Reunion (Mac): GEDCOM 7.0 Compatibility Status

Reunion is one of the longest-running genealogy programs built specifically for the Mac, and its GEDCOM version support has a real, documented history worth knowing before you assume your export is using the format version you expect.

GEDCOM 7.0 arrived in Reunion 14

Leister Productions' own new-features documentation for Reunion 14, released in 2024, lists GEDCOM 7.0 and GEDZIP support among the release's additions. That means the current major version can both produce and read GEDCOM 7.0 files, including GEDZIP's bundled media packaging — but versions before 14 do not. If you're running an earlier Reunion release and exporting a file expecting GEDCOM 7.0 features like structured citations or bundled media, you'll get an older-format export instead, since the feature simply wasn't present prior to version 14. Reunion 14 requires macOS 10.12 (Sierra) or later, which matters if you're on an older Mac that can't run the current version at all.

Leister Productions' public documentation for this release is fairly minimal beyond the headline feature listing — it confirms the addition without much detail on the technical specifics of the implementation. For the general difference between GEDCOM versions and why 7.0 matters, see Does My Software Support GEDCOM 7.0?.

Older versions had compliance issues even with 5.5.1

Before GEDCOM 7.0 support existed at all, Reunion had a documented reputation problem with the version it did claim to support. An independent 2016 test (updated 2021) of 14 desktop and web genealogy apps found Reunion 11 among seven that failed to correctly export GEDCOM 5.5.1 — either missing 5.5.1-only features like structured multimedia records outright, or using them in a file still labelled with an older version number, which the same test flagged as apps effectively mislabeling their own exports. If you're working with a file exported from an older Reunion version and running into structural oddities when importing it elsewhere, this history — not just the file itself — may be part of why.

What this means practically

If GEDCOM 7.0 compatibility matters for your workflow — say, you're moving data to or from a platform or program that expects it — confirming you're on Reunion 14 or later is the first thing to check, since it's a hard version cutoff rather than a setting you can enable on an older release. If you're on an older version and can't upgrade, plan for a GEDCOM 5.5.1-era export instead, and budget time to verify the output manually given the compliance history above rather than assuming it's fully spec-conformant.

This matters more than a version number might suggest, because GEDCOM 7.0 and 5.5.1 aren't just cosmetically different — 7.0 introduces structured, machine-readable source citations and GEDZIP's ability to bundle media files inside the same package as the data, rather than as loose external references. A Reunion export made before version 14 can't produce either of those structures, so a receiving program built around GEDCOM 7.0 features will see a functional but flatter file: sources present as plain text rather than structured citations, and media handled as separate file references instead of a single portable package.

Checking what you actually got

Whichever version of Reunion produced your file, running it through the Validator before sharing or uploading it is a fast way to confirm the export is structurally sound — dangling references, one-way family links, and contradictory dates are checked regardless of which GEDCOM version the file claims to be.

Sources: Leister Productions — New Features in Reunion 14; GenealogySoftware.net — Reunion 14 Released; GenealogyTools.com — Why All Genealogy Apps Should Support GEDCOM 5.5.1 (archived; the original domain is no longer live).