The GEDCOM format made simple

If you do genealogy, sooner or later you will come across a file ending in .ged. This file uses the GEDCOM format, the universal standard for exchanging genealogical data between programs and websites.

What is GEDCOM for?

GEDCOM stands for “GEnealogical Data COMmunication”. Created in the 1980s, it lets you move a tree from one program to another — from Heredis to Gramps, from Geneanet to Ancestry — without retyping everything.

In practice, it is a readable text file: each line describes a piece of information, organised hierarchically.

What does a GEDCOM file contain?

A GEDCOM file mainly describes two kinds of records: individuals (the INDI tag) and families (the FAM tag), which link people together.

For each individual, you find their name, sex, dates and places of birth, marriage and death, occupation, notes, and links to the families they belong to.

What does it look like?

Each line starts with a number indicating its hierarchical level, followed by a tag. A birth, for instance, spans several lines: the BIRT tag, then DATE and PLAC below it for the date and place.

You do not need to read this format by hand: a tool like Genea World displays it as clear records and a visual tree.

How do you open it privately?

With Genea World, simply drop your .ged file into the browser. It is read locally, on your device: no data is sent over the Internet. You can explore, correct, then export a new GEDCOM file.