Julia,

John’s advice is essentially correct.

The FHUG Knowledge Base has advice in Exporting a Family Tree with/without Media:

https://www.fhug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=how_to:exporting_gedcom_with_multimedia

Especially see under Export to Website Without Sensitive Data that focusses on Ancestry.

The FHUG Knowledge Base has advice on the Export Gedcom File Plugin:

https://www.fhug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=plugins:help:export_gedcom_file:export_gedcom_file

The Ancestry option is explained in:

https://www.fhug.org.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=plugins:help:export_gedcom_file:anc_ancestry_family_tree

The reason you are getting the error is that FH uses the Unicode UTF16 character encoding internally.

That is recognised by most products, so needs to be the UTF8 character encoding.

That is an option in FH but there are also other GEDCOM adjustments that are needed for Ancestry.

Regards, Mike Tate

Julia

Did you use the “Export Gedcom File” plug-in in the plug-in store?
https://www.family-historian.co.uk/pluginstore/plugin-entry?id=522

Regards
John Hanson - researching the Halstead/Holstead/Alstead names
Researcher, the Halsted Trust - https://www.halsted.org.uk
Research website - https://www.halstedresearch.org.uk

From: family-historian@groups.io <family-historian@groups.io> On Behalf Of Julia Vokes
Sent: 29 January 2020 12:25
To: family-historian@groups.io
Subject: [family-historian] Exporting gedcom file

hello
i’ve recently done a DNA test with Ancestry and want to export part of my family tree to Ancestry to try and find some cousins.  I’ve followed the FH instructions, made a copy, removed all sources and notes, leaving the very bare bones of the tree, but when I try to upload it I get a reply ‘not a valid GEDCOM file’.
can anyone please help me or let me know what I should be doing?
thanks in advance

regards
Julia