Merging Trees in Reunion

[Paulahayes]

I am new again to Reunion after working with my Mom in FTM for a couple of years. I wanted to start fresh so started my own new tree in Reunion and so far have about 400 people. I inherited my Mom's FTM tree with over 11000 names in her database. I converted that tree to GEDCOM and imported it to Reunion into a separate tree. I don't want to continue working her tree because she has included so many distant family members - meaning far-reaching cousins, but for my purposes, I want something more stream-lined. Is there a way to merge just the data I want from the people I select from my Mom's larger tree into my smaller tree?

[joshualutz]

First, things to consider:

➊ There are several ways to merge data from one family file with another. Which approach is the most efficient one depends on the number of people that overlap between the two files and other specifics about the data on both files. My suggestion below is based on a number of general assumptions about your files.

➋ If place names are not identical in the two files, separate events will be created upon merge (exception: see ➌) . You can avoid this by first matching the shared place names in the two files. For instance, if in your file you were born in "New York City, New York, USA" and in your mother's file you were born in "New York City, New York, United States", then in the merged file you would have 2 birth events. You could do a "Find and Replace" on "United States" to "USA" in Places in the latter family file — before you do any of the following steps. Always make a backup or copy of a family file before you do any "Find and Replace".

➌ If marriage date and place does not match between two couples, upon merge one data set will be lost. This is currently a limitation of the Reunion Software.

Assuming that you want to only merge your direct ancestors from your mom's family three with your tree, here is what you could try out:

① IMPORTANT: Make a backup or a copy of both family files.

② In your mom's family file:

ⓐ Navigate to yourself

ⓑ Mark > Ancestors of … (yourself)

Assign # of generations you want to copy over, select unmark everybody first, mark source person

If you want to merge other people aside from your ancestors, perform additional steps here.

If you want to also merge the siblings of your ancestors, then select: Find > People > Parents > # of Marked Parents > 1 — then mark the found people

ⓒ Change > Numbering > Ancestor > Assign for … (yourself)

If you want to merge other people aside from your ancestors, choose "Relative" instead.

ⓓ Reunion > Preferences > Field > Move > Person Fields > Ancestor # to User ID

ⓔ File > Export > GEDCOM

Check Who: Marked people

Select the fields that you want to export or exclude from the General pane (sources) and the Optional Fields pane (events, facts), then export the selected data.

③ In your own family file:

ⓐ Navigate to yourself

ⓑ Mark > Ancestors of … (yourself)

ⓒ Change > Numbering > Ancestor > Assign for … (yourself)

Assign # of generations equal to what you want to copy over, select unmark everybody first, mark source person

ⓓ Reunion > Preferences > Field > Move > Person Fields > Ancestor # to User ID

ⓔ File > Import > GEDCOM

Select don't mark newly imported persons.

ⓕ File > Rebuild Cache Files

ⓖ File > Match & Merge People

Select to merge marked people with unmarked people based on USER ID

Good Luck with your project. I hope the above is helpful.

[gv8ar8]

I am also trying to combine/merge two Reunion 13 trees. One is my older Reunion tree the other is a new Reunion tree formed from a FTM GEDCOM.( I purchased FTM to be a "middle-man" for my Ancestry tree.) I tried to follow the directions spelled out in Help Contents; however, the combined tree ended up with multiples of most everyone. What should I do? Luckily I made copies of the original trees... Both trees have most of the same people. The FTM tree is much bigger because not all of it is proven...
I read your prior response but am confused. Do I need to select people? I was hoping to combine everyone.....
Thank you.

[gv8ar8]

Update: I have been going through the multiple people on the combined tree and merging by hand. Pretty quick. Seems to be working nicely with Ancestry sources shown. Not all of the sources have images but I think I can decide which ones I want to download from the Ancestry link provided. A work in progress.
Barbara