A GEDCOM is the only common language between genealogy websites, and it is a fairly narrow one. Every move loses something. Knowing what before you start saves disappointment after.

What comes through cleanly

Names, sexes, birth, marriage and death facts with dates and places. Parent, child and spouse relationships. Notes you typed. These are the core of the format and every site reads and writes them.

What comes through partly

  • Sources. Citations exist in every export, but each site structures them differently, so what arrives is usually a title and a page reference rather than a live link to a record image. Ancestry's citations carry a record reference number that identifies the collection; nothing else can use it, but it is there. Expect to see the evidence as text.
  • Places. The strings transfer, but each site's place database is different, so a place that mapped cleanly on one site may not be recognized on the next.
  • Custom facts. Anything the standard has no field for travels as an "other event" or a custom tag, and may or may not be recognized.

What does not come through

  • Photos and documents. No website includes them in a GEDCOM. Ancestry offers no bulk download either. See the guide on getting your photos out of Ancestry.
  • Record images. The census page behind a citation stays with the site that has it.
  • DNA. Never. Matches, ethnicity estimates and relationship theories are each site's own analysis.
  • Hints, comments from other users, and anything a site computed rather than you entered.

The FamilySearch wrinkle

Moving to FamilySearch is not an import into your tree; it is a comparison against the shared tree, person by person, with a decision about each. Moving from FamilySearch has no full export and needs a desktop program. Both are covered in the FamilySearch guide.

The living-person wrinkle

The GEDCOM contains living people with their details. If it is imported into a site where the tree is public, those details are now public. Check the tree's privacy setting on the destination before importing.

What to check after import

Open the GEDCOM in GED-VIEW before importing it anywhere. Look at Issues for impossible dates and duplicates, at Sources for how much came through, and at Places for spellings. Fixing those on the source site, then re-exporting, is far easier than fixing them after import.

After import, spot check ten people you know well. Names, dates, spouses, children. If those ten are right, the rest usually is.

Next

Export, open in GED-VIEW, fix what Issues finds, re-export, then import.