Hi Tamara! The acronym GEDCOM stands for GEnealogical Data COMmunications. The Family History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) developed the GEDCOM standard. It is the standard file format for exchanging information between genealogy programs. GEDCOM files will have the filename extension of .ged. GEDCOM is used to transfer information into your genealogy software program from another genealogy program that supports GEDCOM and vice versa. Nearly all genealogy software programs being written today support this standard. Lets say that you use [whatever yours is] as your genealogy software program, and I use a different genealogy software program (Family Tree Maker, for example). Different software programs are written in different software languages (often called code), and write their database files in different ways. If you and I exchanged database files in their native formats, our software programs would not be able to interpret and understand each other's database file. GEDCOM is a specific portion of your program's software code that will take your database file and copy it into a "generic" format that all other genealogy software programs will be able to understand (your original database file is unaltered). That way I can receive from you a copy of your file and will be able to open it up in my software program, and vice versa, without having to retype any of the database. GEDCOM files are not hard to create. Look in the software manual that came with your genealogy program, or search the on-line help under GEDCOM for instructions. Don Nutt Adrian, MI. At 09:47 AM 10/4/98 -0400, you wrote: >I know this is a silly question. But what is a Gedcom? Someone asked me if I >was set up to recieve a gedcom well I don't know.Please explain. >Tamara Wilkerson >hoosiers@digital.net > > > >==== HUNT Mailing List ==== >The HUNT Document Archives: ><http://www.c2i2.com/~tompkin/index.html> > > > >