How To Upload Your Ancestry DNA Test Results To GEDmatch

The previous article in this series is How To Download Your Ancestry DNA Test Results.

Now that you’ve successfully downloaded your Ancestry DNA test results file, this file needs to be uploaded to the GEDmatch website (http://www.gedmatch.com). The purpose of this post is to show, in easy to understand steps, how to take the test results file you downloaded to your computer and upload it to the GEDmatch site. My next blog post will be the first of several posts I have planned in which I will begin explaining how to start using the GEDmatch site and tools.

Click here if you’d like to open the GEDmatch website in a new window/tab to make it easier to follow along with these steps.

1) When you go to the GEDmatch site, you will see a page which allows you to log in with your existing account information, or to register for an account. If you have already registered for an account, please sign in, and then jump ahead to step 4 below. Otherwise, click the link next to where it says Not Registered?

2) On the User Registration page, you need to enter your first and last name, your email address (twice), and password of choice (twice), into the corresponding boxes. The name entered here is what will become your GEDmatch Log-in Profile, and is not the name which will be displayed to people you match, or on results pages. For extra privacy, however, you can enter an alias into the Optional Alias box, if you wish. Once you’ve completed entering your information in the boxes, click on the Register button.

3) Upon clicking the Register button, you will be be taken to a screen letting you know that a ‘Registration Confirmation Code’ has been emailed to you. You need to keep your Internet browser running, and on this page, until you receive the email with the code. If you accidentally close this page, you will need to start the registration process over from step 1 above. Once you receive your code, enter it into the box and click on the Confirm button.

4) Upon clicking the Confirm button, you will be taken to the GEDmatch home page. There are several options that can be clicked on this page, and these will be explained in upcoming posts. For now, click on the Ancestry.com link in the white Autosomal Raw DNA box inside the light blue File Uploads box in the upper right of the page.

5) You will be taken to the Upload utility for Ancestry.com raw DNA files page. In the Name of Donor box, enter the name/username that your DNA test is listed under on Ancestry DNA. It is important to match the Ancestry DNA name/username exactly, including capitalization, initials, periods, etc. for the GEDmatch tools to work properly. If you are not comfortable having your Ancestry name/username displayed with people you match on GEDmatch, or displayed on GEDmatch search results pages, enter what you would like to be displayed in place of your name into the Alias box. Many people use initials, and/or add the phrase “(administered by)” when managing the test results of a relative. For example, my mother’s test displays as S. M. W. (administered by Dan Stone), although this also happens to match how her test is displayed on Ancestry DNA since I manage her test there.

Select whether the tester is a male or female, and select yes to acknowledge you wish to allow comparisons to be made with your test. Leave the Mitochondrial haplogroup and Y haplogroup boxes blank, for now, unless you are certain of what these are. Leaving them blank will have no impact on your GEDmatch comparisons. Next, click on the Choose File button at the lower left of the page. Doing so will open up a dialog box allowing you to navigate to where the Ancestry DNA test results zipped archive file is located on your computer. This is the file that you downloaded following the steps shown in my last post. In order to be sure you have selected the correct file, check that it has .zip at the end. Once you have selected your file, click the Upload button.

6) After clicking the Upload button, you will get a new page which says “Processing Chromosomes. Please wait…” at the bottom.

The chromosome numbers will begin counting from 1 to 21, and then X, Y and X again, before displaying “Please wait for conversion to Build 36…” This will take a few minutes to complete. It is very important to let this process finish, and not interrupt it by clicking the stop or refresh buttons on your browser, closing your browser, or navigating to another page in your browser. If you do happen to interrupt this process, open a new browser window or restart your Internet browser, log in to the GEDmatch page (http://www.gedmatch.com), and go back to step 4 above.

7) You will know the process has successfully completed when it states “Upload Complete” and gives you an Assigned kit number towards the bottom of the page. Keep a record of this kit number, as you will use it to do your comparisons as well as to use the other tools at GEDmatch.

Congratulations, you have successfully uploaded your Ancestry DNA test results file to GEDmatch! As stated at the bottom of the page, your uploaded file now needs to go through several weeks of processing to fully utilize all the tools GEDmatch offers. In the meantime, within just a few minutes of completing the upload of your file, your file will be available for people to do direct comparisons (called ‘One-to-one compare’) between their test and yours. How to go about doing One-to-one comparisons on GEDmatch will be the subject of my next post. Look for me to have this posted within the next several days. If you experience any problems while following these steps, or notice that a screen has changed from what I’ve shown in the screenshots, please let me know by commenting on this thread or sending me an email. Thanks for reading.

This article last updated 7 Oct 2014