Merging duplicate persons in a single tree.

Question

I have discovered that two persons in my tree are actually the same person.

One is well isolated and could just be deleated, but the other has many attached descendants that I do not want to loose.

Is there a way to solve this problem?

Answer 1

This usually happens (maybe always, I can't think of another example) when someone marries a person who is already in the family tree. The way you fix this is by deleting the "duplicate" person in one of the spots. It doesn't matter which one, pick the one that makes the least work for you. Then add them back as a partner using the choice that is worded like, "Patner with person already in tree". That will give you a dropdown where you can select the correct person.

You will still get a visual indication "(duplicate)" in both places in the tree where that person appears, but that is not an error. It's just an indication that they are related in two different ways.

Comments

Thanks for your suggestion, but, unfortunately, it did not solve my problem.
I have a tree on FamilyEcho with about 800 people on it. I've discovered that the same persons correctly appears in two different branches of it. Each branch has more information than I care to reenter. I'd like to have this one person appear in just one place, not two, on my tree, while still correctly showing her existing connections to both branches. I have not found a way to do this in FamilyEcho. Is this even possible here or perhaps in some other tree manger?

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Just so I understand, you have already used "partner with someone already in the tree" on one of those two entries for the same person, and you don't like how Family Echo displays this duplicate person?

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Yes, your understanding is correct. When I choose  "partner with someone already in the tree" and then click on the desired partner, the field just remained blank. This seemed like a bug to me but I did not report it as such. Instead, I moved my gedcom file into Legacy9, where I was able to "manually" easily unite my duplicate pair while not disturbing any other links in my tree. I then saved it as a gedcom out of Legacy9 and imported it into FamlyEcho, where it looks OK too. Problem solved, for now.

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Aha! I now have found a way to do this within FamilyEcho. It's a bit tricky and I don't have time to explain it now, but I will if other users ask.

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i'd be interested to see how you did it! I have the same problem as pjcooney :)

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I'm working on it, but it will take a while because I'm playing with how robust my technique is.

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I've concluded that this can be a very tricky process.
Every time I've tried to repeat a procedure that worked before, it seemed to fail at first, the second time around.
In each case, I did finally get to my desired result. In my case, it was to join one of my GGMoms, already in my tree, with her probable sibling group, which was in another part of my tree.

My advice:

First, save a GEDCOM file of your starting tree so you can reload it, repeatedly, untill you get what you want done.

Then, play with these crucial options in FamilyEcho to get where you want to be:
1. Change or delete / Change parents.
2. Change or delete / Change partner.
3. Change or delete / Delete (so and so).
4. Add mother (to someone with only a father).
5. Add father (to someone with only a mother).
6. and, MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL, SAVE your changes after each step, before trying your next step.

All of this is very touchy-feely, but it's what worked for me.