Correcting errors in GEDCOM files

[Jeff89]

I have a 15 Meg GEDCOM file that is filled with errors like these:

5 CONthere appears to be some error in the recording of Rispy Overba

and

5 CONC y M oore's dat e of birth. The "Foot prints" ce metery book give bot
5 CONC h the b irth and the dea th dates as 23 Feb. 1910. Th e Overbay boo

I've been using the search and replace feature of Mariner Write, which works very well, but this is a huge file (over 30,000 people) and I wondered if anyone had any ideas on how to make this a bit easier. Also, just out of curiosity, does anyone know why a GEDCOM export file would have these kinds of errors?

Thanks!

Jeff

[theKiwi]

Re: Correcting errors in GEDCOM files

I've seen errors like this in GEDCOM files myself in the past - I don't remember the situation that causes this - whether it's a particular software export routine or is more widespread, but it's not uncommon.

But I don't know of an easy way to fix it :-(

Roger

[Dennis J. Cunniff]

Re: Correcting errors in GEDCOM files

I have a 15 Meg GEDCOM file that is filled with errors like these:

5 CONthere appears to be some error in the recording of Rispy Overba

and

5 CONC y M oore's dat e of birth. The "Foot prints" ce metery book give bot
5 CONC h the b irth and the dea th dates as 23 Feb. 1910. Th e Overbay boo

I've been using the search and replace feature of Mariner Write, which works very well, but this is a huge file (over 30,000 people) and I wondered if anyone had any ideas on how to make this a bit easier. Also, just out of curiosity, does anyone know why a GEDCOM export file would have these kinds of errors?

In my experience, the insertion of single blank spaces where they don't belong, or the loss of single space characters in notes, arises from different genealogy programs interpreting "CONT" and "CONC" tags differently (one program interpreting as 'concatenate' where no spaces are added or subtracted, and others as 'continuation', where a space is added, with varying treatment of carriage return characters). So if a GEDCOM has gone back and forth between various programs, spaces may be missing as well as added in notes.

I can't give any hints on an easy way to proceed, though one way (not easy) would be to spell check and appropriately edit the GEDCOM.

[Jeff89]

Re: Correcting errors in GEDCOM files

Well, I've been working steadily on correcting these errors, but now I've noticed something else, which may be more serious: on the Family View, I can see the parents of the person in question, but not the children, even though they exist. I'll make this the subject of another post, though. Thanks for responding to my question - it looks like I need to solve this link issue before I go too much further, though!

[donworth]

Re: Correcting errors in GEDCOM files

I went through this with my conversion from Windows GENERATIONS (Sierra Online) to Family Tree Maker. And it was the CONT vs CONC thing I suspect.

I ended up writing a BASIC program to scan the GED for the problems and correct them.

Now that I'm on a Mac, I'm writing AppleScripts to fix GED files with odd things in them. Nothing ever changes...

:-)