If there is no information that you want to keep with the one instance of Tom Jones, you can delete him with no bad effects on the other instance. But, if he is linked to an entire family, you have to unlink the family, or delete the entire family using the Edit menu and then delete. If the person isn't linked to a family you can probably just go through the Explorer list and delete from there. Be careful, and be sure to create a backup before you start. I must be getting sleepy, I copied rather than cut to paste my merge comments in the last post. 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 >