Import gedcom

[Thomas F Lettington]

Will someone please explain ho to import a GEDCOM file to an Ancesntry tree that already exists.

[Bob White]

Rather than writing a long response, please click on the question mark (lower left) to open the manual. Do a find on "importing GEDCOMs" and you will find a very thorough procedure.

[SGilbert]

Bob, The OP worded it awkwardly, but wants to send a GEDCOM from Reunion to Ancestry to update an already existing tree.

[Bob White]

Thank you, Steve, for catching that. I'm guilty of reading too fast it would appear.

Thomas: Go to https://support.ancestry.com/s/artic...language=en_US and the instructions are about halfway down the resulting page.

[bmohr]

Thomas: Go to https://support.ancestry.com/s/artic...language=en_US and the instructions are about halfway down the resulting page.

Those instructions are about uploading a new tree. The original question was about uploading a GEDCOM to an existing tree, which as far as I know is not possible on Ancestry.

[SGilbert]

Those instructions are about uploading a new tree. The original question was about uploading a GEDCOM to an existing tree, which as far as I know is not possible on Ancestry.

Just a guess, as I have never uploaded to Ancestry, but can you delete the old tree and then upload current GEDCOM?

[bmohr]

Just a guess, as I have never uploaded to Ancestry, but can you delete the old tree and then upload current GEDCOM?

Well, you can, but Ancestry will then lose track of any "hints" (links to sources available on Ancestry) that you've already accepted or rejected for people in your tree. Ancestry does a very poor job of correlating imported source citations with links to their own trove of records to identify records you've already cited.

Maybe someday, they'll attach unique DOIs (digital object identifiers) to each record and if a source in an imported GEDCOM references that DOI, it could just link it up automatically. GEDCOM 7 has a unique identifier structure that can hold a user- or application-generated unique ID, but can also hold what they call an EXID (EXternal ID), which is a unique ID maintained by some external authority. The current list of EXID types includes things like FamilySearch Person ID and FindAGrave Memorial ID, but there's no reason it couldn't be something like "Ancestry Source ID" if Ancestry got into the game.