Prepare for GEDCOM Export

GEDitCOM II can export your data to a GEDCOM file that can be read by other software. Normally the process works well, but if the other software has trouble reading the data, the tasks in this extension might provide some help.

Move Memos To Notes

GEDitCOM II's memos are a nice feature to help in your genealogy research, but they use a custom tag. If you send your data to another person as a GEDCOM file and they are not using GEDitCOM II, that software will be likely to ignore the memos and is fairly likely to delete them. This extension can solve that problem.

To prepare a GEDCOM file for sharing that includes all the information in memos too, use the following steps:

  1. Make a copy of your genealogy file (because the following steps will change it).
  2. Run this extension choose "Move all memos to new NOTE records." A few special GEDCOM record's do not allow notes and their memos will be moved to the header record instead.
  3. The move can be done for all currently selected records or for all records in the file. The later is more common when you are about to export a GEDCOM file from all records.
  4. You can optionally retain the memos in the file (they normally don't hurt) or delete them. The delete option may be needed if the target application objects to files that have custom tags (e.g., the _MEMO tag used for memos).
  5. Finally export the modified file to a GEDCOM file using either GEDitCOM II's built-in exporting methods or the "Share GEDCOM File" extension.
  6. Once done, you can delete the copy you made in step 1 and return to editing your original file.

Remove new GEDCOM 5.5.1 Tags

Since version 3.0, GEDitCOM II has supported GEDCOM 5.5.1, but some other software might not work well if provided tags that did not exist in GEDCOM 5.5. If you encounter problems using such other software, you could try the following:

  1. Make a copy of your genealogy file (because the following steps will change it).
  2. Run this extension choose "Remove new GEDCOM 5.5.1 tags." This task will delete most tags that are in GEDCOM 5.5.1, but were not in GEDCOM 5.5.
  3. Export the modified file to a GEDCOM 5.5 file using GEDitCOM II's built-in exporting methods.
  4. Once done, you can delete the copy you made in step 1 and return to editing your original file.