I merged my ancestry tree with my FTM tree with the new 2011 FTM program, but I am afraid that I now have duplicate people! The program flagged 69 people and asked me to resolve issues on those people, but I am afraid it may have duplicated many people that I did not flag. The kicker is that with Italian naming traditions, I have lots of people with the same names who are not the same person. This may take some figuring out. Sigh. Any advice on how to weed out duplicate entries on my merged tree?

I hope you saved your original FTM tree file. I did the same thing and what a mess. Even if you fix what they show to be duplicates the program does not pick up all of the duplicates. With 3,000 plus in my tree I just started with the original tree and saved the Ancestry tree in a separate file for reference.

Haven't tried this with Legacy though. I keep saying I will some day.

Just restore your original file and be happy.

lilbees

I have Macs and use two genealogy programs: Reunion 9 (my primary program) and iFamily for Leopard. Even though FTM has introduced a Mac version I have not tried it as the reviews I've read are not very promising. I use only one tree: splitting trees seems to result in a terrible mess according to most genealogists; besides, technology has advanced so much that storage and file handling are no longer the issues they used to be. I also do not merge anything into my tree. I prefer to enter all of my data myself after I've verified that it belongs. Shortcuts with regard to genealogy tend to produce more work and problems than the savings in time that they promise.

Now, the GEDCOM format needs be updated to a standard that more adequately matches the evolving technology and multi-cultural changes of our present day world.

I do have a backup because I have the old family tree maker program on my computer and did not touch those files. I just uploaded them into the 2011 FTM. I went through last night by hand and deleted all the duplicate people. Hopefully, they are still correctly linked. My tree has just shy of 300 people so it was not as difficult to do one the size of libees' tree. Thank God!

Tom, you are right though. Shortcuts do tend to produce more work in the long run. I also don't find FTM to be very user friendly, although I like the new visuals on the 2011 FTM. It has alot of the graphics of ancestry.

Thank God you had as back up. I did the same thing not long ago and now all my files are a mess. I bet you this is why on Ancestry the trees have 30 year men marrying 8 year old girl. Five bucks says many people did the same thing we did and didn;t realize the mess,

You know, downloading the Ancestry Tree is a good thing. You can check if you entered information there that you forgot to enter in your home software.

But again, keeping it as a separate file. The same with the records you find on Ancestry. They may be in the online tree but not in your software. I look at it now as a good backcheck to my work.

So it is not all bad.

lilbees

If you download your ancestry tree, but keep it separate, do you just manually check it against your other tree? (Again, probably I aksed this question too late as I merged my trees!)

I checked them against one another.

By the way, you do have an autobackup for your tree. Look for a date prior to the merge. That way you can restore your original tree.

Do "file open" and search for the "yourtree.ftm which will when you mouse over show date last modified. Keep checking until you find the date prior to your merge or search for "yourtree.ftmb" with a date before your merge. You then open that tree.

That is one of the advantages with FTM. So all is not lost.

Let me know how it goes.

lilbees

Oh wow. I didn't know that. I'm going to try this since I did the same thing not too long ago. Thanks lilbees!