* Splitting Tree & Deleting people

[JMCKG]

I have asked this question before a couple of years ago, have looked but cannot find the answer. I wish to split a tree into 2 separate trees. If my memory is correct I was informed the best way to do this is make a copy of the original tree with different name and then delete those I don't want on the respective trees.
When I go to delete someone the whole tree disappears! Probably a simple answer.

[tatewise]

It may be just terminology, but you cannot copy and split a tree, unless you really mean Project.

Before you start please ensure you have used File > Backup/Restore > Full Backup (Entire Project Folder) so you can recover if anything goes wrong or you change your mind about having two Project trees.

What you must do is copy the Project as a whole.
i.e. Use File > Project Window > More Tasks > Copy Project and give it a new name.

The use File > Split Tree Helper on the two separate Projects to delete Individual records and all other records left with no links to them.
Also run the Check for Unlinked Media Plugin to delete superfluous image files.

However, please consider whether you really need two such Projects as the general advice is to keep all relatives together in one Project as the difficulties of managing two Projects where some Individuals are in both Projects can become intolerably tedious and error prone.
Perhaps you could explain why you think you need two Projects so that we can advise best policy.

[JMCKG]

Thanks for the reply. The reason I wish to split my tree is that it’s becoming too large. I‘m looking to have myself then go back to each grandparent and go back from there for each. So have one tree for Grandparent Jones, another for Black another for Smith, another for White.
One grandparent is French and I have found lots of French ancestors on Filae and would like them to be on a separate tree. Easier to edit etc.

[tatewise]

In what way is that large tree making things difficult to edit?
How large is it in terms of Individual records, as some users work happily with tens of thousands.

How are you gong to handle the common shared descendants of your four grandparents?
If you don't duplicate them in each Project then you won't be able to show their relationship to you.
Then you will have to update those descendants in four places.

The general advice is not to split such families at all.

[BobWard]

Mike's recommendation on not splitting your tree is sound advice. As he said, splitting your tree is going to create management headaches down the road. Plus, you lose all the potential ancestral relationships between your's and your wife's sides (or different grandparents sides) of the family.

For example, as I traced my and my wife's lineages in our combined tree, I found that we are both multi-great grandchildren of Charlemagne. That discovery also opened up other sub-tree branches where we had common ancestors. It is great to be able to see all those common relationships in one tree and have FH give instant readouts in terms of whether those relationships are distant cousins, aunts, uncles, or grandparents to each of us. You will lose that type of inter-family information read-out if you break your wife's tree (or grandparents trees) off from your combined tree.

In my opinion, FH software makes the management of your tree very easy, whether you have 100 people in it or 10,000, i.e., the software does all the record keeping and management work for you. I have 2,254 people in my tree and I have never been faced with any type of "management" problems due to the size of my "tree" (i.e., record database). Computers, combined with good software, are great database managers.