GEDCOM Export Formatting Issues

[pwalker]

I'm doing a big do-over of my genealogy and want to be able to pass a GEDCOM back and forth between several programs to make use of different features. In running a series of test imports/exports I have run into an issue with Reunion that I don't recall having years back. First, Reunion is switching the months in my dates from initial to all caps. Second, all my source fields are being exported as "TEXT" even through they all have custom GEDCOM tags. I'm wondering if this is a standard now or has always been this way and I just didn't notice. I have searched all over the app and queried Reuniontalk, FB, and the help files to see if there are settings to fix these issues with no success. Any help would be much appreciated.

[bmohr]

First, Reunion is switching the months in my dates from initial to all caps.

I assume you mean in GEDCOM date fields (as opposed to dates that happen to appear inside notes)? If so, the GEDCOM standard requires months to be expressed in all-caps.

[Mark]

Second, all my source fields are being exported as "TEXT" even through they all have custom GEDCOM tags.

Please ensure Flatten structured sources is not checked when exporting the GEDCOM.

HTH

[pwalker]

Ahhhhh mea culpa. Yes I had unintentionally exported the file with flattened sources. Thank you for your help. Do you know if there a way to override the months in date fields from being capitalized?

[Mark]

Do you know if there a way to override the months in date fields from being capitalized?

As Brad mentioned, the months being capitalized is required by the GEDCOM standard -- as such, that can't be changed. However, whatever application/website you import the GEDCOM into should be able to take the dates from the GEDCOM and change them to your preferred format.

[pwalker]

Thank you for all your help. Unfortunately the importing app does not reformat the months, it leaves them in all caps.

[theKiwi]

Well if it's really important to you, and you can't coax the importing app to correctly deal with this, use the free BBEdit to open the GEDCOM file and change all instance of

" JAN " (that's space-JAN-space without the quotes) to " Jan "
" FEB " to " Feb "

etc etc

Make sure to check the checkbox for case sensitive matching - that should preserve any instances where the word "may" or other instances of words or abbreviations used in notes that might match the abbreviated month names.

Roger