In this post, I will show how to upload a GEDCOM file to GEDmatch.
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) Sign in to GEDmatch.com and scroll about halfway down the page to the Profile section. At the lower left, click the Click here to upload a GEDCOM link.
2) On the Family Tree (GEDcom) Upload Page, enter the name for your GEDCOM file (examples are Dan Stone Family Tree, Dan Stone Ancestors, or Stone-Wright Family Tree). Next, select your kit number in the drop down box. Continuing down the page, if all four of your grandparents originate from the same area, enter that into the box, otherwise skip this box. Then, click the appropriate radio button as to whether you have permission to show the individuals in your tree. Next, click the Browse button to locate your GEDCOM file on your computer. Finally, once you’ve selected your GEDCOM file on your computer, click the green Upload button.
Congratulations, you have successfully uploaded your family tree to GEDmatch. 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.
In this post, I will show how to generate a GEDCOM file from an Ancestry.com Member Tree, since I’ve found many people don’t seem to be aware this feature exists.
Click here if you’d like to open the Ancestry.com website in a new window/tab to make it easier to follow along with these steps.
1) To download a GEDCOM file from an Ancestry.com Member Tree, select the family tree with the DNA test taker’s ancestral information from the Family Trees drop-down menu at the Ancestry.com website.
2) On the left of the page, click the three circles drop-down menu and select Tree Settings.
3) At the lower right, click the Export tree link.
4) Upon clicking the Export tree link, you will see a message saying Generating a GEDCOM file… along with a counter showing the percentage completed. After the counter reaches 100%, click the Download your GEDCOM file button that appears.
Clicking the Download your GEDCOM file button will begin downloading the file to your computer, saving it in your Downloads folder (or the folder you’ve designated for downloads in your Internet browser).
Congratulations, you have successfully downloaded your GEDCOM file! 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.
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.
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 6 below. Otherwise, click the JOIN FOR FREE button at the top right.
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 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 a page letting you know your registration is successful. Click on the Login button at the top right.
5) Login using your email address and password. You will be taken to a page with the GEDmatch Terms Of Service. At the bottom of the page is the option to accept the T Of Service, reject the Terms Of Service, or to decide later. Assuming you agree to the Terms Of Service, click Here in the Accept box.
6) Once logged in, on the GEDmatch home page, about halfway down on the right, is the option to Upload Your DNA. Click anywhere in this box.
7) You will be taken to the Upload utility for raw DNA files page. Click on the Browse button which 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. 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 the sex of the tester.
Continuing down the page, in the Name of Testing Company dropdown box, select Ancestry
Continuing down the page, leave the haplogroup boxes blank, for now, unless you are certain of what these are. Leaving them blank will have no impact on your GEDmatch comparisons. Under the Raw Data To GEDmatch section, select the appropriate option as to whether the file is your DNA, or the DNA of someone who granted you authorization to upload their DNA.
Continuing down the page, under the Privacy Options section, select either Opt In or Opt Out depending on your preference.
Continuing down the page, under the Upload File section, click in the box next to I’m not a robot and then click the Upload button.
After a brief bit of processing, you will be taken to a screen confirming your upload is complete and providing you with your kit number. 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!
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.
After they learn of the benefits of using the GEDmatch website, I am frequently told by my Ancestry DNA matches that they would like to use the GEDmatch tools, but are unsure how to get their Ancestry DNA test results to the GEDmatch site and how to interpret the data the site provides. The purpose of this post is to show, in easy to understand steps, how to get your Ancestry DNA test results downloaded to your computer so they can then be uploaded to the GEDmatch site. My next blog post will show how to take this downloaded file and get it properly uploaded to the GEDmatch site. Then, I will begin a series of posts showing how to start using the GEDmatch site and tools.
Prior to writing this post, I’ve been referring people to Roberta Estes’ blog post on how to download your Ancestry DNA test results. My purpose in creating my own post is not to take away from Roberta’s post, but to complement it with additional information, such as the corresponding step of uploading the file you’ve downloaded to the GEDmatch site. Roberta has done an excellent job of outlining the download steps, although Ancestry has subsequently made changes to some of the screens shown, which is another reason I wanted to offer an updated version of the steps involved. Roberta’s blog is one that I highly recommend you take a look at as you continue to learn more about using DNA testing in your genealogy research.
Click here if you’d like to open the Ancestry.com website in a new window/tab to make it easier to follow along with these steps.
1) The first step to downloading your Ancestry DNA test results is to sign in to the Ancestry.com website. After signing in to your Ancestry.com account, go to the DNA dropdown menu at the top of the page and click on Your Results Summary.
2) On the next page page, click on the Settings box at the top right.
3) On the next page, scroll to the bottom and click on Download DNA data.
4) On the next page, click in the box next to “I understand that after I download my DNA Data…” and then click Continue.
5) Verify your account either by receiving a code via email or by entering your Ancestry password. Ancestry will then email you instructions for how to download your DNA data file. This email may take up to 24 hours to show up in your inbox, although it usually only takes a few minutes.
6) Once you receive the email, click the Download DNA Data button.
