splitting a profile

[+rmwhittal]

Hi, me and my wife have a profile together, we are getting divorced, is there anyway to split the profile, if we both want to continue Geocaching?

[+GopherGreg]

Hi, me and my wife have a profile together, we are getting divorced, is there anyway to split the profile, if we both want to continue Geocaching?

 

The only way I know of is to re-log all you finds with the new acocunt. I've seen many users do that before.

 

However, you have over 1,000 finds, so that might be hard to do... Maybe there's something in the Groundspeak Guidelines about it?

[+Walts Hunting]

We need more info. Are you talking about each of you getting credit or some are both and some are individual. The word split would indicate you are splitting them up into his and hers.

[+dprovan]

My advice is to forget the past and have one or both of you just start over. Among other advantages, this allows you to revisit and enjoy again the caches you visited in your past life, perhaps with a new partner.

[Keystone]

First and foremost, sorry you're going through that. Been there, done that. I am glad that both parties want to continue geocaching. Going out in the woods for a hike and a cache search is a great escape from the stresses of a divorce. It's what got me hooked on this game 12 years ago.

 

There is no way to split apart a single profile. One of you will need to create a new profile, and the other person will want to rename the existing profile (and change the profile photo of the happy couple). The steps to take using the Geocaching.com website are as follows:

 

1. Login under the old profile and go to the profile page listing all of that profile's geocache finds. You will see there's a hyperlink for each cache page and for the log on that cache page.

 

2. Launch each cache log in a separate browser tab. Then, login under the NEW account name (but keep that first browser tab open, with the old account name's list of finds). Read the log to prompt your memory. If the owner of the new account found the particular cache (on their own or with the spouse) then log a new find using the date of the existing log. Include text explaining what happened so that the cache owner doesn't delete the new, late log as bogus. Sample text: "I am relogging this find at a later date because I have my own separate account now. Previously this find was logged with [OTHER ACCOUNT NAME].

 

3. Repeat this process for every other cache in the old profile name - the site will remember that you're logged in under the new account name each time you launch a cache page or log page into a new browser tab. When I did this for about 500 finds, it took less than a full evening. At the end of this process, the new account name has a full record of found it logs for caches that person found.

 

4. If the spouse who retains the original account did NOT participate in a cache find logged for the (formerly) joint account by the other spouse, then this "found it" log can be deleted.

 

5. Cache hides, travel bugs and geocoins that "belong" to the spouse with the "new" account can be transferred using the cache adoption tool, which also works for adopting trackables.

 

6. The spouse retaining the former joint account may wish to change the name of that account. That process is explained here.

 

NOTE: If the spouse with the "new" account is a GSAK user and a premium member, there is an option to simplify the re-logging process through the mass logging tools provided by the Geocaching API. Use an "All Finds" query for the old account and filter out any caches that the new account isn't going to log a find for. (The user flag feature would work fine for this.) Submit logs en masse for each cache that isn't filtered out.

 

At the end of the process, each spouse should choose a password for their account that is not known by the other spouse. Prior to completion of the process, some cooperation will be required. Good luck!

Edited January 15, 2014 by Keystone

[+B-a-r-e-f-e-e-t]

Thank you for this great information. As this was originally posted a couple years ago and last edited in early 2014, is the process still the same? Have there been any changes in the possibility of splitting a profile or is it still a one-by-one process?

 

Many thanks!

 

B-a-r-e-f-e-e-t

[+Walts Hunting]

Actually there is a much simpler way. Get a new GS account. Get GSAK. Download the old My Finds PQ. Go to Geocaching.com Access at the top. Publish Logs. Fetch from Filter even though there is none. Change the found log template to something like "This is a log from a account split that I logged under another name" Then reapply templates and it will change them to what you put in. Then Publish and get a coffee.

 

You could ask more over at the GSAK forums. They will probably recommend a macro or two that will help

Edited October 13, 2016 by Walts Hunting

[Keystone]

Actually there is a much simpler way. Get a new GS account. Get GSAK. Download the old My Finds PQ. Go to Geocaching.com Access at the top. Publish Logs. Fetch from Filter even though there is none. Change the found log template to something like "This is a log from a account split that I logged under another name" Then reapply templates and it will change them to what you put in. Then Publish and get a coffee.

