Is there a way to remove duplicates besides one-by-one by hand? Clare

I think I remember that you had used "Smart Merge" and it didn't do as well as you had hoped. Have you tried the "Find duplicates to Merge" under the merge road sign? It can get to be a pain in the fingers when you have a large number of individuals with the same name and no birth dates known, but it isn't too bad otherwise. It finds individuals that it thinks could be the same and sets you have the final say on whether to merge them or not. If you have ten John Smiths, and five John Smythes, with no definitive birth dates, it will probably ask you 14 times if the first one is related to each of the others, then 13 times if the next one is related to anyone etc (that is 105 possible combinations that it will ask about and you will begin to loose your patience) BUT, it is easier than looking through the Explorer for each duplicate. Good Luck, and patience, Alfred --------------------- ----- Original Message ----- From: "Clare" <Clare@Sierratel.com> > Is there a way to remove duplicates besides one-by-one by hand? > > Clare >

I had originally replied to Clare personally, but never received a response from her which indicated if my suggestion worked. My apologies if I missed the point. Perhaps I was unclear. If I have interpreted the problem correctly, Clare had two versions of FO on her two computers, so had transferred her primary database to her laptop via a gedcom, then made additions to the laptop database, and wanted to transfer information back to the first computer when she returned home. In making a gedcom from the laptop with the new information, and importing it back into her main database, she had created duplicates of almost everything except the new information. I suggested she make a new gedcom from the laptop, rename her first database, then make a new database and incorporate the information from the laptop gedcom to it. The simplest solution would be to make sure both computers have the same version of FO and simply backup from one computer and restore to the next. Margaret Scheffler