On September 23 someone tried to load their family tree six times, and Viewfore turned it away every time. The message said the server had rejected the file and asked if it was a valid GEDCOM, but the file was valid and the fault was in Viewfore.
What went wrong
A GEDCOM file is plain text, one line at a time. Somewhere in this file, a note held an invisible character called a vertical tab. Some genealogy programs use it to start a new line inside a note, the way you would press Enter.
The code that reads GEDCOM files does not allow that character. When it found one, it did not skip the note. It refused the whole file. A whole family tree was turned away because of one character nobody could see.
What we changed
Viewfore now replaces these characters with a space before it reads the file. A note that was split over several lines now reads as one. Everything else in the file is read exactly as before, and a file without these characters is not touched at all.
If a file still cannot be read, the message now says so plainly, says the problem has been logged, and gives an email address. It no longer suggests the file is broken.
What we log
Uploaded files are read and then thrown away. We do not keep them. When a file fails, we keep a short error record so we can find the cause. Until today, that record included the text of the line that failed, and that text can be a person's name. It now records only the line number and the type of error.
If your file was turned away
Please try it again. If it still does not load, email hello@viewfore.com and tell us which program the file came from. You do not need to send the file.