Tuesday's Tip - Linking Problem or Duplicate? (Intermediate)
April 09, 2019
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?
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.
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.
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).
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.
What would really be nice here is that if the software gave you an option similar to combining a surname or a location name BUT instead of an unquestioned direct merge, it automatically opened the manual mere dialogue box - instead of 1. closing the current dialogue box. 2. opening the tools menu... etc., etc., etc.
I am still waiting for the option to TAG people when setting relationships.
Thanks
Andrew Barfoot
Posted by: andrew barfoot | April 16, 2019 at 03:35 PM
Andrew,
Please send this in as a suggestion. You can find the link on the Legacy Home tab within Legacy itself.
Posted by: Michele | April 17, 2019 at 07:37 PM
Is there a simple fix when there are some of the children connected to each of the duplicate spouses? For instance, the couple has 4 children, but I've somehow connected one child to a duplicate spouse, while the other three are connected to the original. I've been able to fix this mess, but it's clunky. There must be a smoother way.
Posted by: Patricia Della Piana | April 23, 2019 at 04:40 AM
Patricia,
If all of the children are linked to one then no problem, unlink the other. However, if the children are split between the two wives then you have no choice but to relink the children to the wife that is retained.
Posted by: Michele | April 23, 2019 at 04:48 AM