Ancestry.com is a great service. They make searching for and accessing records about our relatives very simple. They also have a very nice online family tree management system, but even if you maintain one or more family trees on Ancestry.com, you’ll probably want to get that data onto your Mac. If you don’t have an Ancestry subscription, click here to try Ancestry.com FREE with a 14-Day Free Trial.
The good news is that the service supports exporting in a standard format called GEDCOM. The bad news is that while they’ve made it relatively simple to do, the functionality is sort of buried in the site. In this video, How to Download Your Ancestry.com Family Tree for Use in Your Mac Genealogy Software, I show you where it is and how to use it to get the genealogy information you’ve captured in Ancestry.com onto your Mac.
Subscribed for my sister. (MM Collins) Hunted for a review of a Mac but could not find one. Am trying to convince to purchase a Mac. Would you send me your review of a MacIntosh. Thank you.
Ben, what are your thoughts on maintaining your “main” family history research on Ancestry.com (or some other online service) and regularly downloading the GEDCOM as a way of backing up your data? Thanks in advance…
Thank you, this is a great video on how to download from Ancestry to a Mac. I’m not a computer geek and this was just what I needed.
Thank you so much for your screen casts. As a new user to Reunion, I have been so excited since finding your site. I’m working my way through all of your tips. — My genealogy research is so much easier now that I have your help.
Thanks.
You’re welcome Bert. Be sure to check out the new site, GenealogyTools.com.
Thanks so much. I built my file in Reunion and exported to Ancestry.com but now think it will be easier to keep making changes in Ancestry but didn’t know how to get updated version back in Reunion. I like using Ancestry because others have done research on my family and it’s so easy to include in my tree.
Thank you so much! I have watched multiple tutorials and read multiple how-tos, but yours is the first that clearly, concisely explains this process. I have one question for you: Is it possible to export a family tree as a gedcom directly from Ancestry.com to an excel sheet, without the use of genealogy software?