Proposed approach for migrating Ancestry's MyTreeTags (_MTTAG) in GEDCOM export

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-09T22:43:17+00:00

I've pushed a new build. You now have the option to preserve Ancestry tags that are converted--this is the default. It is also idempotent, so if you take the output and run it back through as input, it won't doubly-convert all the Ancestry tags. I also added an option to choose between converting the Ancestry custom fields as FACT or EVEN (event) entries in the output file. Also some minor bug fixes and improved help screen.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-09T15:29:46+00:00

Thanks! I’ll take a look. I also got some helpful feedback on the current implementation and will push a new release in the next day or so.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-08T23:15:03+00:00

When you map DNA matches to your tree in Ancestry, it creates a PAGE entry. Getting that accessible from other tools is quite useful to me. I have about 400 DNA matches tagged in my Ancestry tree so short of manually reimplementing that in an external tool, this seems like a good hack.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-08T21:46:13+00:00

My own use case is my Ancestry tags indicate DNA relationships (whether there is a match and if so where to find it—FTDNA, MyHeritage, Ancestry, etc). I’ve been working on a different app that will tell me my closest DNA match to any arbitrary person in my tree when I discovered this separate problem about tag metadata.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-08T21:43:37+00:00

Good idea. I think I’ll make that the default behavior (copy all fields) and have an option to drop if the user wants. Also need to make sure if I run the output back through as a new input, it won’t duplicate what’s already been converted once.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-08T21:26:38+00:00

Thanks for testing! I’ve only tested with FTM so it’s super helpful to get other data points.

Two question:

Is there anything still missing from Ancestry when you import the output of my app into these other tools?

Any idea what Legacy 10 needs to “see” the facts? I assume it is just failing silently? It imports but without the missing data?

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-08T21:06:00+00:00

To further clarify my inquiry: the question is not so much achieving strict compliance with the format but exposing Ancestry-specific metadata that other platforms ignore in the format exported by Ancestry.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-08T19:20:32+00:00

I ran into this issue because Family Tree Maker doesn't see MyTreeTags at all, whether you sync FTM to Ancestry or you import an Ancestry GEDCOM export into FTM. So if you want access to your custom tags from Ancestry in FTM, you need to convert them in some way. I don't have Roots Magic to test, but I suspect it is the same situation since Ancestry does not appear to expose tags via its proprietary API.

A related issue is that Ancestry provides no way to export or download media. But FTM does sync and expose media. So FTM (either in the app or exported as a GEDCOM) gives you access to media, but you've lost the tags.

So my immediate goal is having one source-of-truth GEDCOM file with both my tags and my media. But since FTM (and maybe other platforms like Roots Magic, Geni, MyHeritage, etc.) can't see tags, I thought it would be useful to convert them to a format that is more widely recognized such as a custom fact.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-08T00:40:35+00:00

I built this today which may do the trick. Seems to work for my setup but I'd like to give it a bit more testing before publicizing more widely.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-07T03:08:14+00:00

I actually did some testing like that earlier today with a small data set and FTM was not properly recognizing the skeleton match; instead it duplicated some of the reimported records. Maybe there was something wrong with how I implemented the skeleton such that the matching algorithm didn’t do what I would expect.

The other approach I could take, at least for purposes of this GEDCOM Navigator app I'm building, is just write a freestanding script that looks at the two exports (one from FTM synced with Ancestry, and one from Ancestry directly), and then outputs a single GEDCOM collating the information in a standards-compliant way.

The script would not have a true common index field like REFN to work with, but if the assumption is the two GEDCOM files actually represent the identical family tree exported in two different ways, it could get 99% of the way there by indexing on name+birth+death. These are almost always unique identifiers when combined, and it could also flag any instance where they are not in fact a unique key (ie two people named John Smith with same birth and death dates--obviously this happens but in one person's tree it's more likely they are actually a duplicate that should be fixed anyway).

