Helen C. Leigh (musicgal@uswest.net) wrote: >Rdea: This sounds better to me. Is there any real need to go through >the difficulties(?) of trying to do a gedcom - with new software, etc.? It depends on what you would like to do with the data and the limitations of the software you are using. Most, if not all, genealogy programs will import and export GEDCOMs. And you can get them all to export various reports, descendancy charts, etc. But *importing* those is a different matter--I don't know that any genealogy programs will handle this function (I'd love it if I'm wrong on this point!!). So if you are just giving information to a friend or cousin about your line, e-mailing family group sheets or descendancy charts is a great way to do it. But if you're trying to integrate your databases with one another, then exchanging GEDCOM files is the easiest way to do that. As Rebecca mentioned earlier today, it involves much less typing when you can just import someone's data in GEDCOM format. Recently I had a Loveless researcher send me his family data as a descendancy chart in Microsoft Word. I couldn't just import the data in that format into my database--I had to enter it all by hand, though since it was already in electronic format, I was able to do lots of copying and pasting. --Melissa