Hi all -
This one is mainly for those of you that use (or are keen to use) Aeon Timeline to view and analyse your family trees / genealogy.
I have been researching my own family tree for a good few years now and have 800+ people in my tree. I manage and store all of this information using the macos app MacFamily Tree. I was eager though to visualise this same data in Aeon but the only file format that most family tree makers export is one called a ‘gedcom’ file. This file type is of very limited use and is really only used to transfer information from one family tree software/app to another.
There are some online scripts that allow for conversion of these files but the results are patchy and many require you to use the computer terminal etc. As such I created a brand new utility app called ‘Tree to CSV’ (for macos) that takes the pain out of this whole process and offers different csv export options - each packed with columns containing extracted and derived data:
- People (37 columns relating to each individual in the tree - with information about how they relate to other individuals)
- Events (23 columns relating to each event - Births, Deaths, Burials, Census entries etc…)
- Families (16 columns relating to marriages and children)
- Locations (3 columns to represent locations and their hierarchy)
An additional feature that tree2csv offers is the nomination of a root person - this then calculates a kekulé number to indicate direct lineage of the selected person and also allows each relevant blood relative to be tagged as being on the maternal or paternal side (useful to filter out data in other applications for focussed research).
These exported files can then be used in the likes of Excel or Numbers (or a database etc) to conduct some additional research. They can also be used to import your information into Aeon Timeline (using the Import CSV option). See below for some screenshots. This demo uses a publicly available gedcom file for the Kennedy family. All of these views (with the exception of the Family tree view) required zero intervention after importing the csv data to the template file.
If there are any Mac computer users here that have a family tree and would like to test out this whole process then let me know and I will pass on a code so that you can freely unlock my tree2csv app (max 10 people). I will also provide an Aeon template and instructions of how to get your family tree data added.