If I want to share my family info with a cousin, my cousin has no need for all my wife's ancestors. I would like to be able to fully export only "my side" to a GEDCOM, and then reimport it as a new project.
I can select my own ancestors, sure, but that comes out incomplete. At each step all the siblings of each of my ancestors, and the descendants of those siblings, are lost. Even my uncles, aunts and cousins -- all of them are lost with the "ancestors" selection. How about a feature to select "descendants of my ancestors"?
My workaround is to go back to the oldest person in each of my ancestral lines, and add them to the list with descendants of each. Seems tacky. My tree is only smallish with 1500 people, but I can imagine it would be a bear to be sure you had a complete list if it were a much larger one.
I have devised my own method of exporting one side of tree separately as follows:
1. Make a GEDCOM of complete tree and send to desktop. 2. Open it up in FTB naming it "Working Model". That way you can experiment without messing up the publishable version. 3. I disconnected the two trees by eliminating my spouse, thus elimnating those relatives. 4. I then made a GEDCOM file of that tree. Open it up in FTB giving it the name of your side of the family and add your wife back in..her side should be eliminated in this process...your side should remain intact.
You can do the same thing to make a tree of just her side. Hope this works for you. By using a working model you have nothing to lose.
Joanie, thanks for your kind reply. It's lots better than the workaround I was using, and I'll try it. For a cousin on my mother's side that I want to share with, I would also eliminate my father and reinstate a different number of people selectively. It's still probably easier than the solution I had come up with.
It is still a workaround, though, elegant as it is. The following suggestion is for FTB developers:
The ability to share a "branch" of a tree isn't too much to ask for -- it's basic. I hope hope someone from FTB sees this, and will consider the addition of a feature to select "ancestors and their descendants" from any given person in setting up a GEDCOM export. That would eliminate the need for the clunky workarounds we have to make up, to share branches of a tree with different family members.
Joanie, thanks for your kind reply. It's lots better than the workaround I was using, and I'll try it. For a cousin on my mother's side that I want to share with, I would also eliminate my father and reinstate a different number of people selectively. It's still probably easier than the solution I had come up with.
It is still a workaround, though, elegant as it is. The following suggestion is for FTB developers:
The ability to share a "branch" of a tree isn't too much to ask for -- it's basic. I hope hope someone from FTB sees this, and will consider the addition of a feature to select "ancestors and their descendants" from any given person in setting up a GEDCOM export. That would eliminate the need for the clunky workarounds we have to make up, to share branches of a tree with different family members.
Thanks again Joanie,
Bruce
I need to export to a Gedcom from My Great Grandmother down to just me to share with someone, the rest of the tree has no value for this export, Can this be done yet?
I think Joanie's workaround is the only way. FTB Ddevelopers have not made any changes to facilitate this operation.
Using her example of eliminating a spouse in a working copy, you can think of other variations that would do the lines you want. For example, you can go to the oldest names in each of your ancestraal lines, and select "all descendants." Laborious and awkward, but it gets it done.
It's such a basic feature that I figured others must have brought it up too, since so many would have been former PAF users and even that old dinosaur can handle it.. I've thought about it a time or two since then but it hasn't ruined my life.
Nice of you to respond. You keep adding improvements and I know it will get in there sometime. Thanks again.
