Thank you Wendy for your explanation and example. I needed a day to focus on what you were saying. By the way, I never saw the first responses, the privacy responses, until this morning! But you are right, you answered my question about previewing the GEDCOM results. I will definitely need to consult Legacy Help file, under GEDCOM, about what the tags mean. You intrigue me with the following: "The GEDCOM file is a plain text file, so you can also open it in Notepad, Word, etc and view the contents. It might look like gobbledegook to begin with, but once your eyes adjust you'll make out details, like these lines from one of my files..." I think with my level of inexperience, that may be the safer choice. I would however make a backup of my file before doing anything. Margaret
--- On Thu, 6/30/11, Wendy Howard <wendy.how...@gmail.com> wrote: From: Wendy Howard <wendy.how...@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] GEDCOM preview results To: LegacyUserGroup@LegacyUsers.com Date: Thursday, June 30, 2011, 4:52 PM Hi Margaret, > I'm planning to create my first GEDCOM file... is there anyway to > preview the results? I'm planning to select a focus group of fewer > than 15 people. Can I create it, and export it into my Legacy > under create a new family file? Would this allow me to preview > the results? > There has been a lot of discussion on privacy in this thread, but I don't recall that anyone has actually answered your questions. Yes, you can generate a GEDCOM file and then import it into a new Legacy file (File > Import from) so you can see how the data appears. The GEDCOM file is a plain text file, so you can also open it in Notepad, Word, etc and view the contents. It might look like gobbledegook to begin with, but once your eyes adjust you'll make out details, like these lines from one of my files... 0 @I1@ INDI 1 NAME Wendy /Howard/ 1 SEX F 1 CHR 1 FAMS @F85@ 1 FAMC @F1@ 0 @I2@ INDI 1 NAME Edward John /Howard/ 1 SEX M 1 BIRT 2 DATE 27 Nov 1937 2 PLAC Auckland, New Zealand 1 CHR 2 DATE 27 Mar 1938 2 PLAC Auckland, New Zealand 1 DEAT 2 DATE 18 Nov 1998 2 PLAC Auckland, New Zealand 1 BURI 2 DATE 12 Feb 2002 2 PLAC Auckland, New Zealand 1 FAMS @F1@ 1 FAMC @F5@ That's me, and my father. You can see Dad's birth, christening, death and burial dates and places - but see there are none of those for me, because when I'm sharing information (which is what I was doing when I created this particular file) I don't share those details for living people (only first name and surname). I'm guessing, based on what I know of how I entered my data and what is in that sample, that the FAMS tag is the family with your spouse, and the FAMC tag is the family of your parents - so while Dad's FAMC tag is F5, if we could see his parents their FAMS tag would be F5 (and I've looked at my file and that is the case). That's how the GEDCOM links families together. Likewise, family F85 is the partnership of me and my partner (which is a term that doesn't begin to describe more than 20 years together, but I don't call him my husband in genealogy circles since it raises expectations of a marriage record to be found!). There is information about the tags in the Legacy Help file, under GEDCOM, if you want to know more. One word of warning - when you import the GEDCOM file into Legacy, make sure you give the new Legacy file a different name to your existing data file! Otherwise you'll find that your original file has been overwritten (though I'm sure there would be a warning that this is going to happen if you did do that accidentally). Hope this helps. :-) Kind Regards, Wendy Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyusers.com/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyfamilytree.com/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyusers.com/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyfamilytree.com/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp