Import and Merge

[Guest]

I started manually entering an ancestor tree in R9, then connected with someone that had the data and will share via a GEDcom file. What happens with the duplicate entries if I import the file? Should I go through and delete the dups before the import? Will R9 match the incoming tree and append it at the appropriate place in my existing tree?

Thanks

[John Hill]

Re: Import and Merge

I started manually entering an ancestor tree in R9, then connected with someone that had the data and will share via a GEDcom file. What happens with the duplicate entries if I import the file? Should I go through and delete the dups before the import? Will R9 match the incoming tree and append it at the appropriate place in my existing tree?

Thanks

I have done this sort of thing a number of times, though generally with fairly small GEDCOMs (e.g. downloaded from the old Family Search site).

Reunion will not automatically merge the duplicates for you (and I know of no F/H application that will attempt this). OTOH, it has very powerful tools for locating and merging them manually.

The first step, as always, is to back up your original file. Then you can always go back to it if everything goes pear shaped.

I think I would recommend importing the GEDCOM into an empty Reunion file and inspecting it. Looking at the GEDCOM before you start will give you a feel for the number of duplicates there will be and how they inter-relate. But do NOT delete any duplicates, or you will get into a terrible mess.

Whether you import the GEDCOM directly or via a new Reunion file, it's a very good idea to add an automatic source in the process to say where you got the data from.

Now you will have to go through and use the Change/Match and Merge People facility to look for duplicates and manually merge them. You will probably find that they cluster together, with people having duplicate parents, children or spouses.

This can be a long and painstaking process, and if there is a lot to do it's a good idea to keep backing up at each stage so you can go back a bit rather than to square one.

The only time you can risk deleting duplicates is when you have an entire sub-tree that is duplicated; in this case you can prune it back to be beginning of the shoot (but leave at least one common person or family). But then you risk destroying snippets of information in the imported data that you didn't have such as sources, or additional dates.

If you are attempting to merge two large data sets, this can be mindbogglingly tedious and error prone and I wish you luck.

John.

[Guest]

Re: Import and Merge

Thanks John - that's most helpful. I'll take your advice RE backups to heart. I usually backup after I make any edits, but will up the frequency as I'm working though the merge. The auto-source suggestion is a great idea - I'd have probably missed that. I may make up a couple of mock pedigrees in Reunion so I can play with the R9 tools with a limited dataset that I can readily get my head around and inspect the result of the changes as I go, rather than try to learn the tools on the real data.

Your reply is appreciated!

[John Hill]

Re: Import and Merge

Thanks John - that's most helpful. I'll take your advice RE backups to heart. I usually backup after I make any edits, but will up the frequency as I'm working though the merge. The auto-source suggestion is a great idea - I'd have probably missed that. I may make up a couple of mock pedigrees in Reunion so I can play with the R9 tools with a limited dataset that I can readily get my head around and inspect the result of the changes as I go, rather than try to learn the tools on the real data.

Your reply is appreciated!

As an afterthought, you may find it useful to look in the Index for obvious pairs (sort by surname, show first names, DoB and any other relevant items such as christening date). Then if you mark obvious pairs, one by one, you can Match and Merge them using Merge Marked.