At some point in your research you may discover that a certain individual doesn’t belong in your tree and you need to delete him or her. Or maybe you added a child to the wrong family. Cleaning up relationship issues as soon as you find them keeps them from multiplying.
Merging Duplicate Individuals
After months and years of gathering names and dates, your family tree may become a bit disorderly. You might discover that Flossie and Florence are actually the same person. If you’ve entered duplicate individuals, you should merge them together (instead of deleting one) so that you don’t lose any information.
Family Tree Maker can analyze your tree and show you individuals who might be duplicates.
Tip: Before you merge individuals, make a backup of your tree.
Finding Duplicate Individuals
After adding a lot of new information or merging a family member’s tree with yours, it’s a good idea to check for duplicate individuals.
1. Choose Find Duplicate People from the Edit menu. The Find Duplicate People window opens.
In the Person 1 and Person 2 columns you’ll see the individuals who might be duplicates. (You can click a column header to sort the columns alphabetically.) In the third column you’ll see a match score—the higher the number, the more likely the individuals are a match; a 1,000 means that the individuals are almost exact matches.
2. To merge a pair of individuals (or just compare the two), select a row and click Compare/Merge. The Individual Merge window opens. To complete the merge, continue with step 5 in the next task, “Merging Individuals.”
Merging Individuals
If you discover that two individuals in your tree are actually the same person, you can merge the two together and retain all the facts and sources associated with each person.
- Go to the Tree tab on the People workspace and select one of the duplicate individuals in the index.
- Click the arrow next to the People button on the main toolbar and choose Merge Two Specific Individuals from the pop-up menu. The Index of Individuals window opens.
- Select the name of the other duplicate individual. You can use the scroll bar to move up and down the list, or type a name (last name first) in the search field.
Click OK. The Individual Merge window opens.
The two columns show the facts attached to each individual.
5. Use the buttons next to the facts to determine how each fact will be merged:
- To keep a fact and mark it as preferred, select the button next to the fact. The corresponding fact for the other individual will be merged as an alternate fact unless you discard it.
- To remove a fact, click the Alternate arrow and choose Discard from the pop-up menu. Though you may discard any fact you like, it is usually a good idea to keep all facts in case they turn out to be relevant. If you discard a fact, you can keep its sources, media items, and notes by clicking the corresponding checkbox in the Keep group.
6. Click OK to complete the merge.
Detaching a Child from the Wrong Parents
If you’ve added a child to the wrong parents, you can detach the child from the family without deleting them from your tree.
- Go to the Tree tab on the People workspace.
- Make sure the correct family is the focus of the family group view.
- Select the child.
- Click the arrow next to the People button on the main toolbar and choose Detach Selected Person from the Attach/Detach Person pop-up menu.
- Select the checkboxes next to the father and/or mother.
- Click Detach.
Attaching a Child to a Father and Mother
If you’ve added an individual and his or her parents to your tree, but you didn’t know they were related when you entered them, you can still link them together.
- Go to the Tree tab on the People workspace.
Make sure the individual you want to attach to his or her parents is
the focus of the index or family group view.
- Click the arrow next to the People button on the main toolbar and choose Attach Mother/Father from the Attach/Detach Person pop- up menu.
- Select the father or mother from the list and click OK. You’ll need to choose which family the child belongs to.