do you have a GEDcom on GEDmatch that you want to update? Well, today I'm going to show you how you
can do that. GEDcoms are the family trees that we use on GEDmatch. Now the GEDcom file has been
around since the 1980s. It's basically a way to transfer genealogical information between
programs but not all of our tree information stays the same as we do more research. We add people.
We maybe correct some things. We maybe cut some people out who we find out are not related to us
at all. And so there's always going to be a need to update those GEDcoms. In other words update
those trees that we have on our account. Now one thing to remember about the GEDmatch website
is that GEDcoms are not editable in other words once you upload that tree
you can't go and go in and change the information on GEDmatch. Some companies allow you to do this.
For instance FamilyTreeDNA you upload a GEDcom but then you can also add people
to their tree. In other words they've converted that GEDcom into their own tree format. And so
you're really editing their tree at this point with GEDmatch it's static that GEDcom that you
upload today is going to be the same tree that you're seeing five years ten years from now. So
what do we need to do in order to edit that tree. In essence you might say well we can just upload
a new tree. And that's fine except that the advantage of mixing DNA with trees is actually
connecting that DNA to people on the tree. So let's go through a process in order to make sure
that you preserve those links that you may have already put on your tree. On GEDmatch
first off is we need to check our old GEDcom for DNA links. Now here on the GEDmatch website we can
actually find our GEDcoms listed right below where our kits are. They're listed as your family trees.
And in this account I just have one GEDcom. So clicking on that number is going to go to
the home person for that GEDcom. And as I'm just looking at this home person I can already see hey
there is some DNA attached to this. And in this case what I want to do is I want to make note
of the person. And I want to make note of the kit number that I've attached to this.
In this case is my grandfather and I've actually attached my DNA kit to it.
Just as a reference if you've only attached one and you know you've only attached one DNA kit
to your GEDcom then at this point you're fine. But what I like to do is I like to check the pedigree
and the descendants to see if there's anybody else that I may have added to it.
So for instance here when I'm looking at the pedigree chart what I'm looking for is I'm looking
for these little DNA icons and that DNA icon tells me that there's DNA attached to it in this
view. I can see that hey it's just that one person, my grandfather, that has DNA attached.
Now for the descendancy what I want to do is I want to really go through each of the
grandparents. So here I got Benjamin Freeman Lee, Nancy Jane Locknane, Samuel Kelly Green,
and Lucinda Harper and I want to look at all of their descendants to see if there's any other DNA
attached I can do that by clicking on one of those grandparents. It's going to take me to their page
and then I can click on the descendants and that's going to show me the descendants of that one
grandparent and I can see here that yeah that's my grandfather. He's the only one that has DNA there.
If I go back I can then click on the next grandparent and go to descendants I can see
that yep it's still just that grandfather that has it there. I can go to the third grandparent
click on descendants again just that same grandparent there. And finally, I can go to the
fourth grandparent and click on descendants there's just one person in this tree file that has
DNA attached. So that's the only one that I need to make a note of so that I can make sure I'm able
to attach that later on. So that completes step one we've checked our old GEDcom for all of our
DNA links. If you have been very active in linking people to the GEDcoms then you might have several
DNA links that you're looking at. So we go on to step number two and that is we want to upload
a new GEDcom. Let's go and see real quick where we're going to upload. We're back at the home page
and there is our GEDcoms. Here we want to go over to the tools. And if we scroll down
on the tools there is the upload GEDcom fast tool we click on that and we can enter in the
new name. And I'm just going to call this the new GEDcom tree and we can select a kit number
to match to. I'm just going to select that one yes I agree to all of those the people are not alive.
That the living people have been privatized. And then I can go and I can choose my file
and once I've chosen my file I can upload. And it's going to start scanning it and uploading
it. And it tells me that hey we've got this all upload and it's even assigned a number for me.
