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Is there any way to merge 2 copies of the same person on GR as you can do on other genealogy software?
I have a Groom and a Bride who I wish to 'marry'. Each is already attached to their respective parents (all 4 parents are already on my tree as Pedigree Ancestors because the Groom's brother is married to the Bride's sister).
If I try to add the Bride to the Groom I get a 2nd copy of her not linked to her parents. If in turn I tried to add her parents I get 2 copies of the same parents as well!
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When you add a spouse you get an option "Find Existing" displayed.
Select that and type in the name of the partner in the box and you should find the person you want is one of the choices given (or just the one).
Select that person and you should solve your problem.
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KenSe, thank you for the tip. I had not noticed this feature before.
Unfortunately, this still resulted in duplicate entries. I do believe your method is supposed to be the correct way of doing it, but I'm convinced this software is badly bugged and needs a good re-write. Numerous other comments on the forums support this.
In the end I had to delete a whole bunch of people who were dependent on the link, then 'marry' the couple and re-input all those people again - several hours work for a simple task. Far from satisfactory.
I only use this site for the sharing facility. For the main purpose of building my tree I use Family Tree Maker software which keeps my tree in my machine and is far more functional. It has never caused me any technical problems like unwanted duplicate entries or disappearing data.
FTM does have the option to link my tree with Ancestry.com which I could use for sharing instead of GR. However as my tree is mainly Scottish and Ancestry do not deal in this (being the sole province of Scotland's People owned by the Scottish Government) I'm stuck with GR for now. I just wish they would get their act together in the technical department.
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It might be worth you exporting a GEDCOM file from your FTM tree and importing it to your GR tree. It will overwrite that but could save you a lot of effort. You would need to ensure that living people and sensitive information is not included.
I don't have any experience of doing that but others on here may be able to advise you about it.
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KenSE, thanks again.
I had considered the GEDCOM option but was wary because I have read on more than one site, including this one, that the import may cause file corruption, loss of data etc, and the site will not be responsible if you attempt it. Given this site's track record for data loss in the normal course of things, I'm not sure it's worth the risk.
Given my level of confidence, I would not be satisfied after the import unless I did a person by person comparison of all data on both trees, a very tedious process. Forum users have also reported bad experiences with this.
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My definitive tree is on FTM, under my control. The trees I have on websites are merely copies which can be thrown away or replaced as I wish.
With the exception of my ancestry tree, which is synced each time I update FTM, all other web trees are fed using a gedcom file. As they are already out of date as soon as I next use FTM I don't care a hoot if they have minor accuracies, as far as I am concerned they are simply copies.
In fact with GR it is inevitable you will get a difference in name count because of limitations in the way GR handles multiple relationships such as the marriage of distant cousins, which results in GR over reporting the number of names. For example the last time I tested this after a GR import in February, my GR tree recorded 14,701 names against the FTM number of 14,234.
In over ten years of updating GR via gedcom file, probably thirty plus times, I have only ever had two occasions where the import failed to complete properly. In each case I simply deleted my GR tree and re-imported it.
I wouldn't even contemplate even attempting a person by person comparison. A quick check to see that the number count is in the order I expect and a scan of a handful of records is all that is necessary.
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