I am new to FamilySearch. I have uploaded my GED file from Family Tree Maker 2019. It contains 5336
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Gedcoms do not add living, you would have to add them manually. From my experience it is best not to add living unless you need them to link into the big family tree. For example my father passed away 2 years ago, he was the link for many of us. He had his own profile, my mom had a profile, then each of my 4 siblings have copies of him, each of his 18 grandchildren. That is alot of copies in our private space that have to be merged. Why create more copies of people unless they are needed to connect you to the tree. In my opinion it is best to work with living people in your private software rather than adding them to the FamilySearch tree.
Cindy
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If you have all of these people in a Gedcom, why not use one of the other programs to compare it to FamilySearch Tree? LegacyFamilyTree, Ancestral Quest and RootsMagic all have free versions that you can compare your tree to FamilySearch Tree and they seem to do a better job of finding duplicates or people already in FamilySearch Tree than the Genealogies section of FamilySearch. I personally use LegacyFamilyTree and it can run a comparison on your entire tree, you still have to click through each person individually to add their information to FamilySearch Tree, but I suspect you will find that these stand alone programs will be better able to find the individuals in FamilySearch Tree. You can leave your gedcom file in Genealogies as a static file.
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That's a good suggesion.
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Thanks, I'm looking at LegacyFamilyTree.
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Please be aware that when you do the "View" on your GEDCOM data, it is comparing all of your GEDCOM records to those in the single shared FamilySearch Family Tree. Anytime you add records from your GEDCOM file to the FamilyTree using that compare tool, you are NOT putting them into a tree that belongs to you in the database. With the exceptions of the Genealogy area where your GEDCOM is stored, NOBODY has their own private trees in FamilySearch.
A lot of new folks here miss that very significant point. the FSFT is not like Ancestry.com or MyHeritage.com where everyone gets to create their own private trees in the database. The FamilySearch FamilyTree is a single tree currently containing over 1.3 Billion person records. Anything that you add to it using that GEDCOM compare tool will be visible and MODIFIABLE by all other people with FS accounts.
So dumping everything in your GEDCOM file into the FSFT using that GEDCOM compare tool without really knowing what is going on will be a big mistake, and will cause you (and many others since this is a shared tree) a lot of grief. You need to walk through each of those 5336 individuals (minus the living records) and do a serious comparison with what is already in the tree before copying over any data. Make sure you go into the tree with a separate window in order to see all the Reasons, notes, sources, discussions, and change history on each record since the GEDCOM compare tool blinds you to all of that information that you need to make good decisions on the transfer of your data.
Otherwise you could bel either be blowing away years of significant research that has been done by others, or creating duplicates galore that you will have to just go back and then merge them all away later on to fix them.
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If you are just starting to look at programs compatible with the FSFT, I would suggest Ancestral Quest or RootsMagic first. They both have free versions. My own person preference is Ancestral Quest because it is basically and undated version of PAF, and so it has been around (same developers) in one shape or another for over 30 years. Also it can be run on either Mac or PC.
Knowing what I do now, I would always choose to use the certified PC/Mac tools over the GEDCOM comparison facility in FS since it is so problematic and has caused so much grief to so many people.
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Thanks for clearing up my understanding of this site.
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I'll take your advice and look into each of these.
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Not to belabor the point too much, but even though there is still a bit of a learning curve, I believe that you will be really happy that you went this direction. Once you have one of these apps in place, there are a lot of extra features that the FS FamilyTree does not have:
1) There is MUCH more flexibility and a significant increase in the number of chart types and printouts that you can get from the PC based application. In Ancestral Quest (and possibly others), you can even automatically create books. In fact, we were even told by FS many months back that since there were "other" applications out there that can do so much of this, FS has little incentive to expand their current chart and printing capabilities beyond just the removal of bugs.
2) If you want to do some "what if" type work by temporarily inserting names in your tree or rearranging its structure, you can do that on your PC. You can even have multiple trees for different purposes there. Since the FSFT is shared by EVERYONE, if you put a "what if" person into the FSFT, you might come back the next day and find it is gone because someone saw it, thought it was a mistake, and then merged it away into another record (or even modified the contents of it).
3) Because the FSFT is shared by everyone, if you are serious about your work being preserved and not altered, you MUST have another copy of it somewhere else where it is untouchable by others. That way when changes are made after you have complete vetting a record, you can easily compare your original work with the updates to determine whether they are appropriate or not.
4) The change history records in the FSFT are very cryptic to read and have problematic data in them. When a significant change has been made to a record or records, it can be extremely hard to figure out exactly what happened. If you synced your PC copy with the FSFT after you last worked on it, it is very easy to determine what has happened by using the comparison function on your PC's application.
5) Changes in the FSFT by others can be correct, incorrect, or a bit of both. When you do a compare between your PC based tree and the FSFT to examine those differences, you have the ability to sync those changes back down to your PC (if they are correct), sync your PC data back up to the FSFT (if they are correct), or even leave them as is while you collaborate with the person who made the changes and determine what the correct information should really be (if uncertain about the correctness).
6) The "to-do" and research tracking tools on the PC applications are far superior to those on the FSFT. For example, a list of items to check up on for a given person can be attached to that person's record in the PC, where on the FSFT you have to manually type in the entire names and PID numbers involved in order to get back to the records. There is a list of many requested enhancements to the FSFT To-do list that has never been address now for many months.
7) The ability to do searches on just "your tree" (i.e., those records of your family and kindred that you are specifically interested in) is not really possible in the FSFT. But it is a breeze using some of the PC based apps. Want to see all of your relatives in a specific cemetery? It's easy. In fact, the ability to filter and sort records specifically in "your tree" in many different ways is a cinch. In general, in the FSFT you usually cannot do any of those things.
8) Want to open the record of one of your kindred in the FSFT but don't want to go through the hassle of going through a search (especially if you can't remember the exact spellings or locations)? In the tool I use (Ancestral Quest) there is a list of all persons in my PC database (i.e., "My Tree", not the 1.3 Billion record FSFT) that I keep sorted alphabetically. Since I usually run AQ at the same time I am in the FSFT, I can just find the name in my AQ list, select it, and then click on an AQ function that will go to the FSFT database and open that person's record there in a new browser tab.
And there are others.
Anyway, I am sure that you'll be happy with learning how to use one of the predominant certified apps on your PC or Mac. We get many people coming here and asking for capabilities to be added to FSFT or for instructions how to find information. Frequently, If they had one of these 3rd party tools that is certified to work with FS, the answer would be simple. But if they do not, frequently the answer is more of "that can't be done" or "FS will not add that capability because there are so many tools out there that already have that ability".
So good luck with all that! 😊
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