Transferring GEDCOM to Family Tree question.

Gordon Collett

I am working on a presentation regarding uploading a GEDCOM then transferring the information to Family Tree. Of the various options in the compare process: Potential Matches, Add to Family Tree, Already in Family Tree, and Invalid and Living, I am having a terrible time coming up with an example of Potential Matches.

Today I tried again using a family (LT8Z-SCB) who had two daughters of the same name, one born in 1842 and one born in 1844. In my desktop program I used the same parents names, the same child name, and the same birthplace but put the birth date as 1843 to generate a GEDCOM file thinking this would give a possible match to both children.

However, the compare routine set this as Already In Family Tree, matching it against the daughter born in 1842.

Has Potential Matches been eliminated as a functional option? If not, what criteria would trigger it in the compare routine? How might I set up an example of the working through a potential match?

dontiknowyou

Tweak your GEDCOM some more to make the profiles farther apart. Family Tree has very relaxed date matching, so try changing the names instead. Or use different event places.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

I just checked my (pretty ancient) uploaded GEDCOM, and it's listing two people with potential matches.

One of them has just one possible match:

In my file: Theresia Lelkes, born 27 May 1827 in Diósförgepatony, Pozsony, Hungary, one of eight children of parents Gergely Lelkes 1791- and Julianna Nagy 1799-, married 27 Jan 1818 in Hódos, Pozsony, Hungary.

Potential match: Theresia Lelkes LD3T-C8Z, deceased, spouse Stephanus Bot, deceased, child Adelhaid Bot, 1851-deceased. (Yes, that's the sum total of the information that the compare process is willing to cough up.)

The other has nearly half a dozen:

In my file: Zsófia Gálfy, born 16 May 1846 in Dunaszerdahely, Pozsony, Hungary, one of five children of István Gálfy 1811-1861 and Eszter Lelkes 1821-1867, married 2 Apr 1839 in Hódos, Pozsony, Hungary.

Potential matches: Zsófia Gálfy, deceased, LD3D-WPD (spouse József Csiba, deceased, child Juliánna Csiba, 1881-deceased), LD3D-7JJ (spouse Benö Lelkes, deceased, child Juliánna Lelkes 1874-deceased), LD3D-76J (spouse Benö Lelkes, deceased, child Ágnes Lelkes 1872-deceased), LD3G-HM5 (spouse Lajos Lelkes, deceased, child Karolina Lelkes, 1885-deceased), and LD3D-4SZ (spouse Benö Lelkes, deceased, child Eszter Lelkes, 1871-deceased).

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Both of these women are on my mom's dad's side, Calvinists from the Csallóköz (basically a large island between branches of the Danube, downstream from Pozsony/Bratislava but upstream from Budapest). The potential matches are all index-based legacy profiles that nobody has gotten around to cleaning up (merging) yet. I haven't dug through all of them to figure out the places; I didn't offhand recognize Theresia's daughter's baptismal place, but both Julianna Csiba and Julianna Lelkes were baptized in what I believe is Dióspatony (i.e. the same place as my Theresia). (I find it Extremely Aggravating that FS's indexes use modern placenames and jurisdictions. I can barely keep these people and places straight in one language; I have no hope of doing so in two, one of which I don't know.)

For your purposes, it looks like maybe some experimentation with coming at a family from opposite ends might be fruitful? As in, if in the tree, A is married to B and they have a child C born in place X, put in your file parents M and N, married in place X, with child A also born in place X. In the examples from my file, only C has a placename identified in the Tree (and the compare process will not tell me what it is), so some minimalism on that end may be a factor.

Gordon Collett

Thanks for the ideas. I've tried over a dozen variants now and cannot get any "potential matches." All that comes up are one person in the tree the GEDCOM person matches with even if that person's detail page says there is a possible duplicate for that person has the identical information, a statement that I can add a new person, or that there is too little information on the GEDCOM person to try matching or allow adding. A person in the file with first and last name, full birth date, and full birth place but without parents comes up as invalid because he has too little information and cannot be added to Family Tree through the GEDCOM process.

It seems they have really tightened up the procedure to make it much more difficult to create duplicates and have raised the level for declaring a match quite high.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Gordon, would screenshots from my file be of use to you for your presentation? I haven't done anything with it in years, and don't really have any plans to do much with it in the future, but it may as well be useful.

Alternately, I'm willing to send you the file so you can experiment. I do wonder whether the compare process will give the same results now. (I haven't kept track of whether the matches have changed or not, but it seems like they'd have to, because the tree it's comparing to is in constant flux.)

Gordon Collett

Thanks, but I'm just going to mention in passing that that option will rarely if ever come up. The compare process seems to be a one time event. I suspect that if you deleted your GEDCOM, re-uploaded it, then re-compared it, the results would be much different now.