Load Gedcom

A process within the loading of a GEDCOM will limit the ancestors loaded to just those direct ancestors based on the selected focus person. All others are not retained. It is these ancestors that will become the basis for the selection of an MRCA on the DNA Comparison view, and these ancestors who will be used for Group Names and Standard Surname lists. Ensure that your GEDCOM contains the family tree of your profile person.

Missing Ancestors are uncommon, but possible reasons and solutions are listed at the bottom of the page.

1. Under the Utilities menu option, click “Load GEDCOM”, or, from the Ancestors view, right click and select "Import > Gedcom".

2. Navigate to the location on your computer that contains the saved GEDCOM file and click on the file to be loaded.

3. Select a Profile on the right, then select the person that matches the Profile on the left. Names selected will be highlighted with an orange background. When the two selections are correct, click “Load Ancestors”.

If the left hand side is blank, then a GEDCOM has not been loaded, please click “Load Gedcom” and repeat from step 2.

4. A validation message will be displayed. If the two people are the same, click “Yes”. If they are not, click “No” and reselect.

5. The GEDCOM data will be loaded and a completion message will be displayed. Click “OK”. If you have another Profile that is associated with the same GEDCOM, repeat steps 3-5 for each. If a Profile person needs to be associated with a different GEDCOM file, repeat from step 1.

6. When all Profiles have had GEDCOMs loaded, click “Close”.

7. The resulting view will look similar to this

8. After the completion of the GEDCOM load, the direct ancestors will be displayed in the Ancestor tab.

Ancestors in blue are those in the paternal line, those in pink are those in the maternal line.

The filter area at the bottom of this pane provides for the ability to show either maternal, paternal, both, or an X list. At the lower left of the list is a search box to assist in locating a particular ancestor.

For those with genealogies that go back more than 15 generations, remember that autosomal DNA is considered not very reliable as you go back in time. Consider this when you determine how far back a GEDCOM should be.

It is recommended to retain the default setting of True for "Assume single Ahnentafel name is surname" in F10 as this enables for more user-friendly group names.

If underscores or other punctuation marks are present in a name, they are ignored and deleted. Be aware of this when it comes to hyphenated surnames, and "missing" surnames or names.

Some examples below may assist you in knowing whay you have certain types of group names.

With no parents present, the Group name is the surname combined with their Ahnentafel value. For example in the images below "Quartus224".
When one parent's surname is unknown, the group name for the child will appear as for 112 below: "Father's surname - mother's given name". For example "Quartus-S".
If no surname is present, and no parents present, and "Assume single Ahnentafel name is surname" in Control Settings is set to True; then the group name is the given name combined with Ahnentafel value. For example "S225".

If no surname is present, and no parents present, and "Assume single Ahnentafel name is surname" in Control Settings is set to False, then the group name is simply the Ahnentafel value. For example "225".

If you have an empty name (or it was originally underscores only), then there will be a number of group names impacted.
In the example below, we can see that number 140 has no name entered, they were listed in the gedcom upload as "_____ _____". Their group name is simply 140.
They are the unknown father of number 70, S Ebrius, who therefore has the group name of "Unknown-Ebrius".

Pedigree Collapse in your ancestor list naturally means duplicated identical group names. To assist in keeping the group names unique, GDAT adds the Ahnentafel number to the end of the second instance of the otherwise identical group name. These extra numbers are not able to be removed, and are very helpful when it comes to ensuring that the correct ancestral path is followed when assigning group names to DNA segments and Relatives.

Take a look at the examples below.

Both "219 J Tempero" and "876 G Tempero" are children of different "Tempero-Pons" couples, and thus both need the "Tempero-Pons" group name. Since identical group names are not possible, the second instance (higher ahnentafel numbered ancestor) has their ahnentafel added to their group name. In this instance, "219 J Tempero" happens to be the grandchild of "876 G Tempero" but this isn't going to be the only situation behind duplicate group names.

Also seen is "1756 W Pons" and "1758 R Pons" having otherwise identical group names, except that "1758 R Pons" has his ahnentafel number added to his group name as he has the higher ahnentafel number. In this insatnce, "1756 W Pons" and "1758 R Pons" are siblings and both decend from the same set of parents.

Missing Ancestors

If you are missing some ancestors after loading the GEDCOM for a profile, then there are a number of possible causes.

An ancestor is not correctly connected to their parents, or has multiple parents and biological or preferred parents have not been set.
It's possible that your missing ancestor has been marked as “Private” or “Invisible” within your program and so hasn’t been exported as expected.
An ancestor marked as “Invisible” is unlikely to have any of their ancestors in your list.
If you have people named “Private” in your ancestor list, then you have marked that person as Private in your database, or you have done something at the time of exporting your Gedcom that has marked them as Private.
Check your program for the cause, correct it, and re-export your GEDCOM, paying attention to the privacy settings to ensure that names and dates are exported for living people, and re-load that new GEDCOM into GDAT.

You can also manually add in the missing ancestors. This works well if you only have a handful of missing names; if you are missing more than 5 or 6, it may be easier to fix and re-export and re-import your GEDCOM.

From Becky: My recommendation has always been to use Roots Magic or Legacy or the Ahnentafel loads or input manually. The gedcom logic is complicated and I cannot support all the different formats.

Both Roots Magic and Legacy have free versions available to all.