* Merging duplicate facts

[Orijohnal]

I am a recent FTM 'refugee' searching for a suitable desktop replacement. FH seems a very strong candidate. For a variety of reasons, my tree contains many duplicate facts. FTM 2014 has a feature that enables the merging of duplicate facts that eases the workload by enabling comparison and selecting best fit fact, location and descriptions. I've read with interest the previous topic Sorting duplicate facts but it is tangential to my issue.

Is there an efficient method within FH to tidy up my duplicate facts?

[tatewise]

Welcome to the FHUG.

There is no such feature built into FH, but a Plugin could be written once the criteria for detecting duplicate facts were established.
i.e.
How similar must they be?
Each fact potentially has a Value, Date, Age, Place, Address, Cause, Note, Citations, and so on.
How many of these must be the same (or similar?) before a merge is offered?

May I suggest that if FTM 2014 has such a feature, then use it before migrating your database to FH.

Presumably, you would not be creating such duplicates in future.

[Orijohnal]

Thanks Mike. I get your drift. In FTM, the process starts with a Data Error report with the option to only show "Possible duplicate events". I believe this selects events (facts) with identical labels. The values may be different. Double clicking on the report row opens the person's detail (ie. 'Property' view. Right clicking on any fact with more than one instance enables the "Merge Duplicate Facts" option in the context menu. A window with the candidate duplicates opens with selection boxes to focus the merge on specific facts. This, for example will enable non unique facts such as 'Residence' to be treated properly. If instances of a unique fact, such as 'Birth' contains more than one value, the [Next] window presents the candidate Dates, Places and Descriptions. The user picks one of each. Any source citations, notes and media that are not duplicates are kept attached to the merged fact.

You can tell from my verbose description, there is nothing 'automagic' about this feature. Proper validation of the candidate facts has to be done ahead of time. The feature does help with the mechanics of the merge and no source info is lost. On the down side, irrelevant citations, notes or media may survive.

I like what I've seen of FH enough to buy it and I'm working through it's impressive interface and discovering its myriad features. I'm anxious to cut the cord with FTM but before "going live" I will work through my duplicate facts in FTM as you suggest. I suspect going forward, FH will do a better job of avoiding this situation.

Thanks again for the prompt response!

John