This came on another list. Thought it might help someone here. Carole Tyler ~~ HOW TO DO A GEDCOM GED is a standard file format for exchanging info. It is an acronym (GEDCOM) for Genealogy Data Communications. The Family History Dept of the Morman's (LDS) developed the GED. Most genealogy programs use the GEDCOM format so info can be transferred easily. And I think a GED compresses the information. On a GEDCOM, you will see a little tree icon, then a file name, then a dot, then GED. It is a family file done on a member of a larger family file. In your FTM, go to your earliest ancestor you want to do a GED on (like Monica)---- I did this while the Bill-Monica thing was hot news. Before you do a GEDCOM, you might choose to privatize your file and you can do that by going into the Lewinsky FILE in your FTM and choose priorities, then privatize. You will get a green page. And you can work as usual. If a person is living (born in this century or 80 yr old--I think--and there is no death date), FTM will delete all personal info you have on them. Only the name, spouse and dates will show. That is a good feature if you aren't sure what the receiving person will do to it. I had an unpleasant incident earlier last year when a person tried to merge about 4 Eakins files, didn't clean anything up, and sent it to Rootsweb. Well, there was personal info on some of my cousins--like where they lived and worked, etc. Some of them did find out they were on the web and thought the world was ending, and thought it was me that did it. I, and a few more genealogists, finally got the guy t! o remove the file. I noticed he does have it back, only just names and dates of the living. And no one in my family has noticed. You do have to be careful, even if grandpa is dead and died in jail while serving a murder term--there are some of his descendants who would rather no one else know about it. 1. Have Monica's page open and go to VIEW and click OUTLINE DESCENDANT TREE--you will have a white page with Monica and all her descendants. Here is a little trick I found by trial & error-- if I am the 8th generation, and dad is the 7th and I want to leave his generation out, I go up to contents, click, and change the number of generations to show. Your outline will automatically get bigger or smaller. So-- first, privatize (done in FILE, then priorities)-- then the outline des. tree, then the # of generations. You are now set for #2 below. 2. Go to FILE, click on the COPY/EXPORT INDIVIDUALS IN TREE 3. You will get that gray box and need to tell it what to do-- A. SAVE in C (or whatever drive you want) B. TYPE--scroll to GEDCOM and click C. FILE NAME--you will give it a name like Monica for Barb. Now if the file name shows up on the name line (like LEWINSKY, LAND, or CRABTREE), you can delete the whole name line and retype Monica for Barb and click save. It will save it with the correct extension (those last 3 letters after the dot) and it will be in C. That way you know it is a smaller file with only the descendants of Monica, not the entire lineage of her gg grandparents. 4. You will get another gray box and click OK on it. You should be done. Monica for Barb will be in C drive with a little tree. You have taken a part of your big file and separated it. You now have two files-- Monica for Barb (the person you are sending Monica to) and the larger family file. You HAVE NOT hurt the big file. And Monica is still in the big file. Now do your e-mail thing--letter to whomever. When you are done with your letter, click on the attachment icon part and then go to C drive and click on Monica and on attach. Monica should then be included as part of your e-mail you are sending to Barb. Then click send. Again, if you want to clean up your C drive and delete stuff, you can delete Monica for Barb and it won't hurt anything. You can also save these in FTM but I just find it is easier to get to in the C drive and I know that is where I store all the stuff I want to e-mail to other people. You can export an entire family file--have your file open, and go to FILE and click export family file and follow the same steps. BUT some people have computers that cannot handle a large amount of material and you will A. get it back, B. it will take forever to load in the receiver's computer e-mail or C. it will clog up the other person's e-mail because they can't retrieve it. I had to call my {PSCI technician when part B happened to me and he had to delete it from my mailbox. Good luck. A genealogy report is simple-- have the cursor on the earliest name you want to send, go to view, and click on gen report. You can save it in FTM or C (I usually use the C drive). And when you want to e-mail a person, you can send the report from C. Or, if the person doesn't use FTM and you want to send a genealogy report, open up word-- then open up the gen report, go to edit--copy, and then to word, click edit and paste. Then either E-mail it to the person, or save it and e-mail later. Or, you can copy to an E-mail letter if the gen report is not too large.