* Bad practice in Merges

[phende]

I post this as a warning to others who may be as dim as myself.

When merging two files, make sure you check the merges on all the tabs, including Sources. I had thought that, when checking the matching records for individuals, the census entries you see are references to the sources. They aren't. They are simply citations.

After merging the individuals, the program goes on to look at the source records and merges those it thinks are matches. Since most of my census entries were identified simply by the date and the place, FH could not differentiate between them. I should have told it to Unmatch them, but I didn't. This means I have now a large number census records as sources with two or more instances of Actual Text.

I haven't lost any information but some records now have 'extra' information that doesn't belong to them. I shall have to re-create separate sources for these merged records and re-do the citations.

You can avoid this if you make sure each new census entry has a unique title.

[oops]

ID:2162

[nsw]

If you are using Gedcom Census for your Census entries, the default naming scheme for census sources should ensure that your source names are unique in 99.9% of cases.

[phende]

... only if you fill in either the Source code or enter some unique Other info. (I said I was dim.)

[oops] and [oops] again.