I recently came across the website mentioned in the Eastman's newsletter that will check a GEDCOM file for errors relative to the current standards.
I had many errors, but by far the one that had the most occurrences was using a date formatted as "1950-1971" for example. Apparently the GEDCOM standard expects the format to be BET 1950 AND 1971. When I tried to enter this format in a date field in Reunion, it balked at it and labeled it a non-standard format. Personally, I prefer the style I have been using since it entails less typing and looks rational in charts and reports. But I am concerned that when I transfer data to my Ancestry tree, I will lose information along the way. Is there a way for the GEDCOM export processor to reformat date fields that contain "date-date" information to the acceptable format?
The only other error type that I found (to a lesser degree) was having more than 90 characters in an occupation field. I guess Reunion allows 256. This came up because I have recorded occupations from multiple censuses in the same Occupation field, with entries separated by semicolons, and dates shown in parentheses. I shudder to think what it will take to go back and add separate Occupation lines for each census date, especially since Occupation is not an "event" style entry that has an implicit date. Not sure if there is a way to adjust this on export, but thought I would mention it as a potential problem for users.
I had many errors, but by far the one that had the most occurrences was using a date formatted as "1950-1971" for example. Apparently the GEDCOM standard expects the format to be BET 1950 AND 1971. When I tried to enter this format in a date field in Reunion, it balked at it and labeled it a non-standard format. Personally, I prefer the style I have been using since it entails less typing and looks rational in charts and reports. But I am concerned that when I transfer data to my Ancestry tree, I will lose information along the way. Is there a way for the GEDCOM export processor to reformat date fields that contain "date-date" information to the acceptable format?
The only other error type that I found (to a lesser degree) was having more than 90 characters in an occupation field. I guess Reunion allows 256. This came up because I have recorded occupations from multiple censuses in the same Occupation field, with entries separated by semicolons, and dates shown in parentheses. I shudder to think what it will take to go back and add separate Occupation lines for each census date, especially since Occupation is not an "event" style entry that has an implicit date. Not sure if there is a way to adjust this on export, but thought I would mention it as a potential problem for users.
Comment