Comments on: Member Trees: Merge Duplicate People

By: Judy

Judy — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 18:39:32 +0000

I was shown this merge key from a relative and began using it. The problem is that it merges the main persons info but when you look at relationships it has not merged the info of the spouse and children or siblings it duplicates it under the one name. So then I have to merge all of these people as well – very time consuming. Why can’t there be a list of all the relationship people (siblings, kids, spouses etc) and then let us check which to merge and which to add as an additional. Was really enjoying ancestry, but this duplicating problem has caused be hours of work – I’ve reduced my tree from 6,000+ people to 4,000+ but I still haven’t finished the duplication. HELP!!!

By: debbie (Turner) Stanley Hall

debbie (Turner) Stanley Hall — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 14:02:19 +0000

I tried and it works, thank you I have a lot of duplicates. thank you again

By: Jacqueline

Jacqueline — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:56:30 +0000

HALLELUJAH!!!! This is the BEST Xmas present I’ve gotten in years. Thank you all sooooo much for this merge dups feature, makes my biggest buggaboo a minor problem now. Wow, thanks!

By: FalconEddy

FalconEddy — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 20:33:03 +0000

Before attempting to merge duplicate names, you need to be absolutely sure that you haven’t created a different lineage off from both names. This could have a disastrous outcome on your Family Tree. Especially if one is the “correct” one, and THAT one ends up getting deleted as a result of the merge. NOTHING is bulletproof my friends. Be sure to backup FIRST at least in three places before attempting the merge. I believe in a belt AND suspenders as far as backups are concerned. Be fully aware this merge means that you’ll need to check ALL OF THE LINEAGE all the way down the tree on every branch to see what may be affected by merging each of these names. Fun, huh? When the people at Ancestry.com write these great updates, they inadvertently forget that sometimes people (and the old software) make errors, and making new features sometimes compounds these errors which may be unseen until it’s too late. The larger your tree is, the bigger the nightmare.

By: marilyn

marilyn — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 13:28:01 +0000

I have a 3 cousin that has been working on the family tree and has much more information than I do. How do I merge her family tree with mine..
a newbie at this. Thanks for the help

By: Tina Cecil

Tina Cecil — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 18:27:41 +0000

Amen! Glad this is finally an option. Picking out and deleted duplicate ancesters was daunting.

By: Sinta

Sinta — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:44:54 +0000

I’m sorry if this is off-topic but I’m looking for a way to list all people in my tree (in ftm or on ancestry) that are listed as living. I have quite a few that are obviously deceased (born in 1780′s,etc) but listed as living because there is no death date shown. How can I isolate the “living” on to reflect their death?

By: jhodnett

jhodnett — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 16:03:39 +0000

Patricia, when you merge two duplicate people, the system doesn’t continue to merge other duplicate people. Without looking at your tree, I can’t say for certain, but I think you can just go to the people who have duplicate relationships and merge them as well and that should clean it up. If you’re still having problems, feel free to email me and we can take a look at it. jhodnett@ancestry.com

By: Patricia Childs

Patricia Childs — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 20:12:34 +0000

After merging duplicates in my grandfather’s tree I looked at relationships in his edit space only to find all the information I gleaned from merging is repeated over and over. I have no clue as to which of these I should remove. I am trying to associate the families of my nearest relatives with my own family. Is there a guide to this process that I could download?

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 04:41:36 +0000

This is worse than the torture of the Spanish Inquisition.

I have over fifty two thousand direct ancestors and there are quite few married cousins.

I had been avoiding synchronizing with tree maker.

Now that I have my hard work on ancestry is contaminated.

This repair is an impossible task for me.

Thousands.

Your site is slowing down and locking up.

Overwhelmed.

Get some chinese or indian computer guys to come up with a fix.