Uploading my Reunion GEDCOM to FTDNA

[Judith Morris]

When I upload the GEDCOM for my husband's tree (from Reunion) to FTDNA, it completes the upload, then asks for me to find my (my husband's) name before it will activate. My husband;s name NEVER shows in the list I'm to choose from. His father's does. Their names are identical, but one is Sr. and one is Jr. The only one to appear on the list I need to choose from is his father's, so I can't activate it. I got some help from the FTDNA folks, and the only thing I had not tried was to "try another browser -- our site works best Windows Desktop and Google Chrome" .I do not and will not use either. What is wrong with Safari and Big Sur?! Any ideas on this? It would seem that a large and powerful company like FTDNA should be useable for a much wider audience than that!

[RWells]

Did you by chance exclude living individuals?

[Judith Morris]

No, did not exclude lliving individuals. The more I look at it the funnier it gets -- it looks like he's married to his mother!

[RWells]

You might want to check to make sure the person ID of each of them is different.

Then my next step would be to load the gedcom into a !new! Reunion file and see what it looks like. Be careful and do not load the file into your master file.

This would determine somewhat where the problem is. This would let you know if Reunion made the mess when it created the gedcom or if it got corupted somewhere else.

I don't see how a browser could cause this kinda of problem. I have never had this kind of problem with Reunion and I have families where the parent and child has the same name.

[Ryan_N]

Judith Morris the browser recommendation is a throwaway. I'd forget it. You're just fine with Safari and Big Sur.

DNA isn't my forte but I think I can spot the issue: linking a tree with DNA data--be that data uploaded as a file or pre-existing on a site like FTDNA--requires the tree-owner to identify who the "root" person is. By "root" person, I mean the person who supplied the DNA sample. This oftentimes creates a problem if the root person is (a) living and (b) marked in your tree (Reunion) as "living" or otherwise as "private." For instance, I don't upload trees to Ancestry or anywhere else with my parents and siblings appearing, because they're living. So what I have to do after updating a tree created in Reunion to the likes of Ancestry, is to create a few dummies to include myself (myself being the DNA sample-taker). I do this by first finding my deceased grandparents, then then making a placeholder "child" for my own parent, then another placeholder "child" for myself. I label my grandparents' child (my parent) as Living-1 (i.e. my father). This is done within the tree on Ancestry--not in Reunion. I'll then create, in Ancestry's tree, a spouse for that person (my mom) and label it Living-2, and from this couple, another child, representing myself, and label it Living-3.

At this point, I'm ready to to link my Reunion tree to its mirror on Ancestry, and include Ancestry's ThruLines feature. When activating ThruLines, I'm asked who the root person is (myself), so I search for Living-3 and then I'm done.

Comparatively, you can't do it this way GEDmatch. There, Living-1, -2 and -3 would already have to have been created (i.e. from within Reunion prior to exporting the GEDCOM).

[Ryan_N]

You might want to check to make sure the person ID of each of them is different.

Then my next step would be to load the gedcom into a !new! Reunion file and see what it looks like. Be careful and do not load the file into your master file.

Judith, even if you're including living persons on GEDCOM export, something is triggering the data to not retrieve. I'm with Roger on this. My steps would be: Create a backup (copy) of your Reunion tree by clicking File > Make a Backup. Save that to your Desktop and name it by today's date (i.e. 20230815)
Close your regular Reunion tree.
Double-click the new Reunion Tree on your Desktop (I think it will append the word "copy")
Find your husband on there, delete ALL data (if it were me, anyway) and label him something obvious, like Living-1. Just me personally, I would not be uploading any life-event data for this particular record.
Remove all flags for this record if you have any.
Do the same for any other records you feel necessary.
Export as GEDCOM 5.5.1 to your Desktop and label it by today's date with a dash followed by GEDCOM (so as to not confuse it with your Reunion Family File). Before you produce the export, I would try to include living persons and sensitive data.
Delete your current tree in FTDNA
Upload the GEDCOM with today's date to FTDNA.
Delete the Reunion Family File and the GEDCOM you just created from your Desktop. This is the most important step, because the last thing you want to do is to build your family tree from the copy file (on your Desktop) vs. your usual everyday file. To re-load the correct file, in Reunion just go to File in the menu bar, select Open Recent, and choose the correct file (not the one with today's date : ).