Hi. I’m new to this program and community. My cousin had paid $700 for a narrative file from a genealogist in the Azores. He sent her a chart instead, which is not in the format to which she’s used to working with on ancestry. She requested the narrative report again and would delete the chart. Even though it’s the same information, she just needed it in a different format that made sense to her. The genealogist never responded again. I signed up today and hopes to help my cousin get what she needs but I’m having trouble and trying to convert the file and I’m hoping you all can help. Thank you in advance for your kindness.
If you get a GEDCOM file from them, you can import to RootsMagic.
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Thank you. But her tree and the genealogist information have different data and goes further back then what she already has. She and I spent all day today trying to get around the excel sheet that is 560 pages long and get it out of the chart format. We’ve watched videos and googled until we couldn’t see straight anymore. I honestly have a migraine at the moment. We need help. $700 is a lot of money and he didn’t give her the correct format.
If all you have is a chart in Excel, I doubt that anyone could reverse engineer it into a lineage-linked database without, at least, enormous effort or computer resources. Moreover, if it is just a chart, it would lack the evidence on which it is based and, so, it may be little more than fiction. That swid, maybe you could post the file for others to see it and invite anyone to attempt a conversion.
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Thank you for your response, I appreciate the help from everyone. I will double check with my cousin and see if she wouldn’t mind me posting it here. We’ve spent days on it as I stated above. Loving this group already!
There are a few programs that can read data from spreadsheets, but without knowing the exact format, it is difficult to say what information can actually be extracted. Extracting a list of persons should be relatively easy, possibly by changing some column names so that they are recognized by the receiving program, but understanding the family relations may be quite difficult.
Gramps is such a program, and it’s the one that I use for most of my work. I use RootsMagic for the things that it can’t, like connecting to Ancestry and FamilySearch, so I know both.
Hi and thank you. It isn’t currently in a spreadsheet. It’s in the genealogy chart. Saved to word and then I think a pdf then in a software like this one. The top picture of the report is what I am needing. The last picture is what was received and I am trying to convert it to a report. It’s been a nightmare!
Your descriptions of what your cousin commissioned the ‘genealogist’ to do, what she received, what’s missing, what you’ve done with it, et al has left me very confused. I don’t think I can help other than to encourage the restoration of diplomatic relations with the author of the chart and narrative report and persuade them (maybe with $) to send the database file, from which those outputs were generated, in both original and GEDCOM file formats.
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OK, I understand. Sometimes it helps to use a program like LibreOffice to read the PDF, and convert it back to Word format. I can try to do that for you, if you’re not familiar with that software, which is why I sent a PM with my personal email.
To my regret, I must tell you that this is not the first ‘genealogist’ who sends things in a format that may look nice, but is very hard to incorporate in your own tree, in whatever software you like. I once had a remote cousin do that, who even tried to forbid me using ‘his’ data.
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I think that you may have a TON of manual data entry ahead of you. Unless you can reestablish contact with the person who supplied you with the report.
Best of luck
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Sorry for the confusion. It’s all the same data put into a report or a chart. My cousin paid for a report and they sent a chart and now have been unresponsive to her request to have the report. Thank you for your patience.
OMGosh! I had the same genealogist do this for me. I received both the report, chart and a hard bound cover book with both in there. It’s a beautiful book. So it just adds to the confusion. Thank you and will respond to you from your PM.
OwlOCR will convert a multipage PDF to text but you really need the file used to generate the excel, word, etc reports as Tom suggests. Think you just need to connect with the sender to get a more useable output.
Thank you. There lies the problem, the sender has ghosted us.
I would suggest leaving negative comments in online forums wherever you see this person advertising or participating. Sometimes that helps.
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There are parts of me that would and then I realize this person as much of a jerk he’s become to me (after a 20+ year friendship), I would look bad. I may even get kicked out of all the genealogy group pages because of it. I stand to lose more then he does. But, my cousin and I are trying to see if we can figure this out with out going that route. I bought RootsMagic to try along with some other software. My cousin paid a lot of money…hundreds for a result she didn’t ask for. Thank you for your advice. I appreciate it. I’m finding this community is quick to respond and be super helpful. I am grateful!
I think you are pretty much in the same situation I was in 20 some years ago converting a family history book printed 100 years earlier into a genealogy database. It was mainly a manual process given the quality of the Optical Character Recognition tech I had and that text was really only useful (after spell-checking and editing in Word) for copying into Notes in the RootsMagic or Family Origins software I used at the time. There was then, and I daresay still true now, no software that could convert the chart into a lineage-linked database such as RM, populating the tables with people, names, and BMD events, let alone capable of extracting data from the Notes and Footnotes to populate other facts, sources and citations. That was all a manual exercise, adding each person and their details using the database software.
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UG! Not what I was hoping for. This situation is crappy.
I can’t see on these images if there are sources listed for the dates, places and people in the report. If there aren’t then you’ve got one huge book of clues that you’re going to have to research. At any case, you’d have to do some research just to check the work of the guy who wrote the report.
No sources were provided. We are okay with “clues” as we enjoy the hunt for the documents.