I have run across the following examples a few times recntly and thought I'd share them with the list. Example: I had a few male family cards from a while back. When they were submitted no other researchers were working on them. The baptism and confirmation ordinances were completed. Finally, after many months, the endowments were completed. As I prepared the cards for a sealing session, I went back into New FamilySearch and discovered duplicates for some individuals. I merged the duplicates and discovered that the endowment and sealing to parents ordinances had been done a few months previously. My family file's endowment date were no longer the earlier ordinance but the baptism and confirmation were still the earliest ones. The sealing to parents ordinances were done too. When looking at the page for lds ordinances for a person, there is a little printer icon. I printed out the page for the lds ordinances and then stapled my family file card to it. I then take the sheet to the temple and they delete my family file card out of my files. It can be a little frustrating to find duplications after receiving the family file card. The ordinances were done in NFS temples in late 2008 and early 2009. Whoever submitted the names should have been the ones to find the work was already submitted but they didn't do so. Another example: when I submitted one of my direct Dutch families from the early 1700s, they weren't in the system. I printed out the FOR and then received the family file cards from the temple. A month or so later the family showed up in the NFS with ordinances completed in 1955-1957. There were still some family members who needed to be sealed to their parents and a couple of daughters who had been missed altogether. I then worked with the temple to delete my unneeded cards and can now finish up the family. My feeling is that this Dutch family was not in NFS when I submitted the work. I kept searching for duplicates when I typed in the original entries but never found any. I think the family came from a "missing file" which was added to NFS later. The duplicates just popped up one day -- much to my surprise. I have come to the conclusion to check again if the work has been done before doing any endowments. The endowment takes the longest of any other temple ordinance. (This recommendation has been made previously on the list by others too.) Searching for duplicates again prevents us from feeling that our time or the time of another temple patron is wasted by duplicating the endowment. It does take time to search for duplicates but it is better than wasting precious temple time. We need to remind our ward members that they may NOT be the only descendants for an ancestor. They need to realize that NFS will ONLY achieve it's goal of preventing duplications IF we do our part and check for duplicates in our family files. We can check not just at the time of submission but later if necessary. We may be surprised that many ancestors have several descendants who have converted to the LDS Church. This is important because even one other researcher can bring a lot of duplications into the system. The fun thing is that these multiple researchers may all hold different pieces to the family tree puzzle. They may hold some record or know a story that will enrich the portrait of the people we are researching. Mary Scott Northville Ward Westland Michigan Stake Detroit Michigan Temple