What is a GEDCOM file?
GEDCOM is the plain-text format genealogy programs use to exchange family trees. Here is what it contains, what it leaves out, and how to open one.
Updated
A shared language for family trees
GEDCOM stands for GEnealogical Data COMmunication. It is a plain-text format created by FamilySearch so that family trees can move between genealogy programs that otherwise store data very differently.
Almost every serious genealogy application — Ancestry, MyHeritage, Gramps, RootsMagic, Legacy Family Tree, Family Tree Maker — can write and read GEDCOM. That makes it the practical way to get your research out of one tool and into another.
What is inside a .ged file
Open a GEDCOM in a text editor and you will see numbered lines rather than a picture of a tree. Each line has a level number, a tag, and a value.
- INDI records: one per person, with names, sex, and life events.
- FAM records: one per family unit, linking spouses and children.
- Event tags such as BIRT, DEAT, MARR, with dates and places.
- Source citations and notes, when the exporting program includes them.
What GEDCOM usually leaves behind
A GEDCOM carries the structure of your tree, not the media around it. Photos, scanned documents, and stories are normally not embedded in the file — some programs export a separate media folder alongside it, others reference file paths that break on a different computer.
Formatting is also lost. Colour coding, custom fact types, and program-specific fields often do not survive a round trip, because the receiving program has no matching field to put them in.
Dates are the most common source of trouble
The GEDCOM standard expects dates in the form 12 MAR 1897, with a three-letter English month abbreviation. Programs configured in another language sometimes write localized months such as MARS, MÄR, or MAA instead.
That is why the same file can look perfect in one program and show blank dates in another. PrintMyTree recognises month names in several languages when reading a file, so localized exports still render correctly.
How to open a GEDCOM
You do not need to install desktop software to look at one. PrintMyTree reads a .ged file directly in your browser and draws the tree from it — the file is parsed on your own device and is never uploaded to a server.
From there you can pick a root person, choose how many generations to show, correct any names or dates, and export the result as a print-ready PDF or order it as a printed poster.