pgn merger

How large are your pgn files? Millions of games, or smaller?

Also, will you need to edit the pgn files, or just view them?

The reason I asked is that if the pgn files are huge (millions of games), it will take a chess database program a long time to open the pgn file. However, if it's just your own games, then this isn't an issue, and almost any decent database program will do.

You might want to first try ChessX. I haven't tried ChessX yet, but it supposedly works well with pgn files. I'm assuming it will merge pgn files.

I prefer to use Scid vs. PC. It can read pgn files, and it can also add one pgn file to another pgn file. However, it CANNOT edit a multi-game pgn file. (In that case, you'd have to convert the pgn file to Scid format; Scid formatted files read much faster than pgn files.)

Scid is another option that's similar to Scid vs. PC. There may be a few other options.

http://chessx.sourceforge.net/

http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/

http://scid.sourceforge.net/

PGN files are just text, so you can use any basic text editor or text utility to merge them. I use a Windows built-in command-line utility (and some basic batch scripts) to merge the pgns I get from TWIC (when I get behind )

Hi Martin. Good suggestions, but I'd already linked to DOS solutions in this link: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/is-there-a-way-to-combine-several-pgns-into-one-pgn

Since the OP keeps asking, I took that to mean he'd prefer a chess GUI solution. :)

Text editors are good as long as the PGN files don't get too big. If the PGN files get huge (millions of games), many text editors will fail or take forever to do anything.

As was posted in the other topic, make sure the file really is a PGN and not a PGN.txt or something and make sure the app you are using can actually read in files with multiple games.

PGN files have a few formatting conventions that must be followed, or the PGN reader may not read the file. For example, there must be a blank line (a single carriage return) after every game.

There are other requirements, but you get the idea.

You should double check that the file isn't actually being saved as cobmined.pgn.txt and the system is set to hide known extensions. When you look for a PGN to open, try changing the drop-down from PGN to All Files and see if you can see it that way.

@TuckerTommy, have you ever used a file sharing service like SendSpace?

https://www.sendspace.com/

You could upload your pgn file to the filesharing site and either post the download link here or PM the download link to me. I'll take a look at it to see if I can tell what you're doing wrong.

EscherehcsE, I will...

Here's the appearance of the pgn notation in notepad....when I download it from chess.com, then open the zip file this is how it appears 16... b5 {[%clk 0:02:11]} 17. Ba2 {[%clk 0:04:13]} 17... Qd7 {[%clk
0:01:34]} 18. Bd2 {[%clk 0:04:11]} 18... Rae8 {[%clk 0:01:25]} 

Here's the sendspace link

https://www.sendspace.com/file/ff9fis

It's got to be something else that's the problem. I tried using one of the "curly bracket" comments, and both Arena and Scid vs. PC took it without any protests. ChessX opened the file, but didn't import the curly bracket info.

OK, I downloaded your "pgn" file. Right off the bat, the problem is the name of the file, which is Combined.pgn.txt

Right-click your mouse on the file, then select "Rename". Then delete the .txt part of the name so that the new name is Combined.pgn

Then it ought to work.

Once I renamed your pgn file to Combined.pgn, I tried to open it with ChessX. It did open the pgn file, but it didn't import the comments such as {[%clk 0:04:11]}.

The fix for this problem for ChessX is to first use a text editor like Wordpad to do a "Replace all" where you find all occurrences of "{[" and replace them with "{". Then you do the same for the right-hand brackets.

The result would be something like {%clk 0:04:11}

After doing that, ChessX will read the PGN file, including all of the comments.

Note that Scid vs. PC or Arena will accept the comments without modification. I'm not sure how other GUIs will handle the issue.