Family Historian User Group

Hi there,
I use FH 6.2.7, I have recently decided to go through my files and make sure each person is correctly labelled and sourced. To do this I made a complete copy file of one section to start on, about 200 files. I am using that file, but I am replacing some of my sources and now I would like to delete those sources that are unconnected. I hope some kind person can advise me how to do that! Or would I do better to delete ALL the sources and then re-enter them? This is because my research goes back 30 years and some of the sources have been superceded, eg a large proportion of the Irish BMDs are online now. Many thanks! Val

In Tools...Preferences....Records Window....Record Type Display options make sure that you have Sources set to Always show. Then in the Individual Record window select the Sources tab. Then in the resulting Source Records window Alt-left click on the Citations column heading and that will then display sources that aren't cited by anything.

You can double click on the title to check it and if you really want to delete it just select it in that Sources window and press the delete key. It will ask you to confirm the action.

Best to take a backup of your project first!

PS - if you want to delete lots, select all of them then Edit...Add to Named List. Then from the Named List window you can delete all of the contents of that named list: right click on the name of the list and select Delete Listed Records.

(or you add them to the named list one at a time, as you check them, then delete all in one go).

For a full explanation of all the options see how_to:delete_a_large_number_of_records|> Delete Any Number of Records.

Remember that there may well be other unconnected records such as Notes, Repositories & Media that need purging.

I presume that the 200 Individuals you copied for this review process are unrelated to the Individuals you didn't copy.
If that was not the case, then have you considered how you will re-establish those relationships?

Thank you very much Mike and David that sounds really helpful. Thanks for the point about Notes etc, which I had not realised. There is so much on FH that I don't know about and I shall try to work through your suggestions tonight.
Re the connections to the rest of my tree - this 200 is my father's side, mostly Ireland, the other 500 is my mother's side England, and apart from my parents, siblings, children and grandchildren neither side is related. Will this cause me problems? I am not very switched on in computers.
Val

If you have any other issues with unconnected records then just ask.
Don't forget Place records.

When you have completed your father's side, then similarly create a Project for everyone on your mother's side including your father, yourself, your siblings, and descendants (i.e. everyone not on your father's side). Ensure to include one or two (such as your father &/or yourself) who also exist in the father's side Project.

Then when your review is complete, it will be fairly easy to merge those two Projects into one master Project.
The important point is to have a few Individuals in both sub-Projects that allow the merge to synchronise the family tree.

Alternatively, if you have not gone too far with your father's side review, then it may be easier to abandon that and just copy your whole current historic Project and work through your father's side while still connected to your mother's side. You can use Named Lists or other techniques to keep track of who/what has been reviewed. That way you avoid the merging process that some users find quite tricky.

Mike, now that I have heard all the difficulties I think I will opt for starting again with my whole tree, as I only separated the trees on Sunday. It sounds a lot easier!
with many thanks, Val

i have fallen at the first hurdle. I was following David's advice to find unconnected sources, and when I got to Record Type Display Options, Sources was set to "always show", which was fine, but the Individual Record window was greyed out so I could go no further. Have I read the instructions properly? Val

What David meant was that after checking the display options to make sure that Sources are set to Always Show, you close that box and go the the Records Window. (Use the icon at the left of the screen, see below.) Once there, go to the Sources tab. Then Alt-left click on the Citations column heading.

Thanks Lorna! So easy! Val