Tuesday 12 May 2009

Ancestral Atlas - Gedcom Update

Yesterday I received an email from Ancestral Atlas to tell me that I could now upload a GEDCOM file to the site.

I chose a very small file (only 5/6 people with 15 events max) and uploaded it. Once I received the email to tell me the file was uploaded I went to the site but couldn't see anything!!! When I clicked on Events, Places etc all I could see was a green box.

I dug around for a while and spotted that one of the preferred browsers for the site is actually Firefox not the Internet Explorer which I had been using. When I used Firefox to enter the site I could now see the data that I had uploaded.

I thought that this would mean that I could now see my locations marked on the map but I was wrong. What I have actually uploaded is just the events. I now need to go through each event, find the place on the map then edit the event to pick up the place. Each even that I uploaded is marked with "*** This event is currently not attached to a location! ***" even though there is a location in the gedcom.

This is quite a lot of work (especially if you were uploading a reasonable size gedcom) when all the information is actually held in the gedcom file itself so I'm quite disappointed. I think I will hold back and wait until the location information in the gedcom can be used to at least guess at the location of the event. If Ancestral Atlas guessed the location you could then go through and verify which would be quicker.

If anyone else has any thoughts about this please let me know as I think this site could be useful in the future once the upload of data is made easier.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Jo!
    I have nominated you for the "Friendly Blogger" award...I think you have made a terrific start on your blog!

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  2. Hi Jo,
    You must be psychic!
    You should have received an email confirmation that we now auto geo-reference your Gedcom file (we map your data and all you have to do is confirm the location we have chosen from the data in your Gedcom)jus as you had hoped.
    Give it a try and let us know what you think. We have also add "Life Maps" that create maps of individuals and entire families at the touch of a button.
    Kind regards,
    The Ancestral Atlas team

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