If you are only interested in one or two large trees and want to get rid of the rest, it might be less time consuming to use the same technique to select the desired trees, export them to new files and then simply delete the current files with all of the unwanted trees. You can then restore the two exported files into separate FTM files. The only downside is if the main data base is synced to an AMT. Even then it might be easier to delete that AMT and then re-upload the new data base to Ancestry.com. Enjoy the basketball games. BJ On 2/15/2014 2:09 PM, Bruce King wrote: > BJ This has been a long day, and I can't say much now (have some basketball to watch!). > > But I wanted you to know that your more detailed instructions have enabled me to delete 110 "islands" from my database today. With a moderately large database this has consumed hours of work. So I'm tired, but very happy with what you have helped me to learn. My best guess is that I probably have at least several more hundreds to delete (and one critical "island" to export). > > I suspect I may have another week's work on this, but it will be worth it. And I did order FTM 2014, by the way--thought it might be a bit faster than my present FTM 2012. >