With the growth of genealogy research, relationship errors can easily appear in your Family Tree. You will discover that you have entered duplicate individuals, or have accidentally connected a child to the wrong family. It is better to correct these issues early to prevent the mistakes from spreading throughout the tree. FTM 2024 provides a number of tools to find and Merge Duplicate Individuals, detach a child from incorrect parents, and attach a child to the correct parents.
Using FTM 2024 To Merge Duplicate Individuals
Duplicate individuals can easily turn a Family Tree confusing and might lead to repeated information. FTM 2024 allows you to merge two records when they are representing the same person, helping you to combine their information into a single and more complete record.
Why Duplicate Occur
Duplicate individuals might occur after mentioning information or combining another family member’s tree with your own.
Merge In Place Of Delete
If in case two records are representing the same person, merging them is more preferable to deleting one.
Preserve Information
Merging can help you to retain facts, sources, media and other kinds of information that are associated with both the records.
Look For The Possible Duplicates
FTM 2024 provides a tool which helps in identifying individuals who may be duplicates.
Have A Backup First
Do have a backup of your Family Tree before merging individuals in order to protect your genealogy research.
How To Find Duplicate Individuals
The “Find Duplicate People” feature in FTM 2024 helps identify individuals you might have entered more than once. You can easily check possible matches and compare their details before deciding whether they should be merged. With the following ways, you can easily find possible duplicates:
- Click on the edit menu, open it, and select Find Duplicate People.
- Review the Person 1 and Person 2 columns.
- Check the match score that is displayed in the third column.
- A higher score shows a greater possibility that the two records represent the same individual.
- Select a pair and click on Compare/Merge to get the review of the records in more detail.
How To Merge Two Duplicate Individuals
When the records indicate the same person, FTM 2024 allows you to merge them into a single individual. Before you begin, it is a good idea to create a backup of your tree. See below to merge two duplicate individuals.
- Go to the tree tab in the people workspace.
- Choose one of the duplicate individuals.
- Click on the arrow next to the People button.
- Select Merge Two Specific Individuals.
- Choose the other duplicate from the Index of Individuals window.
- Click ok in order to open the individual merge window.
- Go through the facts and information that are associated with both individuals.
- Select the facts that you want to keep and mark the most preferred information where it is appropriate.
- Take help of an alternate option if you want to retain information from the other record as an alternative.
- At last, click ok in order to complete the merge.
How To Attach A Child To The Correct Parents
If the child is not connected to the right parents, FTM 2024 provides you with an option to attach the child to the appropriate family later on. This is very useful when you discover new information during your genealogy research or need to correct an existing relationship.
- Head to the tree tab in the people workspace.
- Turn the child into the focus in the index or family group view.
- Click on the arrow next to the People button.
- Select Attach Mother or Attach Father from the attach/detach person menu.
- Choose the appropriate parent from the list.
- Click on ok.
- Select the family to which the child belongs.
Best Practices For Cleaning Up Relationships
With the below-mentioned ways, you can easily clean up relationships in FTM 2024:
- Do have a backup of your tree before merging duplicate individuals.
- Review the duplicate records carefully before combining them.
- Merge instead of deleting if possible, so that you can keep the important facts and sources safe.
- If the child is connected to the wrong parents, detach the relationship instead of deleting the child.
- Verify the correct family before attaching a child to new parents.
Conclusion!
Keeping family relationships accurate is crucial in order to maintain a reliable Family Tree. FTM 2024 makes it easy to resolve the common relationship issues by providing options to merge duplicate individuals, detach children from incorrect parents, and easily connect them to the right family. Using these tools carefully can help in keeping the genealogy records clear, accurate and well organized.
For more information please do contact us.