I can't a 100% sure about anything until I have tried the whole cycle again, something I am trying now. But I did a detailed comparison line by line between the GEDCOM made by Legacy and the one made by Ancestry after I made a number of known changes in Ancestry. The differences seem to be largely meaningless, except for the ones caused by the intentional changes.
I also imported the Ancestry GEDCOM into Legacy (remapping UID) and immediately exported it back out as a new GEDCOM that is in Legacy's format. That way, I took away all the file format issues that Ancestry might have introduced. Again, comparing the two GEDCOM files (the original compared to the modifed file as re-exported by Legacy) showed the intentional changes, and a couple of unintended changes. The RIN's were different, and the source ID numbers were changed. However, these differences seem to be irrelevant to Legacy when you merge the database files that match the GEDCOM's. As long as you use the Intellishare merge and merge the modified file back into the original, Legacy breezes past all the records with matching UID and shows only the records that have changed for verification. Try it with a test, if you are unsure. I can't see any reason to mess with the GEDCOM files, unless there is something else you are trying to do besides transferring the data from Ancestry to Legacy. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2010 6:34 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Exchange with Ancestry.com Round 2 I hear y'all - no one with sense messes with a GEDCOM unless he has to. I may have to. I only had a couple of small Ancestry GEDCOMs handy to look at. Only two user defined fields, properly distinguished by a leading underline - _PREF and _MEDI. Then I thought to look at the header. The date was Nov 2008, but Legacy version 3! OK, Legacy does things right and did so long ago, but what Robert got back could have been sourced by any program providing a GEDCOM that Ancestry could (sort of) read. Since Nov 2008 is only two years ago, probably Ancestry is not the origin of either the UID or APID tags seen. Since clearly oddities may be encountered, cautions against blithe editing of GEDCOMs are further supported. That said, how else other than looking at the GEDCOM is one to have confidence how to instruct Legacy to remap? Was there a sensible mapping for APID? Was UID just a standard field lacking the underline prefix for it's tag, or something oddball now imported into Legacy? If standard and a rare or unique case with others _UID, Is that a warning of possible corruption elsewhere in that download? kb Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp 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/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
