In your research, at some point, you might find out that a certain person isn’t supposed to be in the tree, and thus you need to remove him or her. Maybe you had placed a child into the wrong family. Cleaning a relationship issue before it becomes worse will prevent it from multiplying.
Merging Duplicate Individuals
Your family tree can get a wee untidy after months and years of collecting names and dates. The two may discover they are two names belonging to one person, Flossie and Florence. When adding duplicate people, you ought to be able to merge people (instead of deleting one) in order to maintain information.
Your tree can be analyzed by Family Tree Maker, which shows you potential duplicates.
Tip: Make a backup of your tree before you merge people.
Finding Duplicate Individuals
It is always a good idea, after adding many new trees or combining a family member tree with yours, to check to see whether there are duplicate people in it.
- Select Find Duplicate People in the Edit menu. A window appears: Find Duplicate People. You will also find who could be double in the Person 1 and Person 2 columns. You may click on a column header to make the columns sort alphabetically. The third column has a match score whereby the bigger the number, the more the people are likely to match; the higher the number, the closer; a 1,000 is an indication that the individuals are near a perfect match.
- To combine two people (or simply to compare the two), highlight a row and choose Compare/Merge. The Individual merge window opens. To complete the merge, complete step 5 in the next task, “Merging Individuals.
Merging Individuals
If you find out that two people on your tree do turn out to be the same person, you can merge the two individuals and be able to retain the facts and sources relating to all of the parties concerned.
1. On the People workspace, in the Tree tab, choose one of the duplicate persons in the index.
2. Select the arrow next to the People button on the main toolbar, then select Merge Two Specific Individuals from the menu that opens.
3. You can Choose the name of the other copy person. The scroll bar lets you scroll through the list up and down, or you can enter a name (last, first) in the search box.
4. Click OK. A window of Individual Merge appears. The columns represent the facts that are attached to individual individuals.
5. The buttons, along with the facts, will help you decide how the facts will merge:
- A button is available next to each fact to click to remember the fact and mark it as one of your favorites. The corresponding fact on the other person will be merged to become another fact, except when you discard it.
- This is to delete a fact, just press the Alternate arrow followed by a right-click on the Discard tab in the pop-up menu. Even when you choose to discard any fact that you find likeable, it is always good to retain all facts since they might eventually prove important. On discarding a fact, you can save its sources, media items and notes by clicking the corresponding check box in the Keep group.
6. Click OK to merge.
Detaching a Child from the Wrong Parents
By mistake, you need to add a child to the wrong parents. You can unlink that child to the family without deleting it in your tree.
- Select People workspace and visit the Tree tab.
- Ensure that the family group view is focusing on the right family.
- Suggested the child to choose.
- Click the arrow beside the People button in the main toolbar; select Detach Selected Person in the Attach/Detach Person pop-up menu.
- You can Check the respective checkboxes against the father and or mother.
- Click Detach.
Attaching a Child to a Father and Mother
Even when you inserted someone and his/her parents in your tree, and you did not suspect that they were related, you can still connect them.
- Access the Tree tab on the People workspace.
- Ensure that the individual whom you desire to develop an affinity to, together with his parentage is The index or family group centre.
- It can be done by clicking the arrow symbol next to the People button in the main toolbar and choosing Attach Mother/Father in the Attach/ Detach Person pop-up menu.
- Click OK, and the father or the mother can be decreased by clicking on the list. You will have to make an option in respect of whose family the child belongs to.
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