Sync with Familysearch questions

[Urchello]

Regarding the problems:

1. I have a local Gramps Database and a remote Familysearch tree. The FS tree is created by other people, not by me. I manually transferred remote persons from FS into my local database. I looked for a way to automate imports from FS into Gramps but found nothing. The lack of such a tool was confirmed by this post: link to the post. In principle, I am no longer very interested in the problem of automatic import because I have already done the manual import. And mass import is somewhat intimidating as I’m not sure if the data is imported correctly. Plus, there’s the need to somehow merge duplicates and combine one branch with another. I would appreciate your approaches and experiments with imports, how you do it, and what problems you encounter.

2. The next problem arose later when I set a goal to regularly synchronize changes from my local database that other users made on FS. I had to open each person and add them to “Following” to see changes. But I’m still not sure if I missed someone and I’m not tracking them on FS. Is there a way to check and add missing “Followings”? How do you track changes? Please share your ideas.

3. The next question is the need to link persons from the local database with persons from FS. I couldn’t think of a better solution than adding a new web address with a link to the personal page of the same person on FS to each person on the “Internet” tab. Now, at least, I can easily find these persons on FS. Previously, this took a lot of time. I find it strange that there is no tree search on FS. There is a search by ID or a general search across the entire database. So I had to go to a known person in the FS tree and then navigate through the tree to reach the target person. Saving the web address solved this problem. But I’m curious how others solve this issue. Please share your experiences.

4. Finally, I tried to use two programs that @ennoborg mentioned here: RootsMagic and Ancestral Quest. I want to understand if they can help in comparing two exports (one from the local database and the other from FS) to see if there are new persons in the FS database or changes in birth and death dates, for example. However, it seems that the comparison in RootsMagic is paid, so Ancestral Quest remains the only option. But maybe this program can be used in a different way. Merging both exports in it and then, through this program, making exports of individual persons (or entire branches) from Ancestral Quest to FS. This way, it might be possible to perform a controlled and relatively quick export of persons from Gramps to FS. I’m also interested in your ideas and thoughts on this approach.

In general, with this post, I would like to hear the opinions of both Gramps specialists and developers and users. How do you address these and related issues regarding data synchronization between Gramps and FS? Maybe someone has tried other synchronization tools and succeeded or encountered issues.

Thank you to everyone who participates in the discussion.

[anon9092048]

A FamilySearch Gramplet - https://github.com/jmichault/PersonFS exist also.

[Urchello]

Thanks a lot! Will it work on ubuntu?

[Urchello]

@anon9092048 is it possible merge attach people directly from this page? I see unattached spouse and unattached child. This is unreal use Search, it doesnt find persons which i need, maybe Cirillyc is the reason.

[ennoborg]

I use RootsMagic a lot, next to Gramps, because it works well in Linux, under Wine 7, and Ancestral Quest shows some blank windows in Wine, so I need to run that in Windows, in a VM, or by rebooting to Windows 11.

Comparing exports is a lot of work, and since automatic merges are a paid feature in RM, and don’t work in Gramps either, my process is always to export a tree from Gramps, and then let RM look for new information on FS, and that feature is free.

I must add that I don’t use that feature very much, but often just navigate to an existing person to see if there is anything new, and then to a selective download, marking new data that I trust, or adding a few generations to a dead end. Adding many generations in RM is quite slow, so in that case I do switch to Windows for Ancestral Quest. That program also has the advantage that it offers a choice to download normalized place names, so that I get those in English, and not in whatever language that the FS user liked.

Both programs don’t download sources automatically, which is not always nice, so for that the PersonFS Gramplet may be a better idea. There is also an independent Python program that can download large trees from FS, with notes and sources:

GitHub - Linekio/getmyancestors: Get GEDCOM files from FamilySearch.org

This latter program is very fast, even when you try to download 20 generations, and where RM sometimes crashed during such a download, getmyancestors never did. It may be difficult to install in Windows though.

The PersonFS Gramplet is very powerful, I removed it, because I found it a bit too invasive, and because it often missed the fact that a person already exists on FS. And if you add such a person then, other users will be confronted with duplicates, while you will often have no idea about that. RM does a much better check, but takes more time, because you always need to use a GEDCOM file as your transport medium.

So for me, the normal procedure is to use AQ, getmyancestor, or RM to do the FS work, and then import a GEDCOM file from either program into a new tree in Gramps, which I can then check for duplicates, and from which I make a selective export in Gramps XML for inclusion in my main tree.

When I use RM, I often let that search for duplicates before exporting, because there are quite a lot of duplicates on FS, and the RM duplicate finder is very fast and smarter than the one in Gramps. The one in AQ is pretty dumb, so I try to avoid that. I call the one in RM smarter than the one in Gramps, because it recognizes equal dates and places, so that it will never give you duplicate facts or events, unless they are different. Gramps always gives you duplicate events, even if the date and place are the same.

Exports from RM can be a pain if you don’t switch off RM’s extensions, but if you do, the GEDCOM file is pretty clean. The one from AQ is clean too, if you export in PAF format.

[Urchello]

@anon9092048 I tried to use this addon. The idea is beautiful, but I think that this addon need some updates to be used. I’ve reported several tasks directly on Github bug-tracker. But anyway, thank you a lot!