Ron Taylor wrote: > There is one unusual way to make use of the User ID. Under > Merge Options>Special Duplicate Searches>Find duplicates > using only User ID Number the program provides a way to > merge based on the contents of the User ID field. If a > process were to populate User ID with the Family Search ID > or some other field then the option mentioned above could > detect those records that need to be merged. It should give > similar results to "Find duplicates using only Ancestral > File Numbers". This would be helpful when two databases are > combined that already contain Family Search ID numbers but > do not have the same Intellishare values because they are > from researchers that have never collaborated before. >
*PLEASE* be careful here. Family Search has several unique numbers available. There's the old Ancestral File Number (AFN); there's a Pedigree Resource File number (PRF), and there's the new Personal ID (PID) number from nFS and FSTree. PIDs may match, but it's unlikely today's PID will match either the AFN or the PRF. And, if the PIDs do not match you ought not assume different humans of the same name. To see an ugly demo of the problem, see Marmaduke vanSwearingen (with or without the van, and with or without the space). Last time I looked at him, he had 50 entries, all close enough to identical that the human brain knows him when it sees him, but different numbers attached. So, before you copy a "family search" number into the AFN field, be sure it IS an AFN not a PID. Cheryl Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyusers.com/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyfamilytree.com/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
