From Family Tree DNA's home page, under Autosomal DNA Results & Tool, click on "Chromosome Browser" to go to their Chromosome Browser page. From there, click on the link that is named: "Download All Segments" that is shown by the hand pointer circled in red below.
Click on the link once and wait. You should get a wait indication symbol in your browser indicating that FTDNA is processing your request. Now you have to be patient but it shouldn't take more than a few minutes. Unfortunately FTDNA does not provide any feedback about their processing until the file has been generated.
This will download a special file named: nnnnnn_Chromosome_Browser_Results_yyyymmdd.csv
where:
nnnnnn is your Family Tree DNA kit number,
yyyymmdd is the date of your download, and
.csv indicates this is a comma delimited file which can be read by Excel and other programs.
Do not rename the "nnnnn_Chromosome_Browser_Results" part of the segment match file names or change their ".csv" extension. DMT looks for that to find segment match files and will not accept files not following that structure. However, to help identify whose file it is, you may change the filename by adding the name of the person between the "Results" and the date, e.g:
nnnnnn_Chromosome_Browser_Results_JohnSmith_yyyymmdd.csv
DMT will then use "nnnnnn_JohnSmith" as part of the output file names so you can identify who the output files are for.
When loaded into Excel, the file can be seen to contain all the segment matches:
Column A (Match Name) is the person who matches. The file lists match names in alphabetical order, so blank names are first.
Column B (Chromosome), C (Start Location) and D (End Location) is the chromosome number with the start and end locations of the matching segment on that chromosome.
Columns E (Centimorgans) and F (Matching SNPs) is the distance in Centimorgans (cM) and number of SNPs for the matching segment.
Adding the Name of the Tester to cell G1
Important: In July 2021, Family Tree DNA changed the format of this file and removed the name of the tester which used to be in Column A before the Match Name. This is unfortunate, as now there is no way for Double Match Triangulator to know the name of the tester from the file itself.
As a result, you must now add the name of the tester into cell G1 to include this needed information.
Open the file with Excel, add the name of the tester into cell G1, and save the file.
Make sure you use the tester's name exactly as Family Tree DNA refers to it in other Chromosome Browser Results files. Make sure the capitalization, spaces, special characters and any punctuation is correct. The easiest way to ensure you have the tester's name correct is to find the tester in the Match Name column (column A) of someone else's Chromosome Browser Results file, and copy it into column G1 of the tester's Chromosome Browser Results file.
e.g.: If this is the name of the tester in someone else's Chromosome Browser Results file:
Then copy the name in cell A335 to cell G1 of that person's file and save the file:
If you still have older FTDNA files (prior to July 2021), don't add the name of the tester to cell G1, because the tester's name is already there in column A.
New Files versus Old Files
You may have a mix of new Chromosome Browser Results files (July 2021 or later) or old Chromosome Browser Results files (prior to July 2021). Double Match Triangulator will allow them to be used with each other.
However, Family Tree DNA also changed their matching algorithm, so their segment matches between any two people have changed.
Also remember, if someone tested after the old file was created, they will not be in that file.
Best practice would be to use old files with old files and new files with new files if possible.
