This has been mentioned in this thread, but I don't think it can be emphasized enough. Obviously, when merging two people, sources will not merge if they are not exactly equal. But, when merging two people, two different sources will not merge even if they are exactly equal. When merging two people, two sources will merge only if they are identical -- which is to say, if they are the same source and if the citation information (page number, etc.) is the same. The trick is that you must merge equal sources to make them identical )(i.e., the same) before you start merging people. You do this in the source manager. Terminology is difficult here. By "identical" I mean it's the same source. Here's an example. Start with an empty data base. Add one individual, say John Doe born in 1710. As a source, add "Doe Family History, 1689-1900" by James Doe, Jr. Your data base now has only one person, and only one source. Also, for John Doe, there is only one citation to the "Doe Family History" book. So far so good. But you can certainly add a second citation to the same source. There are bad reasons and good reasons to do so. A bad reason might simply be that you have made a mistake. A good reason might be that you are citing both p.20 and p.211. (I think most people would make this a single citation, say to "pp.20, 211", rather than two citations, but I am trying to keep the example simple.) But the point is that for the same person, you can by hand enter multiple citations to the same source. You can also add a second instance of the same source by hand. For example, you could enter "Doe Family History, 1689-1900" by James Doe, Jr. as a source for a second time. I think it would always be a mistake to make such an entry by hand, but it would be a mistake that the program allows you to make. On the other hand, such duplicate instances of the the same source can arise very naturally when you import GEDCOM. So the bottom line when importing and merging GEDCOM is, first merge duplicate sources. Then, merge duplicate people. Otherwise, you can (and usually will) end up with people who have multiple citations to the identical same source. Having said all that, I have a few instances of multiple citations to the identical same source in my data base. Most of them are leftovers from when I first started using the program, and didn't yet fully understand the merge process. Such multiple citations to the identical same source are dreadfully hard to find. I usually find them only by accident. Does anybody know of an easy way to find them? Finally (and this is a wish list item for RootsMate), I wish the list of citations in reports didn't have so many duplicate entries for citations to the same source. Several pages of "2 Ibid.", "3 Ibid.", "4 Ibid." etc. are not very efficient. I wish report references to the "identical same" source (including the same page number or the same whatever else) could point to the same item in the list of citations, rather than having so many duplicates in the list of citations. Jerry Bryan _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com