GED Utils

GED Utils v. 1.2
Last updated: 26 Feb 2011

GED Utils is a collection of macros for manipulating GEDCOM files.  The original intent was to clean-up GEDCOM exports from Legacy Family Tree before sharing publicly online at Ancestry.com, but there's really no reason they shouldn't work on GEDCOM exports form other software or for uploads to other repositories.

GED Utils is written as a clip library for use with NoteTab, a text editor by Fookes Software.  The library works fine with their free Light version.  NoteTab is similar to Windows Notepad, with support for macros (what they call clips) and multiple documents open at the same time.

To use these macros:

• Install NoteTab
• Download GED Utils from the menu on the left
• Save GED Utils into NoteTab's 'library' folder (from Windows Explorer not from within NoteTab)
• Open a GEDCOM in NoteTab, select GEDUtils library, and double click any of the clips to run them

GED Utils Features:

• Remove Source Titles
  Don't share TMI; Remove Legacy's Source Writer generated citations from Master Source
     
• Remove Source Details
  Don't share TMI; Remove Legacy's Source Writer generated citations from Source Details
  
  
• Remove Surety Values
  Don't share TMI
  
  
• Remove Media References
  Why tell 3rd parties about my media files?
   
• Remove File paths and names
  Why tell 3rd parties about my local file structure?
  
  
• Remove \i and \i0 formating codes
  Get rid of those pesky formating codes Legacy insists on keeping in the output!
  
  
• Remove <i> and </i> formating codes
  Get rid of those pesky formating codes Legacy insists on keeping in the output! (HTML version)
  
  
• Rename ABBR to TITL
  Legacy's Master Source List Name is output as a GEDCOM ABBR tag.  This clip renames them for use as the source title instead of a full citation sharing publicly online.
  
  
• Rename REFN to _APID
  Ancestry's hints are maintained through GEDCOM files by the _APID tag.  Legacy will import this into their database, but exports it as REFN.  This has to be renamed before uploading back to Ancestry if you want hints to be automagically reattached in your new tree.
  
  
• Move Event Notes into Event Details
  Ancestry will upload event notes as unsourced citations.  In Legacy, these notes are equivalent to the notes in an event.  This clip appends event notes to the event description so they show up as part of the  facts at Ancestry like they do in Legacy.
  

Add (by Request) Feb 2011

• Rename TEXT to TITL
  To fix a source issue with Reuinion© GEDCOM exports.
  
  
• Move NOTEs to Events
  Original intent is to prepare a Geditcom© GEDCOM for upload to Ancestry.com. Finds and replaces event NOTE pointers (eg. @N42@) with the actual NOTE text found elsewhere in the file (usually near the bottom). Used to make event notes part of event details so that they will appear in Ancestry.com events, and not as unsourced citations. Geditcom makes use of NOTE pointers, while Legacy exports the NOTES inline with the events. Different, but valid GEDCOM formats. Because this clip copies and pastes text around, it may run slow of large files.