Uploading gedcom help needed...

[mrstucci]

Hi-I have recently transferred my sister's test along with my husband's and a cousin's tests to FTDNA from Ancestry. I have no surnames listed because I thought that uploading a gedcom would take care of that. I am on FTDNA WITH a tree and I don't remember having issues uploading a tree to my account. But I cannot seem to upload a tree to anyone else's account.

I read through the help files and didn't see a size limitation. Maybe I overlooked that info. It's possible. I have tried different browsers but to no avail.

The tree I am trying to upload has 7200 people. Is that too large?

Also, once the gedcom is uploaded do the surnames that are in the gedcom get applied to the profile information automatically?

Thank you for any help! Greatly appreciated. Judy

[JDP1144]

7200 people in your gedcom

is ridiculous to post to say the least.

You should only be posting your direct ancestors, not all of every ancestor's children and grandchildren and all of their brothers and sisters. This is not ancestry.com with their horrendous and often erroneous family trees. FTDNA's family tree is very poorly designed and it has trouble loading a tree with any size at all. If you had managed to upload a tree that size, nobody would have been able to look at it since it takes forever to load.

[John McCoy]

In my opinion, the best way to control what goes into a GEDCOM file is FIRST to import whatever GEDCOM you can generate from Ancestry into a genealogy program on your own home computer (I use Brother's Keeper, which is shareware, easy to use, and very flexible; RootsMagic is also very popular), then use the options in that program to tailor a GEDCOM to meet your needs. You should be able to control how living people are shown in the GEDCOM, for example. For FTDNA, you want to include just the ancestors and spouses of the person whose DNA is being analyzed, and there's no need to go back more than about 10 generations. Personally, I see no problem with including names of living people, as long as there are no places or dates associated with them. For other purposes, such as posting a GEDCOM on GEDmatch, Rootsweb World Connect (when Rootsweb is working again, currently out of commission due to a serious hardware failure), etc., it may make sense to include all the collateral lines.

[mrstucci]

Thank you, John, for your reply. I use Reunion and it was from there I generated a gedcom. I appreciate the time you took to reply to me... Have a good day! Judy

[mrstucci]

Are you always this snarky? To you it may be a ridiculous post but I posted it in all seriousness. There is no need to be unkind. Judy

is ridiculous to post to say the least.

You should only be posting your direct ancestors, not all of every ancestor's children and grandchildren and all of their brothers and sisters. This is not ancestry.com with their horrendous and often erroneous family trees. FTDNA's family tree is very poorly designed and it has trouble loading a tree with any size at all. If you had managed to upload a tree that size, nobody would have been able to look at it since it takes forever to load.

[MMaddi]

Are you always this snarky? To you it may be a ridiculous post but I posted it in all seriousness. There is no need to be unkind. Judy

I guess that poster doesn't understand that including collateral ancestors (siblings of your direct ancestors) in their trees is actually something that's very helpful in evaluating DNA matches. That could potentially make it very easy to see that your ancestor was the sibling of your match's ancestor. That would mean that the common ancestors from whom you and your match received the shared segment were the parents of the sibling ancestors.

In fact, I just had a case of that myself today. I received a new match at AncestryDNA who's estimated to be a 3rd-4th cousin. Looking at the match's tree, I recognized a surname that was the maiden name of my great-grandmother. I checked my tree and found that my great-grandmother's sister was the match's great-grandmother. This means that we are 3rd cousins, since our gg-grandparents are the parents of each of our great-grandparents. Case closed.

Being snarky may make a person feel satisfied, but many times it's a substitute for thinking through a subject to understand its nuances.

[mrstucci]

Thank you for understanding about listing collateral lines. They have helped me IMMENSELY with my research since my maternal main line seems to be very, very elusive. And your recent match on Ancestry demonstrates just how invaluable collateral lines can be. Again, thank you for replying. I know that one bad apple does not a community make. Have a good evening, Judy