>>These are IDENTICAL ENTRIES. I don't how to make it any clearer. >Two people named John Smith, born in 1850 in New York City are also >identical, but that doesn't mean Family Origins should merge them >automatically. This is why there is a duplicate search and merge so FO can >display the two records to you and let you decide if they >should be merged. I sometimes wish that SmargeMerge and the duplicate person finder (more or less the same thing, I guess) were a little more context sensitive. There is essentially no context. Expanding on Bruce's example, the program basically just compares John Smith born in 1850 in New York, with John H. Smith born 12 Aug 1850 in New York, New York. I deliberately introduced some minor differences, and this still might well be the same person although there are some small differences in the data. Conversely, even apparently identical people (e.g., Bruce's example of two John Smiths, both born in 1850 in New York City) might not be the same people. They might not be the same people even with more specificity, e.g., two John H. Smith born 12 Aug 1850 in New York City still might not be the same people. But by context, I mean parents, children, and spouses. For example, suppose one John H. Smith (not two with the same name) has two spouses Jane Jones born 1852. The probability is very high that these are the same Jane Jones. This is a very different situation than two John H. Smiths, each of which married a Jane Jones. Conversely, if you have John H. Smith born 1850 in New York City son of James Smith and Mary Doe, and also John H. Smith born 1850 in New York City son of William Smith and Elizabeth Jones, then the probability is very low that these are the same John H. Smiths. In fact, I wish this type of context checking were an option that could be turned on or off in the standard duplicate checking. If it were, I think it would greatly reduce the number of false positives. Finally (and back in the affirmative direction), if you have John Smith born about 1851 son of William Smith and Elizabeth Jones and a second son for the same couple John H. Smith born 12 Nov 1850 in New York City, then John Smith is very likely the same person as John H. Smith. And again, by the same couple, I mean the same records in the data base, not duplicate records with the same name. Notice that with this approach, merging only a member or two of a family would enable the rest of the family to be identified as duplicate. By the way, I agree with the advice to be extremely cautious in using Merge. I virtually never use Smartmerge. The rare times I do, it is in a temporary data base, and it is with data I have downloaded from Ancestral Files on the LDS Web site. Unless I am doing something wrong, you really can't download ancestors and descendants of a person at the same time from the LDS Web site. But if you make separate downloads, you can put the pieces back together without ambiguity by Smartmerging by Ancestral File Number. And I seldom use (unSmart)merge either. Again, when I do it is primarily in a temporary data base, where there are few false positives in the duplicate search and I personally verify every duplicate one way or the other. I will sometimes merge such a temporary data base into my main data base. But when I do, I try to get it down to the point where there is only one person common between the two data bases. I then will merge this one person as a way of linking the two data bases together. Jerry Bryan _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com