How to Open a GEDCOM File (and What It Actually Contains)

If you have ever exported your research from a genealogy program, you have probably ended up with a file ending in .ged. That is a GEDCOM file, and it is the closest thing family history has to a shared language. Here is what it contains and how to open one.

What GEDCOM actually is

GEDCOM (short for GEnealogical Data COMmunication) is a plain-text format for storing family tree data. It was created so that different genealogy programs could share information — a tree built in one tool can be moved to another without retyping everything.

Inside a GEDCOM file you will find:

• Individuals — each person, with names, sex, and identifiers
• Events — births, marriages, deaths, with dates and places
• Families — the links between spouses and between parents and children
• Sources — notes on where each fact came from

It is just structured text, so you can technically open it in any text editor. But raw GEDCOM is hard to read — it looks like a list of numbered tags — which is why you almost always want to open it in something that draws it as a tree.

How to open a GEDCOM file

In your browser. The quickest option is a tool that reads the file and draws it as a chart. Blaadline's GEDCOM viewer opens GEDCOM 5.5 and 5.5.1 files: open the builder, choose your .ged file, and it builds the tree for you. There is nothing to install and no account needed to try it, and the file is read inside your browser. This is ideal if someone has sent you a file and you just want to see it.

In desktop software. Programs like Gramps (free and open source), RootsMagic, or Legacy Family Tree open GEDCOM files if you prefer working offline.

As raw text. If you only need to check a detail, opening the .ged file in Notepad or any text editor shows the underlying data. Useful for troubleshooting, not for reading a whole tree.

If names come out garbled — accented letters or non-Latin script turned into question marks — the file was probably saved in an older encoding. GEDCOM 5.5.1 vs 7.0 explains why, and the fix is usually to export it again as UTF-8.

Where GEDCOM files come from

Most genealogy programs can export one. Look for an "Export" or "Export tree" option and choose the GEDCOM (.ged) format. This works in:

• Ancestry
• MyHeritage
• Desktop programs such as RootsMagic, Legacy Family Tree, and Gramps
• Family Echo and most other online tree builders

One exception catches people out: FamilySearch's shared Family Tree has no direct GEDCOM download. To get your branch out of it, you need a desktop program that syncs with FamilySearch and can then export GEDCOM.

Because the format is shared, exporting and importing GEDCOM is also how you move between tools without losing work.

Import it and keep building

Opening a GEDCOM file to look at it is one thing; continuing to work on it is better. When you import a .ged file into Blaadline, it becomes an editable tree: add new relatives, fix connections, record remarriages and half-siblings, and then export a print-ready PDF. You can export it back out as GEDCOM at any time.

If you are starting fresh instead, our guide on how to make a family tree covers the whole process.