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JFA › Documentation › GEDCOM Import

GEDCOM Import

Bring genealogy into the archive.

Use GEDCOM to bring people, family relationships and supported genealogy data from another application into JFA without making JFA your primary genealogy research program.

GEDCOM is a bridge

You can continue maintaining your larger family tree in the genealogy software or service you prefer. Export a GEDCOM file when you want to bring the relevant genealogy into JFA.

JFA then uses the imported genealogy for person pages, relationships, navigation and archive context.

JFA deliberately supports a GEDCOM subset.

The goal is reliable import of the genealogy JFA needs, not complete support for every tag, extension or feature that can exist in a GEDCOM file.

What JFA uses from GEDCOM

PEOPLE

People & names

Imported people become the genealogy identities JFA can connect to photographs, documents and other archive material.

FAMILIES

Basic relationships

Family and parent-child relationships provide the structure used by person pages and the JFA family-tree navigation.

EVENTS

Supported life events

Supported genealogy events and their associated information can provide useful dates and places for the archive context.

Before you import

  • Keep your original genealogy database and GEDCOM export as separate copies.
  • Make a backup of the WordPress database before a large import or reimport.
  • Export the tree or branch that is useful for your archive rather than importing unrelated genealogy simply because it exists.
  • Use the preview to check the planned result before applying the import.

You do not need a huge tree.

JFA is most useful when the genealogy helps explain the archive material. A focused tree containing the people relevant to the photographs, documents and stories can be more useful than importing every distant branch.

The import workflow

1

Open the GEDCOM importer

In Family Archive administration, open the GEDCOM importer from the People & Genealogy area.

2

Choose the GEDCOM file

Upload the GEDCOM export from your genealogy application. JFA keeps the uploaded file only as needed for the import workflow rather than treating the GEDCOM file itself as the permanent genealogy database.

3

Review the preview

JFA parses and normalizes the file first and shows a preview before anything is written to the archive.

4

Check warnings and changes

Review counts, warnings and any differences from an earlier import. Resolve unexpected parsing or identity problems before continuing.

5

Apply the import

Only after reviewing the preview do you apply the planned changes to JFA.

Preview before write

The preview is an important safety boundary. It lets you inspect the normalized import result before JFA creates or updates genealogy records.

Look for

  • Expected numbers of people and families
  • Unexpected warnings or parsing errors
  • Relationship counts that look unreasonable
  • Records reported as missing from a reimported file

Do not ignore

  • Persistent identity warnings
  • Large unexpected differences from the previous import
  • Relationship or event errors
  • A source that is not the tree you intended to update

Reimporting the same genealogy source

JFA keeps import-source information separately from the internal JFA person identity. This allows a later GEDCOM export from the same logical source to update existing imported genealogy instead of blindly creating an entirely new set of people.

Where the source provides a usable persistent identity, JFA can use it to reconnect records even if ordinary GEDCOM XREF identifiers have changed between exports.

Genealogy source

↓

Source identity / persistent identity

↓

Stable JFA person

Do not treat GEDCOM XREF numbers as permanent person IDs.

Genealogy applications can renumber records between exports. JFA therefore separates its own internal identity from the temporary identifiers used inside one GEDCOM file.

People intentionally removed from JFA

An imported person may sometimes be deliberately removed from the archive even though the person remains in the external genealogy tree.

JFA can retain an import exclusion for that source identity. The exclusion is kept separately from the person record so a later reimport does not automatically recreate the same person simply because the person is still present in the GEDCOM source.

Source compatibility

GEDCOM is a standard, but real applications often produce different dialects, extensions and export details. JFA therefore focuses on its supported subset and tests realistic exports rather than assuming every GEDCOM file is identical.

Ancestry

Real exported genealogy has been used in JFA compatibility testing.

MyHeritage

Import identity and reimport lifecycle behaviour have dedicated compatibility tests.

Gramps

Gramps-generated GEDCOM has also been part of JFA compatibility work.

Compatibility testing is not a promise of complete vendor support.

Export options and application versions can change. Always use the JFA preview and report a reproducible problem if a real GEDCOM export behaves unexpectedly.

If an import behaves unexpectedly

  • Do not apply a preview that contains unexplained large changes.
  • Keep the original GEDCOM file that reproduced the problem.
  • Record which genealogy application and export version produced it.
  • Note whether this is a first import or a reimport of an existing source.
  • Include the relevant JFA warnings or error messages in a bug report.

A reproducible GEDCOM edge case is especially valuable to the project because unusual exporter behaviour can be difficult to discover with synthetic test files alone.

Next

Photos & Documents →

Start adding the photographs, PDFs, letters and other material that the imported genealogy will help put into context.