Hi Michele,
1) Make a normal backup of your family file and call it <family
filename before merge date> eg Smith before merge 20071119
This is so you can play with the merge quite happily knowing that you
can restore this file and get back to exactly where you were before
you started playing.
BTW To learn features it's a good idea to have a test file. You can
use the Sample file but I find it easier to have one that I'm more
familiar with. My test file began with a section of my tree that I'm
familiar with but with major surnames changed so that it's obvious
I'm dealing with my test file. eg I've changed my maiden surname of
Clark to Scotland because they emigrated from Scotland.
2) Don't bother about the options that are first presented until
you're more familiar with merging. Just use the defaults and click Continue
3) On the merge screen when two people are presented, you always end
by merging the right person into the left person. That is the
resulting person will have the RIN of the current person on the left.
If this happens currently to be the higher RIN, you may wish to swap
the people over. Otherwise swap the person with the best or most
information to the left.
3) You choose which bits of information are kept, which bits are
discarded or saved in a different place.
If you have different birth dates or places, you click the radio
button of the one you want to make the birth date and place. Then you
have the option to ignore the other date or make it an Alt Birth
event or put it in General Notes. You access these options by
clicking the black square next to the label after you've put the
radio button next to the one you want to be the main choice.
On the Event Tab, you have the option of copying a highlighted event
for the right person to the left person. You can also edit events.
On the Notes Tab, you can edit notes or add the notes from the right
person to the notes of the left person (append) or replace the notes
on the left with the notes on the right. Remember in the end the
right person is merged to the left.
Once you've looked at all the information and made your choices, you
click the merge right into left person button.
and on to the next person.
Hope that helps but really the only thing that clarifies is trying it
out. You make that try out stress free by having good backups so it
doesn't matter how many mistakes you make while you're learning how it works.
Cathy
At 11:12 AM 19/11/2007, you wrote:
I want to check my file for possible duplicates. In rural MS there
was quite a bit of marrying of relatives going on so I am sure I
have quite a few dups. The merge thing scares me (though I did hit
the auto backup). When I get two people that I think are a match I
don't know if I am supposed to edit right or edit left or swap left
and right or merge right into left. I don't understand the options.
michele
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