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Geni GEDCOM import ignores Language and Cause of Death in GEDCOMs exported from MyHeritage

Dimitri Vulis

November 27, 2022 14:24

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I imported into Geni a GEDCOM file just exported from MyHeritage.

The file starts with:

0 HEAD
1 GEDC
2 VERS 5.5.1
2 FORM LINEAGE-LINKED
1 CHAR UTF-8
1 LANG Russian
1 SOUR MYHERITAGE

Geni ignores the Language field. All the names, which happen to be in Russian Cyrillic, are in English language tab in Geni.  It looks like I'll have to add a Russian language tab to each Geni profile, move the name field, and (if I'm not lazy) add an English translieration.

Many profiles in the Gedcom file contain:

1 DEAT Y
2 DATE ...
2 PLAC ...
2 CAUS cause of death

Geni just ignores the CAUS field when importing the GEDCOM file, but correctly loads the date and the place. I guess I'd have to copy them over manually as well.

12 comments

• 0
  
  Job Waterreus November 27, 2022 17:02

  Dimitry,

  It has been a few years since I imported my last GEDCOM.

  As far as I can remember you can specify a language for the import. Did you try to specify Russian language on the import? If not you could try to undo the import and try again specifying Russian as language (please always try with a very small GEDCOM first to see what is/is not supported).

  From your results it seems Geni does not support the LANG in the GEDCOM header. As far as I know Geni has not provided any documentation on the import, so it is hard to know what is supported on what not.

  If you are able to upload your GEDCOM on  a site supported by SmartCopy (see https://www.geni.com/projects/SmartCopy/18783) you may be able to copy over missing information from there to Geni.

  Please also see https://www.geni.com/projects/Connecting-to-the-Big-Tree/17983

• 0
  
  Dimitri Vulis November 27, 2022 17:44

  Thank you very much for all your suggestions, Job!! I already tried rolling back the import and experimenting with a small file, trying a few things. Geni never asked me for the language. I also tried to change the language Genu uses for menus, on the bottom of the screen, but that setting did not affect the import.

  It is not a show stopper, but sounds like someting Geni developers may fix one day.

  Much appreciated!

• 0
  
  Job Waterreus November 27, 2022 18:11

  If you have some results from your testing I can raise a support ticket with Geni to see if they can make any improvements (and/or give a bit a bit more info on the import process)

• 0
  
  Dimitri Vulis November 27, 2022 18:26

  Thank you so much.

  Here is a an example profile from the gedcom file: https://www.geni.com/people/x/6000000189024704088 . Her name got imported to the "English" tab (I will eventually move it to the "Russian" tab, and add an English transliteration). The gedcom also contains "2 CAUS Эпидемия" that was not imported (I will add that too eventually).

  If you like, I can edit the gedcom file and delete everything except this one profile, to help with testing.

  Edited by Dimitri Vulis November 27, 2022 18:30
• 0
  
  Job Waterreus November 27, 2022 21:19

  Don't get your hopes up to high, Geni only has few resources so some tickets stay open a very long time.

  I'll try to experiment a bit myself to see if the import process has changed since I last used it.

• 0
  
  Dimitri Vulis November 27, 2022 21:35

  Thanks a lot. It's understandable if the ticket takes a while to investigate as it is not critical - I can continue without it. Greatly appreciated!

• 0
  
  Job Waterreus November 29, 2022 13:47

  If did some testing and raised a number of tickets (also for lack of documentation). But it could take time (I still have tickets open raised years ago)

• 0
  
  Dimitri Vulis November 30, 2022 20:18

  Thank you very much Job!!

  Meanwhile, I am experimenting with SmartCopy. It does look like a much better choice than importing Gedcom.

• 0
  
  Job Waterreus November 30, 2022 20:45

  If a large part of your tree is already on Geni SmartCopy can be a better choice, but if many families must be copied a GEDCOM can be easier (when you do not have to add extra information by hand like the cause of death)

• 0
  
  Dimitri Vulis December 02, 2022 01:04

  Thanks a lot Job! I really appreciate your help

  Geni import also seems to skip the occupation:

  1 OCCU occupation

  and the name prefix (like Dr.) and the married name (which is MyHeritage's extension, not standard Gedcom)

  1 NAME First name /born Last name
  2 NPFX Dr.
  2 _MARNM Married last name

  I think I'll try to use SmartCopy :)

• 0
  
  Job Waterreus December 02, 2022 09:49

  I can't predict when Geni will react to the tickets.

  So if you can manage with SmartCopy please use that. It has the advantage that you can skip families that are already on Geni, so you will have to do much less merging and conflict resolution.

• 0
  
  Dimitri Vulis December 17, 2022 17:04

  I just noticed another problem. If a date in the Gedcom is not exact, but a range, for example:

  1 DEAT Y
  2 DATE BET 1989 AND 1991

  then the import just leaves the date empty.

  I'm definitely using SmartCopy in the future.