Friday, May 30, 2014

Easy trick for merging identities on Family Tree Maker

Ever see names kind of stack up in the index of Family Tree Maker? Then you take a look and see that some are duplicates--same person listed several times. You want to see all relationships possible--all the children of all these parents.

Example: You've listed Joe Martin as father of Jeremiah Martin. Elsewhere you have him as father of Lisette Martin. You want to see all siblings listed under the same father (Joe), which you have suddenly noticed is the same for both kids. This is very helpful in any genetic matching or in family tree matching. Maximum info=maximum results with minimum effort.

Ordinary merges take time and attention to details such as birth and death dates.

Simpler is this method-choose a special letter, such as "t" to temporarily attach to the ends of the names of the mergers. Appelman becomes Appelmant temporarily. His merge also becomes Appelmant. You merge the two Applemants, without having to sort them out from any other Appelmans in your file. Once they have merged, you remove the "t" ending and voila--a quick merge. Very useful with common names such as David Johnson or Sarah Brown.

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