7) Ancestry.com will open in your browser and give you a Download DNA Data button. When you click on this button, you should have the option to determine where on your computer you want to save the downloaded file. I would suggest saving it on your desktop to make it easy to find.
The downloaded file will be in a zipped (compressed) archive format, which ends with the .zip extension. While you can unzip the zipped archive file, and then open the file in a word processor or text editor if you would like to see what it looks like, you need to keep a copy of the zipped archive as this is the file format the GEDmatch site uses.
Note to Macintosh users: When downloading a zipped archive folder on the Macintosh, the resulting file is usually automatically unzipped, placing the unzipped file in your downloads folder and the zipped archive file in the Trash. In these cases, you need to retrieve the zipped archive file from the Trash and move it to a different folder (the Download folder or Documents folder are good choices) in order to upload the file to the GEDmatch website.
Congratulations, you have successfully downloaded your Ancestry DNA test results file! 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. Next, we’ll upload our file to GEDmatch so we can begin making DNA comparisons. Thanks for reading.
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I have not posted any new Genome Mate step by step guides for a few months now. The reason for this is that a new version of Genome Mate is in the process of being created. The new version is being called Genome Mate Pro, and Becky (the programmer) has been posting screenshots and teasers on the Genome Mate Facebook page. I have gotten to see a preview version of Genome Mate Pro within this past week, and I think all current users will be very pleased with this upgrade. A manual is also being written for this new version, which may eliminate the need for further step by step guides. If not, I will focus on creating guides for items not covered in the manual, or for which additional instructions may be beneficial. Testing of Genome Mate Pro is currently underway, and if you have made a PayPal donation you are eligible to participate in the testing. If you wish to do so, more information about joining the test group is listed on the Facebook page. If you are not yet a project donor, participating in this testing process would be a great reason to become one.
I was contacted late last week by a lady who came upon my family history website while searching for the person who had been a big brother to her younger brother, through the Big Brothers and Big Sisters program, back in the late 1980s. The name of a distant relative happened to be the same name as the person she was searching for, and she wondered if it might happen to be the same person. This distant relative had passed away on January 1, 1990.
As she conveyed to me “I recall Douglas was very generous with my brother. One beautiful offering to my brother was a bicycle at Christmastime. There was so much more than material things that he gave me brother. Without someone like Douglas in my brother’s life, my brother would never have reached his highest achievements, of which he has today. I hope this is the same person, so that my brother can give thanks to he and/or his family (members). My brother only mentioned this brother to me last week and I began the search. My brother had tried to search for his big brother, to no avail. I hope to surprise him with good news.”
Fortunately, I happen to do some volunteer work each Friday with the aunt of this distant relative, and he was the son of her husband’s brother. While discussing this with her, I was reminded that this distant relative’s sister had happened to find my website a couple years ago, while doing some family history research of her own, and we had exchanged a few emails at that time. Yesterday, I was able to make contact with the sister, after an initial failed attempt due to a changed email address in the intervening years. It turns out this distant relative was indeed the same Douglas that had been the big brother to this thirteen year old boy all those years ago. Douglas’ sister let me know she was happy to reply to the lady who had contacted me, and in her reply shared more about the wonderful person her brother was, and all the lives he touched before his passing. The lady who initially contacted me, as well as her brother, have both been very touched by the sister’s reply, and in turn shared how thankful they are to be able to make contact with a family member of Douglas and relay to his family the story of the difference Douglas made in this young boy’s life.
How very humbling that they were able to make this connection through the family history information I posted to my site. No greater justification for having a family history website, and sharing one’s family history with others, is needed than this very touching story they’ve been kind enough to share.
As explained in my earlier post, Using Genome Mate (Identify triangulated groups and confirm segments), we now have an understanding of the basic principals of triangulating DNA segments, and know how to manually go through our match data and identify triangulated groups. In this post, I will show how to use the GEDmatch Triangulation tool to automatically identify the triangulated segments you share with your 400 closest matches at GEDmatch and then easily import the triangulated segment results from GEDmatch into Genome Mate.
In following the steps that have been previously outlined, we now know how to identify triangulated groups and confirm the segments within a triangulated group. This post will show the steps to add these triangulated segments to our chromosome map.
In following the steps that have been previously outlined, we now have imported a sizable amount of data from GEDmatch into Genome Mate. This post will show how to begin working with this data to identify groups of triangulated segments. The process of identifying triangulated groups can be very time consuming, and like genealogy itself, is something that is never ending. The concepts of identifying triangulated groups are fairly simple to grasp, but there is no shortcut to taking the necessary time to work through and analyze your DNA data. As one leading genetic genealogist, Dr. Blaine Bettinger (http://www.thegeneticgenealogist.com), summed it up so accurately, “Finding genetic matches is easy, but finding the common ancestor from whom we inherited a segment [of] DNA is very hard.”
The steps we have used to import GEDmatch segment data into Genome Mate have not imported the email addresses of our matches from GEDmatch. Importing these email addresses is done as a separate import. This post will show the email address import process, step by step. It’s also a good idea to use this same import process from time to time to update the email addresses of your imported matches in Genome Mate, in case someone has changed the email address associated with their kit at GEDmatch.
Adventures In Genealogy Research: No Stone Unturned/The Wright Stuff 