General Chat

I understand that if I GEDCOM my tree from one place to another I lose the photos I have uploaded.

Does this happen to the source as well as the destination. That is are the photos wiped completely. I'm not brave enough to try it.

Edit. my edit!!

Well seeing I didn't receive a reply last night. Will try again this morning.

Would you please tell me if they remained on the document you were downloading to the new "site" ie the one from which the info was coming. Or were they incorrect on the document being loaded to, ie the destination site. Thanks

In any tree, each record has a unique identification. You are usually unaware of this, as it isn't displayed anywhere. So record 1 could be Fred Smith, 2 Joe Blogs etc.

Photos do not form part of your tree. They are held separately and simply 'linked' to a particular record in the tree. So when you add Fred's photo a link is created to record 1, and for Joe, to record 2. The important point is that it is linked to the Record ID, not to a particular name.

So if you were to change the names on your tree from Fred to Joe, and from Joe to Fred each will appear to have the others photo

When you Export a gedcom file from any tree program, your original tree data i.e. all your names and details remains intact. Any photos that you have previously added remain intact and linked to their original records. So, in other words, nothing will be changed. That is the easy bit.

When it comes to importing a gedcom to a file that already has photos attached, it gets more difficult, and without trying a few experiments, it may not be possible to come up with a definitive answer. It may also depend on the tree program that you are importing into.

In theory, if you import Fred Smith into a tree which already has that name and attached photo, nothing should change, PROVIDED the import routine preserves the original tree record identification. If it creates a new record, or re-allocates the record ID's then the tree data will look ok, but the photo will have lost its connecting link and will either appear missing, or attached to the wrong name.

In JAE4's example it would appear that the import has over-written or re-allocated or all of the original record id's with the import,, hence the photo links are now pointing to the wrong names.

As I said, different tree programs may handle imports in different ways, so it is best to exercise caution, or expect the worst and have to re-load some or all of your photos.

I can only advise on uploading from my off line Family History prog to here. No Pictures were involved. The address and notes connected to the census were uploaded into the ‘notes’ box, but not the dates/years which made confusing reading.

Good point.

GR and other sites may not necessarily support some of the gedcom tags which family tree programs do. Hence the 'loss' of data.

Thank you InspectorGreenPen and DET. I actually understand all of that. My main concern was that the photos might be lost from the original file. I don't much care if they do not travel well and arrive correctly at the other end. My GR tree is my test tree for seeing where the missing links appear.

Right now the phrase missing link has quite enormous connatations with my tree. What a confounded mess!!