Import a GEDCOM file

Export a GEDCOM from your current program and run it through the GEDCOM import guide, which checks a file in your browser without uploading it and explains what comes across: names with their parts, sex, birth and death with approximate dates, places, occupations, parent and partner connections, notes and citations. Photographs and other media do not travel in a GEDCOM; add them afterwards.

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   Step 1. Open Add → Import a family tree, or Settings → Import a family tree → Open saved imports.

   

   

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   Step 2. Choose the GEDCOM file and Save file for review. It is kept privately for the review; unfinished drafts expire after 30 days and each family can keep up to 20 saved files.

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   Step 3. The review opens with what the file contains, its supported coverage and any limitations found.

   

   

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   Step 1. Work through the people. For each one, choose to add them, skip them, or match them to a person already in the family when the file’s Zoë looks like your Zoë. Alternate names help the matching; a match never overwrites the existing profile.

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   Step 2. Save your choices at any point and return later; the review resumes where you left it.

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   Step 3. Publish the import. Publication can be retried safely: people already added are not added twice.

The original file is retained with the import, so what you started from is always on record. If the review leaves two records for one person, merge duplicate people with a reviewed merge rather than deleting either.