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Converting gedcom to excel?

Hi. I use excel primarily to track where families have appeared in the census and/or for whom I'm still looking - the format allows me to visualize the data more easily and spot holes that I might miss in looking at descendants chart, etc. The downside is that Legacy, my primary program, doesn't seem to have an easy option for downloading fields to a spreadsheet. Setting excel up with a large family can be labor intensive. Generally I end up jury rigging something from a descendancy chart. Is there a genealogy program that exports data in xls that I could use as a converter to download columns of names, dob's, etc?

I've a attached a PDF of something I was working on earlier this week, so you can see what I mean. The census columns exist in a template and have to be filled in manually as I look at what I have or gather more, but It's the pesky first couple of columns that make me crazy. It seems like there should be a better way than retyping names and dates that already exist in Legacy.

Thanks for any suggestions to make this better/easier.

Alaine

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Attachments:

sample census chart.pdf, 48 KB

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Permalink Reply by John Keith Coldwell on August 23, 2009 at 10:58am

Alaine

I use a program "Gedcom Reader" which converts GEDCOM output from my family history program to an Excel file. I find that it works well.

John

Permalink Reply by Barbara Byrne on August 24, 2009 at 9:29am

Hi,
I'm new to this lark and wondered if someone can tell me how to go about starting the Excel Family History Program please. I am 70 years of age and have got quite a lot of information but don't know where to go from here. Also what is Gedcom Reader please.
Hope to hear from someone soon.
Thank you
Barbara

Permalink Reply by Sue Mastel on October 9, 2009 at 6:10am

Alaine
I also use Legacy for my Adamthwaite one-name study, mainly for producing descendancy and DNA charts (the new Legacy Charting is brilliant!) but I keep all my data on extensive Excel sheets -- the main Births spreadsheet being crossindexed to Deaths and Marriages sheets and also indicates whether or not I have found each individual in each of the census years. The spreadsheets are reproduced in pdf format on our website, colour coordinated to indicate which line of Adamthwaites each individual belongs (thus ensuring that I don't unwittingly allocate one individual to more than one line!)

I will certainly be trying out the GEDCOM reader, if only to double check that I have actually included every individual in each of our family lines over to the respective Legacy file.

However, I have recently started to collect data for another surname as I am coordinating their DNA project, also using Legacy, and I have hit upon a convenient way of recording when I find each individual in the census - I use the INDEX view and have created suffient TAG columns to include one for each census year. As I find each person in the census I just tag that box: it shows up which families I still need to be hunting for. I wonder if I could export THAT info using the GEDCOM reader ????
Sue

Converting gedcom to excel?

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