Tuesday's Tips provide brief how-to's to help you learn to use the Legacy Family Tree software with new tricks and techniques.

Linking Problem or Duplicate? (Intermediate)

If you open someone's Spouse List and you see this, what does it mean?

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It can mean two things. It can mean that you have linked to the same person twice or it can mean you have a true duplicate. How can you tell the difference? All you need to do is go to Options > Customize > View > Option 8.2 and select Show RINs on all Name Lists.

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If you see that both spouses have the same RIN number that means you have accidentally linked to the same person twice. If you try to link to the same woman twice Legacy will give you a warning but if your data came in as a gedcom import or a direct download from FamilySearch you won't get that warning.

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Make sure you unlink the one that does NOT have the children linked to them. When you highlight one of the spouses and click the Unlink button (over on the right on the above screen), and you see children listed, you are unlinking the wrong one. Cancel and highlight the other spouse and unlink that one.

However, if you see that the RINs are different, you have two people with the same name and information and you have linked to both. You need to make a note of the RIN numbers and then do a manual merge (Tools > Merge > Manual Merge).

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As soon as you turn on the RIN numbers the problem becomes clear.

Find tech tips every day in the Facebook Legacy User Group. The group is free and is available to anyone with a Facebook account.

For video tech tips check out the Legacy Quick Tips page.  These short videos will make it easy for you to learn all sort of fun and interesting ways to look at your genealogy research.

Michele Simmons Lewis, CG^® is part of the Legacy Family Tree team at MyHeritage. She handles the enhancement suggestions that come in from our users as well as writing for Legacy News. You can usually find her hanging out on the Legacy User Group Facebook page answering questions and posting tips.