Alton, I've had the same problem -- I just edited the leading message off the front of the gedcom and it read into Family Origins okay. Gedcom files are text and can be sent included in the body of an e-mail, though it'll may make the post too long for some providers to accept. [It's my understanding that AOL automatically bundles received attachments into the received message (perhaps this is just for text messages ????)] These files can be made smaller (in order to send them more quickly) by "Zipping" them, but now they're not in any recognizable format and can really confuse the issue if there's any problem receiving them. A typical gedcom file is ASCII text format and looks like : 0 HEAD 1 SOUR FamilyOrigins 2 VERS 3.0 2 CORP FormalSoft, Inc. 1 DEST FamilyOrigins 1 DATE 15 NOV 1996 1 SUBM @S1@ 1 FILE CLOUD.GED 1 GEDC 2 VERS 5.3 2 FORM LINEAGE-LINKED 0 @S1@ SUBM 1 NAME Mary Lou Park Freeman 1 ADDR P. O. Box 128 2 CONT Kennett MO 63857 1 PHON (573) 888-5062 0 @I1@ INDI 1 NAME Mary Lou /PARK/ 1 SEX F 1 BIRT 2 DATE 14 JUN 1943 2 PLAC Wasco California 1 FAMC @F2@ 1 FAMS @F1@ 0 @I2@ INDI 1 NAME Benny Don /FREEMAN/ 1 SEX M 1 BIRT 2 DATE 17 FEB 1943 2 PLAC Seminole OK 1 FAMS @F1@ ...... etc, etc ...... another thing, the writer that said the problem he experienced was due to being from a confuser running WIN95 .... t'aint so !! The OS (operating system) has nothing to do with the way data is represented in a file. the only way I can explain his experience is to say that different editors handle "text" differently (e.g. some put in a real TAB character and some put in spaces; while others only use a carriage return (C/R) at the end of the line while others use both a C/R plus an LF (line feed)). Perhaps somewhere on the way of going from various OS's, someone used the old EDIT or WordStar, etc and got the file into true ASCII text format. bottom line .... it's easy to get superstitious and make erroneous assumptions about things that are acting screwy. >FIRST: Please accept my sincere thanks for everyone who responded to my SOS. > >SECOND: It seems that two things were wrong here: >1. I was trying to reformat an attachment by changing ".txt" extension to >".ftw", when the file was a GEDCOM file. yes, you probably should have changed the extension to ".ged" and them "imported" it into your genealogy database program. >2. The more serious problem was that the sender copied the GEDCOM file into >the e-mail message before sendint the e-mail. AOL or the sender's e-mail >service read the message as being too long, and converted the message to text >format. As a result, the attachment was never in GEDCOM format. I think AOL is the one that truncated your message .... as I said above, I've had many curse AOL and say that it often incorporates files, that were originally sent as genuine attachments, into the main body of the e-mail. >My advice (although I haven't yet opened the file--a word to the wise), is: > When you send a message, make sure that you are truly ATTACHING the GEDCOM >file to the e-mail message, and not importing the file in text format into >the e-mail message. AOL will permit the transfer of a file in GEDCOM, IF it >is formated and attached in that language. Unfornately, mine was not. I >have aske the sender to re-send, in GEDCOM attachment. Remember, the gedcom format is text, as shown above, and I doubt the AOL system either knows or cares about files with a ".ged" extension (except, if it automatically appends ".txt" files to the e-mail, perhaps making the extension _anything_ other than ".txt" or "*.doc" might keep it as an attachment). If all else fails, you might get the person to just copy the file to a diskette and send it to you. Tom Cloud <cloud@peaches.ph.utexas.edu>