Extract text from Genealogy data files (GEDCOM)
To convert GEDCOM Genealogy files to another format, you need Gramps or other Database software.
To convert other file formats to the "Genealogy Data File" file type, you need software like Gramps or a similar tool.
The .GEDCOM (often shortened to GED) format is the universal standard for exchanging family tree data. Developed by The LDS Church, it stores genealogical information like names, dates, relationships, and places in a hierarchical text format. It is designed to let users move family trees between different desktop software and web platforms.
You can open and edit these files using specialized genealogy software like Gramps, RootsMagic, or Family Tree Maker. You can also upload them to online services like Ancestry or MyHeritage.
However, the format has severe disadvantages. It is fundamentally an old standard, mostly relying on a specification from 1999. A major limit is that it does not embed photos or documents. It only saves the file paths to media on your local hard drive. If you send the file to someone else, the images will be missing. Furthermore, many software vendors add proprietary custom tags. When you import the file into a different program, these custom tags are often ignored or cause errors, resulting in lost data.
Users frequently need to convert .GEDCOM files to more readable formats. The best conversion targets are CSV (to view a list of individuals in Excel), PDF (to print a structured family chart), or HTML (to publish a family tree online). Be aware that converting to CSV will flatten the complex family relationships, meaning you will lose the visual and logical structure of the tree.
Converting the file automatically is difficult because the hierarchical text structure is hard to map cleanly into flat tables. Proprietary vendor extensions also break standard parsers. Standard online converters often fail to process this nested logic properly.
Convert.Guru analyzes your GEDCOM file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted GED, ZIP, GED 2, TXT, FAMILYX, CSV, PDF, AHN, GED 3, XLSX, INFTREE, RMTREE and ALDF files.
If you want to convert GEDCOM file to PDF, CSV, JSON, HTML, BOOK, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG or CONF, you can use Gramps or similar software from the "Genealogy Data Transfer" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to GEDCOM, try Gramps or another comparable tool in the "Genealogy Data Transfer" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our GEDCOM converter.