tree on Ancestry.

I have Reunion, Family Historian and Roots Magic as my software with Roots Magic being my prime App.

Roots Magic can sync with Ancestry via its Tree Share function.

I downloaded my Ancestry tree together with all the linked media and citations directly into a new Roots Magic project, do note that this is not via a Gedcom.

Within Roots Magic I then run through all its error checking features and once this was complete I ran its database checking tools.   The result is an error free tree and believe me an Ancestry Tree will have errors no matter how careful you are.

Now within Roots Magic I can split trees and combine them then upload them to Ancestry or create Gedcoms to upload to other sites.

So now I have two master trees, one on Ancestry and one in Roots Magic.  Periodically I also import the dated Gedcoms into Family Historian and Reunion (Reunion has imo the best Tree printing features).

Maybe using software can help you, certainly having a family tree only going back say 5 or 6 generations is useful for uploading to the size limited comparison websites.

Now what I do with DNA matches on Ancestry if they are not shown via Thrulines is to create a Tree based on them, I can then Tree Share their tree into Roots Magic and combine it with either my Master Family Tree or into a duplicate of it that can be used as a Beta Family Tree to test out the viability of the links.  This Beta tree can be uploaded in full to a new Ancestry tree which in my case I call Experimental.  Once satisfied all is OK I can go back to my Master tree, combine the DNA matches tree and Tree Share back to Ancestry.  I have been doing this for a couple of years now and my Master Tree has grown from 6000 to 7000 and much of this is due to finding out who my Great Great Grandfather was.

[phil57]

Now what I do with DNA matches on Ancestry if they are not shown via Thrulines is to create a Tree based on them, I can then Tree Share their tree into Roots Magic and combine it with either my Master Family Tree or into a duplicate of it that can be used as a Beta Family Tree to test out the viability of the links.  This Beta tree can be uploaded in full to a new Ancestry tree which in my case I call Experimental.  Once satisfied all is OK I can go back to my Master tree, combine the DNA matches tree and Tree Share back to Ancestry.  I have been doing this for a couple of years now and my Master Tree has grown from 6000 to 7000 and much of this is due to finding out who my Great Great Grandfather was.

I do something similar, but I create separate trees (aka projects) for the matches in Family Historian, and upload the gedcoms to Ancestry. I have four different trees on Ancestry currently, but I have had more. I can attach myself to those trees along theoretical lines and temporarily assign my DNA test to them to cause Thrulines to recalculate and test for hints. If I progress a tree to proof of a connection to my ancestry, I can then merge all or just the relevant part of the FH project for that tree into my main project.

I guess we are doing much the same thing, but from a slightly different angle.