6814651. And we can see here on the homepage I now have the two files. I have this older file
from two months ago and I have this newer file that I just uploaded. We're going to want to
see both of those numbers for the next step. So I've uploaded my new file. And now I'm ready
for step three and that is I want to actually compare these two GEDcom files because I want
to make sure I uploaded the right file. Now if you've made changes you should be able to find
that there's some new people or some old people are not in there. But really what you're just
seeing is that hey are a lot of these people the same because these two are very similar files.
So on GEDmatch we're going to use these two numbers and what we want to do is go down to
the genealogy comparison tools we want to do a two GEDcom comparison. And I'm going to open that in a
new window so that way I can copy my GEDcom files. So I need two numbers which I have. Now I have my
old one and my new one. I'm going to grab the old one and I'm going to put that in there. And then
I'm going to grab the new number and I'm going to put that in there as well. So this is going
to go through and it's going to look at both of these and see what is the same. And right off the
bat I can see hey person number one which is my grandfather it is the same and all the information
is the same. And I can go down I can see that yeah his ma or this is like his great-great-grandmother
and some other grandparents, great-grandparents, going through and what we can see here is we can
see a lot of this information the same. Now a few and it's because this is the exact same
GEDcom file that I've used. If you have made some changes like for instance let's say that
you found out oh he wasn't dead on August 21st he died or sorry August 20th, he died on August 21st,
well then this would show August 20th and this would show August 21st. They're still close
enough that it thinks it's the same person. But there's just a little bit of information that is
different. But in general what we're looking for is we're looking to see hey is a lot of this
information the same. And in this case yeah it's all the same. So I know that I uploaded the right
GEDcom file. And that's really what I want to make sure. If you uploaded the wrong GEDcom
file you can go in and delete that new one and find the right file and upload it. So we know
that our two files are of the same people one just has the corrections and the other doesn't.
So now we go on to step four. We want to go in and we want to add the DNA links for
each one of these new people. Let's go over and see how we can do that. So I'm going to start with
this new GEDcom file and here I've added a DNA link. When I uploaded the file but you know what
I think this link is wrong. So I'm going to click here to unlink that and it says it's been
unlinked. And now we see that that is not there. So I want to enter in the actual link. And so I go
look at my notes and hey it was this HK823216, the infamous Phil Garnett. I go in here add that link.
Now because Phil Garnett is not the same line as Burton Eugene Lee it gives me a warning saying
hey these are people with two different names. In this case I'm just showing you this as an example.
And so that's okay it's another check to make sure you're linking the right DNA to the right person
but it does say that we have linked this. So I can click the back button and you'll notice now
that that DNA is showing up. So you're going to go through and do that for all of the DNA links you
have for that GEDcom file. Once you've done that we're ready for step five and that is to delete
the old GEDcom file. What we've done so far is we've verified that we know what all the links are
we've uploaded the new one we've made sure that's the right one gone through and added all those
links. So now we really have two GEDcom files with the same DNA links to the same people but one of
them has more correct information than the other. So we want to go in and we want to delete the old
one so we can go over to the GEDmatch home page. And now what we want to do is we want to delete
this file this is our old file. If you go down here there's a click here to manage
your GEDcom resources. So these are our trees it's going to take us to this page
where we can actually delete it. As we scroll down at the bottom you see here there are
our different GEDcom files listed and there's the ability to delete it with the x. So I'm going to
click on the x. For this one it's going to ask me are you sure you want to delete this file
this is a good place where if you've written down the file number you can say yes. I want to delete
that I understand it's a permanent deletion. And you'll notice now it is gone. If we go back to the
GEDmatch homepage I can see that I only have that new GEDcom tree in the file and that is how
you update your GEDcom files in GEDmatch. Again you can't actually edit the file in
GEDmatch you have to upload a new one but we want to preserve those DNA links. Now if you'd like to
learn something more about GEDcoms and searching with GEDcoms you can watch this video up here. If
however you want to learn something more about DNA then why don't you watch this video down below.