Importing a family tree

A GEDCOM file is how genealogy programs hand over a family tree. Import one and its people and places become entities in Timescrolly, with their relations, sources and citations and, if you like, their lives on a timeline. Nothing is added until you have chosen who to import and checked what will be added.

Get a file from your genealogy program

Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilySearch, Gramps, RootsMagic, Family Tree Maker, Geni and most other programs can export a tree as a GEDCOM file, which ends in .ged. Look for Export or Download in the tree's menu or settings and choose GEDCOM. If you can pick a version, choose 5.5.1 or 7.0. Photos and other media aren't part of a .ged file, so they aren't imported. If the program can leave out living people, use that if you don't want them in Timescrolly.

Where to import, and who can

Choose Import family tree on the Entities page, on the tab of whose entities you want the people and places to become: your own, or a team's. Or open New timeline and choose From a family tree. You then upload the file and choose Read the file. Under Destination you choose:

• People and places only, which adds the entities;
• Also add their lives to a timeline, which also puts lifespans and events on a timeline: one you can edit, or a new one made for the import (Or start a new timeline from the file). A new timeline is private. A timeline on a floating date scale can't be used, because a family tree's dates are real dates.

Only owner level can import: you, for your own entities, and a team's owner and admins for the team's. Contributors and collaborators can't, not even onto a timeline they can edit. You can have one unfinished import at a time for your own entities and one for each team; the page offers to Continue it or Discard it.

An import has three steps, shown at the top of the page: What to import, Matches, and Check and import.

What to import

Under Who to import, choose Everyone in the file or Part of the tree. For a part, choose a person, then the Relationship (Ancestors, Descendants, or Ancestors and descendants) and, optionally, the number of Generations; leave it empty for all. The partners of everyone reached come along, so marriages stay whole.

With a timeline, On the timeline lets you put only some of those people on it (Who appears) and choose what appears: Lifespans, Marriages, and More events such as baptisms, burials, divorces, residences, censuses, emigrations, immigrations, naturalisations, military service, education, occupations and other events. Every event of every imported person is listed in the person's description whatever you choose here. If the timeline already has a range, lives outside it stop the import unless you tick Widen the timeline's range to fit; a new timeline's range is fitted to the lives.

Matches

Before anything is created, the import looks for people and places you already have. A person matches when the file and the entity carry the same GEDCOM ID (Same GEDCOM ID), or when the name is the same and the birth or death dates agree (Same name and dates). Both start as Link. Same name only, when there are no dates to compare, starts as New. A place matches when its name and the place it lies in match (Same place). When several people in the file match the same entity, none is linked and they show as Ambiguous.

The Matches step lists People and Places, with a search and a filter for each kind of match. For each row choose Link or New. Choose another… links the row to a different entity, which you search for. A linked person keeps all their fields: the import only adds the "GEDCOM UID" identifier, if they have none, and the relations and items from the file. An entity can be linked to one row only.

What is created

• People become entities of the kind person, with their name, aliases, sex, occupations and titles. The birth date becomes the start date and the death date the end date; without a birth, a baptism is used, and without a death, a burial. The description holds the notes and a Life events list. The "GEDCOM UID" identifier keeps the person's id in the file, and a FamilySearch id becomes a "FamilySearch" identifier.
• Places become entities of the kind place. "Leiden, Zuid-Holland, Nederland" becomes three places joined by located in, and coordinates in the file become the place's location. Only places that people in the import use are created.
• Relations between the people. Birth parents and parents the file doesn't qualify get parent of. Adoptive, foster and step-parents get relation types of their own, made the first time: "adoptive parent of", "foster parent of" and "step-parent of", each reading the other way as "adopted child of", "foster child of" and "stepchild of". They count toward your relation types. Partners get spouse of, with the marriage date as its start and the divorce date as its end. Siblings are worked out from shared parents; children of a family with no parents get sibling of between them. See Relations.
• Sources and citations. A source is added only when something you import cites it. It is reused when its title and authors are exactly those of a source in your library, so a second import doesn't fill the library with copies. The page numbers become the citations' locators, on the person, the event or the marriage. See Sources and citations.
• Items, with a timeline: a lifespan for each person (a period, or an event when only the birth or only the death is known), the marriages and the events you chose, each linked to its people and its place.

The people and places are private, which for a team's entities means only its owner and admins can see them. You can change that afterwards, entity by entity. The items take the timeline's audience: on a public or team timeline, everyone who can see it sees the names, dates and places in them at once, including those of living people. The last step says who will see the items and, on a public or team timeline, asks you to confirm before Import.

Dates

A GEDCOM date becomes a real date wherever it can:

• A plain date keeps the precision the file gives: day, month or year.
• About, calculated and estimated dates (ABT, CAL, EST) become dates with a margin of uncertainty, as does a range (BET ... AND ...), which becomes a date in the middle with a margin that covers both ends. See Dates.
• Julian dates are real dates, including the double years of the old March-to-March year ("30 JAN 1720/21" is 30 January 1721), as are Hebrew and French Republican dates.
• A "before" or "after" date (BEF, AFT), a date in a calendar Timescrolly doesn't have (such as Roman), a date outside what a calendar allows and a date that is only a phrase stay as text. They are kept as written in the person's description but aren't placed on the time scale, so they never become a start date, an end date or an item. The Check step counts them.

Limits

A file can be up to 50 MB and hold up to 50,000 people. For more, export a smaller part of the tree from your genealogy program, or import part of it here.

What the import adds counts against your plan, or the team's: entities, relations, relation types, sources and the timeline's items. The Check and import step shows what will be added and warns when something goes over a limit, before anything is written. One entity can hold up to 5,000 relations, and a timeline can refer to up to 10,000 entities. See pricing for the current numbers.

Large imports run in the background

A small import is finished when you choose Import. A large one runs in the background; the step says so before you start it. You can leave the page, and you get a notification when it is done, which opens the import again. If it fails, nothing is added.

Importing the same file again

Importing a file again doesn't change anyone already there, but what it does depends on whether it can recognise them:

• A person with a "GEDCOM UID" identifier is matched by it and nothing about them changes. The import keeps the id from the file as that identifier when the program writes one for each person.
• A person without one, because the program writes no ids or because you created them by hand, is matched only by name and dates. A person with no dates, or whose dates you have edited since, can start as New and become a duplicate unless you Link them in the Matches step.
• Onto a timeline, a second import adds a new set of items even when every person is linked. It duplicates the lifespans and events already there.

Check the Matches step when you import a tree you have imported before, and import to a new timeline, or without a timeline, when the items are already there.

There is no Undo

An import can't be taken back with one button. To undo one:

• The items. Each item the import added is recorded in the timeline's History tab under your name. They were added as a single batch, which can be reverted from there; see Deleted items and restoring.
• The people, places and relations. Delete the entities on the Entities page. The sources and relation types the import added stay in your library until you delete them there.

Because of this, it pays to import a small part of a big tree first, and to read the Check step carefully.