Finding the duplicates is the hardest part. Once you know which ones are duplicates, you "MERGE" the two into one. Either click on the merging road sigh icon, or go to the tools menu and click on "merge" Then you have three choices: 1. Smart merge that does everything for you, but is errors on the side of caution and won't merge two individuals if there is a remote chance that they could not be the same person. You can try it, maybe it will merge a couple for you. 2. "Merge Individual Records", where you choose John Smith as the "From" person and the other John Smith as the "To person" and tell it to combine/ No/ Merge the from into to. (the advantage of merging rather than deleting is that the facts of the from person are added to the to person) that way you get all the facts. (the disadvantage of merging rather than deleting is that the facts of the from person are added to the to person) that way you get some duplicate facts 3: "Find Duplicates to Merge" - The program goes through the data looking for potential matches, sometimes this gets tiresome, especially if you have several people with like names in your database. You get a chance to set the selection parameters as loosely or as strictly as you want. Works to find some long lost duplicates if you can keep your concentration. (the advantage of merging rather than deleting is that the facts of the from person are added to the to person) that way you get all the facts. (the disadvantage of merging rather than deleting is that the facts of the from person are added to the to person) that way you get some duplicate facts If you just have a few, and you know who they are, number two is probably your best bet. Good Luck, Alfred ============== ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Orton" <borton@liveh2o.com> > I have a data base with over 6000 names listed. I just added another 600 > names using the Drag and Drop method. Now I have discovered that I have > several DUPLICATE names and families. What is the best way to get rid of a > duplicates. If I delete one Tom Jones. Does it delete both of them? > Should I rename one of the Tom Jones to Tom Smith and then delete the Tom > Smith? > > Bill >