One thing you lose in a GEDCOM is marriage links where there is no date or place. That is, when FO asks you if you want to establish a marriage even if you don't know where or when so you say yes and leave everything blank, the names will still be linked in the new database, but it won't say they are married. Have I explained that right? Another thing that gets lost is information you put in custom fact types, if you don't establish the custom fact types in the new database. For instance, I have a fact type "Admitted" for the multiple moves my relatives made from one church to another. If I forget to set up this fact type in my new database I lose this information. Or it might get added to general notes, I forget, think it does get put into the listing file if I'm transferring to another program. If you transfer the GEDCOM to FTW or PAF, you lose a lot of your fact notes, but the general notes transfer okay. This is because these programs don't have separate fact notes. I have heard that the most recent version of FTW does allow you set up new fact types, but I don't know for sure if everything transfers to these okay or not, maybe someone else has tried it. I like to try different programs. Of all the others I have tried, Legacy does the best job of accepting GEDCOMs of FO. Another interesting thing is that the notes seem to all get transferred if you send a GEDCOM to Rootsweb, if you chose to send notes. When I first sent info to Rootsweb, World Connect, the facts other than b, m, d didn't seem to appear, but now they do. I don't know if custom facts such as "admitted" mentioned above appear okay or not. It is not quite the same output as you'd get from a FO report, but it is there. I thought that was pretty interesting.

I almost panicked when I read the information below about possibly losing marriage facts in a gedcom export when no place or date was listed for the marriage since every month or so, since I export my entire database of 37,000+ names, delete the original database and rename and reimport. So, I tried it out -- exported the entire database to a gedcom, deleted the current database, renamed a new one the same name, and imported the gedcom I had just made. I had a couple marriages I added last night with only a source, no place or date. When I reimported the gedcom the marriage the marriage facts remain as well as their source. Does anyone know for sure if there is ANYTHING other than user defined facts that gets lost in a gedcom export and import within the current versions of FO? Occasionally I have to re-enter my preparer information, but that is the only thing I have ever discovered missing. Obviously, when one goes from one program to another or from a current version of FO back to one of the really early ones, data that does not conform to the programs structure could well be lost. Margaret Scheffler ----- Original Message ----- From: <LouPero@aol.com> Subject: Re: [FO] Info lost in gedcom??? > One thing you lose in a GEDCOM is marriage links where there is no date or place. That is, when FO asks you if you want to establish a marriage even if you don't know where or when so you say yes and leave everything blank, the names will still be linked in the new database, but it won't say they are married. Have I explained that right? > > Another thing that gets lost is information you put in custom fact types, if you don't establish the custom fact types in the new database............