Your family tree on Ancestry is yours, and you can take it with you. The tree itself, every person, date, place and relationship, comes out as a single GEDCOM file in about a minute. This guide shows exactly where the button is, what arrives in the file, and the one thing that does not.
Export your tree, step by step
- Sign in at Ancestry and open the tree you want to export from the Trees menu.
- Click the tree name in the top left, then choose Tree Settings.
- On the Tree Settings page, find the Manage your tree section on the right.
- Click Export tree. Ancestry spends a few moments preparing the file; the button then changes to Download your GEDCOM file.
- Click it, and a
.gedfile saves to your computer. That single file is your whole tree.
That is the entire process. No fee, no waiting list, no permission needed. Keep the file somewhere safe; it is a complete, portable backup of years of work.
What is in the file
The GEDCOM holds the genealogy: every individual, their birth, marriage and death dates and places, how they connect as parents, children and spouses, and the notes you have written. Open it in any genealogy program and your family appears, connected, exactly as you built it.
What does not come with it
Two things stay behind, and it is better to know now than to be surprised later.
Photos and documents. A GEDCOM carries tree data, not image files. The portraits and scanned records you attached have to be downloaded separately, one by one or in batches, from each person's gallery. Do this before any subscription lapses, because access to your uploaded media can end with it.
Records and hints. The historical documents Ancestry surfaced through your subscription, the census images, the shaky-leaf hints, are licensed content, not your tree data, so they do not travel. What you keep is the structure and facts of your family, which is the part you actually built.
Where to take it next
Once you have the file, you have options Ancestry would rather you did not think about. You can keep a permanent backup. You can move to a service that does not charge a yearly subscription simply to keep looking at your own tree. Drop the GEDCOM into Dynasty House and your whole family renders in about five seconds, free for up to a hundred people, with one-click export whenever you like so you are never locked in again.
If the yearly bill is what is pushing you to export in the first place, we wrote an honest comparison: a free, honest Ancestry alternative. And whatever you choose, you now hold the one file that keeps your family history yours.