Practical articles on exploring, organizing, and sharing family history data.
A walkthrough of this viewer. From the interactive tree to the data table, map, validation report, File editor and the tools that make new files.
Point GED-VIEW at the folder your photos and documents live in and it will match them to your tree. Nothing is uploaded. How it works and how to pick the right folder.
Where the evidence lives in the file, how the Sources page organizes it, what PAGE and QUAY mean, and how to find people who have no sources at all.
What each check on the Issues and Source coverage pages is looking for, which ones are worth fixing first, which ones a tool fixes in GED-VIEW, and how to take the rest back to the program that owns your tree.
What each of the six charts in GED-VIEW is for, how to choose the person it starts from, how to fold branches and cap generations, and how to export them.
How the Events page lines up every birth, marriage, death and burial in the file chronologically, how the decade navigator and filters work, and how to narrow to one place or one kind of event.
How place names in the file become pins on a map, how GED-VIEW locates them without sending anything anywhere, and how the Places list helps you find spellings that need fixing.
Every view exports with Pro. What each format is for, the calendar files for birthdays and anniversaries, one person's sources with every citation, and the tree itself as a file: GEDCOM 5.5.1 or 7, GEDZIP, GEDCOM X or Gramps.
A month by month view of every event in the file that has a full date, and how to get birthdays and anniversaries onto your own calendar.
Step-by-step instructions for exporting a .ged file from Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilySearch, RootsMagic, Gramps, Family Tree Maker, Legacy, WikiTree and Geni.
The exact clicks to download an Ancestry tree as a .ged file, what the file contains, what it leaves out, and what to do next.
Where the export lives on MyHeritage, what the file includes, and a note about the sources MyHeritage generates on its own.
FamilySearch is one shared tree, not a private copy, so there is no full export button. What it does offer, and the free programs that will pull your branch down properly.
File > Export, the options that matter, and the one setting that produces a media folder alongside the .ged.
File > Export, which boxes to tick, where RootsMagic keeps media, and why its exports are unusually rich.
Family Trees > Export, the GEDCOM options dialog, how the base media path affects the file paths in what you get, and the shorter route of opening Gramps XML or CSV directly.
Where WikiTree's export lives, why the file has almost no structured sources, and how living people are handled.
File > Export To > GEDCOM File, the customize screen, and the privacy choices.
Where Geni's export lives, what it includes, and the limits on how much of the shared tree you can take.
A frank list of what survives a GEDCOM move between the big sites, what is lost, how to convert the file for the destination, and what to check after import.
There is no bulk download button. Two desktop programs will pull the tree and its media to your computer, and from there everything works.
A GEDCOM file never contains photos, only their file names. Why that is, what each website leaves out, and how to see the pictures anyway.
The usual reasons a .ged file fails to load, in the order to check them, with how to confirm each and how to fix it.
Why Müller turns into Müller, what ANSEL, UTF-8 and Windows-1252 are, how to tell which one a file is, how to read it again as the right one, and how to re-export it correctly.
The byte order mark problem, stray blank lines, broken continuation lines and duplicate IDs, what the Repair file tool fixes for you, and how to fix the rest in a text editor.
What makes a .ged file big, what sizes are normal, and what GED-VIEW does to stay responsive on huge files.
How duplicate entries for the same person get into a tree, how to spot them, how to compare two candidates before deciding they are one person, and how the Find duplicates tool merges them.
Death before birth, children born to a nine-year-old, marriages after death. What GED-VIEW checks, why these errors matter, and what to fix first.
Why the list of people with no sources is the most useful report in the app, and how to turn it into a plan for what to research next.
What it means when someone in the file has no path back to the rest of the tree, the three usual causes, and what to do about each.
Why "Boston, MA" and "Boston, Massachusetts" can be two places to a computer, what GED-VIEW resolves on its own, how the Standardize places and dates tool unifies the spellings part by part, and how to fix the rest in your desktop program.
When merging is a good idea, when it is not, and how the Merge trees tool keeps the original safe: compare first, decide every pair and every piece yourself, preview the result, and accept it as a new file.
How the Split tree tool cuts a subset of the tree (descendants of one ancestor, one side, one household) into a new file, so a relative gets what they need and nothing else.
What the Compare files tool reports, how to read additions, removals and changed facts in words or line by line, and the two situations where it earns its keep.
The plain-text format every genealogy program can read and write. What it is, where it came from, what is in it, and what is not.
What the new version adds, what it removes, which programs write it, how to convert a file either way, and whether it matters yet.
Tags starting with an underscore are vendor extensions. What the common ones mean, which program writes each, and what GED-VIEW does with them.
A gentle read of a real record: levels, tags, cross-references. Enough to open your own file and understand what you see.
The strict GEDCOM date forms, which spellings the Standardize places and dates tool rewrites, which it leaves alone, and what happens to a date that can be read two ways.
The GEDCOM 7 package that carries photos and documents along with the tree, who supports it, how to make one in GED-VIEW, and how to build one by hand.
How the Convert tool rewrites a file from any GEDCOM version, program or format to GEDCOM 5.5.1 or 7, GEDZIP, GEDCOM X or Gramps, what cannot be carried over, and what the report says.
What each file type GED-VIEW opens and writes carries, what survives a round trip through it, and which one to pick for a program, a relative or a backup.
The Program setting on the Convert page, one program at a time: which GEDCOM version each reads, how it links media, and what happens to its own tags on the way in and out.
A family tree is full of living people who never agreed to be online. What "upload" actually means, how a browser-only viewer is different, what the browser itself stores, and how to check for yourself.
The living-person problem, how the Privatize living people tool and the privacy options in desktop programs work, how to send only one branch, and what a careful share looks like from start to finish.
What the Anonymize tool replaces, what it keeps so the file still behaves like yours, how the date shift works, and when to use it instead of Privatize living people.
What to look for in a genealogy site's terms about keeping, sharing and deleting your tree, what the answers usually are, and why none of it applies to a viewer that never receives the file.
Four kinds of genealogy software do four different jobs, and most people end up using at least two. What each one is for, and where GED-VIEW fits.
A maintained table of desktop programs and websites: can they read GEDCOM 7, can they write it, and can they handle GEDZIP. A snapshot, checked as of mid-2026 and updated when readers report changes.
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