 

You could ask more over at the GSAK forums. They will probably recommend a macro or two that will help

Right, and my 2014 response noted that in the penultimate paragraph that begins with "NOTE." But not everyone is an advanced GSAK user, so I also gave the old fashioned manual method instructions. Both the manual and GSAK method instructions remain valid in 2016.

[+B-a-r-e-f-e-e-t]

Actually there is a much simpler way. Get a new GS account. Get GSAK. Download the old My Finds PQ. Go to Geocaching.com Access at the top. Publish Logs. Fetch from Filter even though there is none. Change the found log template to something like "This is a log from a account split that I logged under another name" Then reapply templates and it will change them to what you put in. Then Publish and get a coffee.

 

You could ask more over at the GSAK forums. They will probably recommend a macro or two that will help

Right, and my 2014 response noted that in the penultimate paragraph that begins with "NOTE." But not everyone is an advanced GSAK user, so I also gave the old fashioned manual method instructions. Both the manual and GSAK method instructions remain valid in 2016.

 

You are both awesome - thank you for the information and your time!

 

B-a-r-e-f-e-e-t

[+Walts Hunting]

Actually there is a much simpler way. Get a new GS account. Get GSAK. Download the old My Finds PQ. Go to Geocaching.com Access at the top. Publish Logs. Fetch from Filter even though there is none. Change the found log template to something like "This is a log from a account split that I logged under another name" Then reapply templates and it will change them to what you put in. Then Publish and get a coffee.

 

You could ask more over at the GSAK forums. They will probably recommend a macro or two that will help

Right, and my 2014 response noted that in the penultimate paragraph that begins with "NOTE." But not everyone is an advanced GSAK user, so I also gave the old fashioned manual method instructions. Both the manual and GSAK method instructions remain valid in 2016.

You are right I didn't read your whole post, sorry for that. Since the topic was so old I got careless. Not reading through the responses on a small topic is one of my complaints about others and now I did it. Sorry.

[Keystone]

No worries. In your defense, my post was an awfully long tl;dr. Over in the reviewers' forum it's kind of a standing joke about Keystone's long-winded posts.

 

The important thing is, we were both able to help B-a-r-e-f-e-e-t and that's what matters!

[+Moore4us2]

Just a note to say thanks for this guidance - everything still works in 2020.

 

We've just split out from the family account as Moore4us Jr heads to Uni.  Advice - start with a small batch and make sure they're going OK - it did 300 of mine before I realized I'd missed the step "re-apply templates" and we were logging blanks. We used all the advanced filtering to pick and choose (omit) a few of those we'd actually quite like to go back to an re-explore. GSAK is very powerful and will reward a little time spent working out how it behaves. 

 

Beware a couple of gotchas: 

• GSAK will initially warn that you're duplicating logs - that's because the downloaded GPX file says "logged", but that's against the old account. So OK to ignore as you're going to publish to a new account. 
• Make sure the new account is premium if the old was
• It can do favorite points. I didn't - but first you need to earn them! So perhaps log a 1,000 caches that don't warrant FPs, then you can start allocating FPs from then on. 
• A small number of caches are locked - for obvious reasons. The publish will fail (cleanly) but with an alarming error about unauthorized. Again - OK to acknowledge, but bear in mind it will stop the publish process until you do, so don't walk too far for that coffee if you want them to get done. 
• GSAK is very good, but just every now and again crashes. If that's mid publish - don't panic - it knows exactly where it's got to - go back to the publish step and just don't do the fetch step - you will have the last fetch remembered with just those it still needs to do. You might just lose the one cache it crashed on. Advice : quit GSAK cleanly and restart just to force the database write - just in case.

[+IceColdUK]

5 hours ago, Moore4us2 said:

We've just split out from the family account as Moore4us Jr heads to Uni.

You nearly crashed my mail server!  Tbh, I was quite excited at first - all those new finds on my caches! ?

 

Good luck to your son at uni.

 

5 hours ago, Moore4us2 said:

Make sure the new account is premium if the old was

I use GSAK to log caches for my account and my other half’s - I’m premium, she isn’t.  It works fine, even with PMO caches.