Is there a program that will allow me to convert Gedcom files to jpeg or pdf? Using a family history program (Family Tree Maker version 9) I have produced the Gedcom file but can't find a way to manipulate it for printing.
12 Answers
A GEDCOM file should be plain text, so you could open it in any text editor. If you are just looking to print it, that should be sufficient because you could edit it in Notepad, Word or any other text editor and then print from there. If you still need it in PDF format, open it in something like Microsoft Word 2007/2010 and save it as a PDF from there. Or find and download one of the myriad of free PDF printers out there and just print to the PDF writer from your favorite text editor.
Although the GEDCOM format is just structured plain text, it wasn't really designed with the intention of being printed from a text editor. That's not to say you can't, but the resulting output would be rather large, rather bland and not very useful.
The true value comes when you take that file and run it through software which can generate the family tree. Once you have that then you can use "print" and select PDF as the printer.
One possible option is ged2web () which is free.
