To open a database, either choose File → Open or click the Open button on the Toolbar. The Open database dialog will appear and you'll see a list of files. If you don't see the file you're looking for, make sure the All files filter is selected. (This dialog has a "filetype" filter, meaning it may only be showing files that have a certain extension.)

To open a recently accessed database, choose either File → Open Recent or the down arrow next to the Open button and select the filename from the list.

If you do not have "write permissions" for the selected database, it will be opened in a Read Only mode. In this mode, the data may be viewed, but no changes will be made to the database. To indicate this mode, the title of the main window will be appended with (Read Only) text.

GRAMPS allows you to open certain databases that have not been saved in GRAMPS' own file format. These include XML and GEDCOM databases. But you should be aware that if the XML or GEDCOM database is relatively large, you may encounter some performance problems. These can be avoided by creating a new GRAMPS database and importing your XML/GEDCOM data into it.

	Opening XML and GEDCOM databases
	XML and GEDCOM databases require all data to be held in memory. GRAMPS' native grdb format does not. Thus, a database with a grdb format can access data quicker and more efficiently.

	GEDCOM Editing
	Please keep in mind that some information in a GEDCOM file may be lost during import into GRAMPS. Simply opening and viewing the file will not change it. However, if any changes were made and they were not abandoned upon exit, exiting GRAMPS will save the data, with possible data loss.