GEDCOM 5.5.1 vs 7.0: Key Differences, Media, and Portability

For more than twenty-five years, GEDCOM 5.5.1 has been the common language of genealogy software. Nearly every program — Ancestry, MyHeritage, RootsMagic, Gramps — reads and writes it to move family records from one tool to another.

In 2021, FamilySearch released GEDCOM 7.0, with a stricter text encoding and a way to bundle photos with the data. So how do the two versions actually differ? What happens to your photos and citations when you move a file? And why is 5.5.1 still the version you are most likely to be handed?

Key differences at a glance

| Feature | GEDCOM 5.5.1 (1999) | GEDCOM 7.0 (2021) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | Character encoding | ANSEL, ASCII, UTF-8, or UTF-16 | UTF-8 only | | Photos and media | References to files stored elsewhere | References, or an optional GEDZip package (.gdz) that bundles the files | | Adoption by software | Near-universal | Growing, still partial | | File | Plain text .ged | Plain text .ged, or .gdz with media |

1. Character encoding: why names get corrupted

The biggest practical problem with GEDCOM 5.5.1 is that it allowed several encodings:

• Older programs often exported in ANSEL or ASCII, which cannot hold most non-Latin characters. An ancestor named Müller became M?ller, and Arabic or Bengali names turned into strings of question marks.
• GEDCOM 7.0 allows UTF-8 only, so every script survives the trip.

Blaadline reads GEDCOM files as UTF-8, the encoding most current programs use. If names look garbled after an import, the file was probably saved in ANSEL by an older program: open it in the program that made it and export again as UTF-8.

2. Media and photos: .ged vs .gdz

A common surprise when exporting from Ancestry or MyHeritage is that the downloaded .ged file does not contain your photographs:

• In GEDCOM 5.5.1, a photo is recorded as a path to a file somewhere else (for example FILE C:\MyPhotos\portrait.jpg). Send the .ged file to another person or program and the photos stay behind.
• GEDCOM 7.0 adds GEDZip: a standard ZIP archive (.gdz) holding the GEDCOM data together with the media files it refers to.

GEDZip is the better archive, but many programs cannot open it yet. When moving a tree between programs today, a 5.5.1 file with the photos copied across by hand is still the most reliable route.

3. Portability: why 5.5.1 is still the standard in practice

Despite 7.0, GEDCOM 5.5.1 remains the version that almost every program can both read and write. Most exports you receive will be 5.5.1, and until import support for 7.0 is common, 5.5.1 is what keeps your family data from being tied to a single vendor.

How Blaadline handles your GEDCOM files

• Import and export, free: import a GEDCOM 5.5 or 5.5.1 file (UTF-8) to build an editable tree, and export your data back out as GEDCOM 5.5.1 at any time. GEDCOM 7.0 and GEDZip are not supported yet; if your program offers a choice, export 5.5.1.
• Read in your browser: the GEDCOM viewer parses the file inside your browser, so you can look at a file before deciding to save anything.
• Vector printing: turn the tree into a print-ready vector PDF that stays sharp at poster size.

Want to look inside a GEDCOM file right now? Use the GEDCOM viewer, or read the beginner guide on how to open a GEDCOM file.