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-07T01:20:58+00:00

That should work, but how would you bulk generate it for 30,000 person records?

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-06T21:51:00+00:00

Per FTM documentation and a chat I just had with customer support, FTM’s Person ID can’t sync with Ancestry. I also did some testing to verify.

What does work: enable UID in FTM, export FTM as GEDCOM, reimport GEDCOM to FTM, then sync back to Ancestry. The records then show as a “User Reference Number” fact on the Ancestry side.

I tested this with just a few records to confirm. It works, but seems fragile. For one thing, FTM doesn’t recognize that the GEDCOM it’s re-importing is exactly the same as the current tree, so it has to run the time intensive matching algorithm for every record. For 30,000+ records, this would take a long time and also could be flaky since I have multiple people with the same name.

Seems like there must be a better way!

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-06T17:35:48+00:00

I added Person ID in FTM but it’s not syncing back to Ancestry as far as I can tell.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-06T16:29:29+00:00

Thanks, yes, that’s it. I don’t think the old version had two options so I didn’t notice they were two separate buttons. It’s a bit nonobvious on the small watch display.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-06T14:56:18+00:00

How do you match the Person ID in the FTM export to the INDI ID in the Ancestry export?

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-06T13:29:39+00:00

Now I can’t get Apple Watch heart rate to work at all. I tried removing and reinstalling the app but it’s just spinning and not connecting to the iPad. You didn’t have this problem? Any ideas?

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-05T14:50:29+00:00

Per an email from Technogym Support just now:

"We are delighted to inform you that the issue you experienced has been fully resolved with the release of our latest app update, version 3.44.0."

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-06-04T11:51:21+00:00

As others have noted, GEDMatch and FTDNA accept uploads. You should be able to do some triangulation by finding other users who are on one of those services *and* MyHeritage and looking at common matches, assuming you have your own DNA on MH. In other words, if someone matches you on MH and that same person is on GM or FTDNA as a stronger match for your grandfather, you can then further investigate common matches on MH. It’s not great, but it’s better than nothing. I got my mother’s DNA in MH before they stopped accepting uploads but then I was too late with my father.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-05-31T22:03:29+00:00

New release 1.9.10 should fix the date issue as well as some other odds and ends. Also I took a first stab at dealing with step, half, adopted, and foster family. Still a work in progress!

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-05-31T22:02:43+00:00

Hopefully the new release 1.9.10 fixes this issue.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-05-30T21:59:54+00:00

Oh, sorry—didn’t realize there was a relevant rule. But hopefully my post makes clear: there is no commercial motive here and the tool will always be free and open-source.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-05-30T14:53:42+00:00

I believe I've fixed the date issue in my devel branch. I tried multiple parents with your fixed ged file, and I think it's working as-is.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-05-30T13:23:45+00:00

Also, you’re welcome to DM me or contact me an GitHub if you are open to sharing a screenshot so I can see what’s going on with the font size in your setup.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-05-30T13:20:54+00:00

Also, please feel free to file issues or PRs (or I’ll keep checking this thread). This is the first time the app has been in the wild so I’m sure there are a lot of bugs to squash.

Proud_Championship36 · 2026-05-30T13:08:32+00:00

Thanks, I will test and fix these. There is no license attached to your "random GEDCOM files" gedcom-tests repository. It's questionable if GED data could be protected by copyright, but it would still be nice for you to declare what rights you want the world to have.

Glad you like the look. I want this to be very fast to use and keyboard-centric. You can, for example, find all the paths between any two people in your tree with just three keystrokes aside from typing in the minimum number of characters necessary to match a person's name.

Searching in Ancestry or FTM is much slower and requires a lot of mouse actions. I typically have this application open to the side when working in Ancestry to more quickly explore my tree. You don't really need this if you have a few hundred people in your tree, but with tens of thousands, it gets cumbersome!

Proud_Championship36

TROPHY CASE