Family Historian User Group

I made a mistake in who my great-grandfather was, and want to delete everything about the wrong person.

Initially, I thought it was John Q. Smith, so I entered him, his children, and a whole bunch of ancestors. I also entered his wife, Sally Q. Jones, and all of her ancestors.

I later then found out it was a different John Q. Smith. Oops.

So how do I delete the erroneous John Q. Smith and all of his ancestors and children, as well as Sally Q. Jones and all of her ancestors? I'd also like to delete any supporting records (multimedia, notes, source, etc.) that become orphaned due to deletion of John and Sally.

I think the answer is the Split Tree Helper, with the options chosen below (and I would select John Q. Smith as the "starting person"). Do all the options below look correct for what I'm trying to do?

You can remove an erroneous ancestor from your tree (i.e. the linked set of relationships to which you belong) but leave their details on file (i.e. in the "Project") - which could be useful if you come across someone else and wonder "where do they belong? in my tree or in that other tree than I chased in error?" Who knows that erroneous Great Grandparent may turn out to be a distant cousin of your correct Great Grandparents - be a shame to have thrown away all that work!

If I have added someone to my tree in error I tend to use the all tab to delete the erroneous link - but leave the rest of the data.

Presumably you have got you correct grandfather or grandmother added as a child to the incorrect great grandfather and great grandmother?
If so go to the All tab in the property box for your grandfather or grandmother and find the Parent Family link (to the incorrect parents) and press delete! This will detach the person from those parents without actually deleting "the parents" as individuals within the file. You will then have one more tree in your file.

As for flushing all those details out of the file, before doing what you ask about I would separate the trees as described above first. Then you can confidently select everything to do with the incorrect "great grand parents" and delete them without accidentally deleting your real grandparents!

Others I am sure will comment about the safest way of doing the comprehensive flush that you request.

Before doing anything, make sure you have a Full Project Backup, just in case things go awry.

What David suggests has some merit, but an alternative approach is to export those erroneous Great Grandparents and create a separate Project just in case you discover they are distant relatives.
Use the File > Import/Export > Export > GEDCOM File command followed by File > Project Window > New Project.

Then you can use the File > Split Tree Helper but NOT with that Query, which includes Descendants!

There is no available Query that I could find that does the selection of relatives you require.
Remember you don't want any descendants of your Great Grandparents, but you do want both their ancestors, and any descendants of those ancestors such as cousins, and the Ancestors Query won't do that.

So the best solution is what David suggests and unlink your Great Grandparents from your Grandparent.
Then you can use the standard All Relatives Query for both the Export > GEDCOM File and Split Tree Helper.

tatewise wrote: ↑

10 Feb 2020 17:32

Then you can use the File > Split Tree Helper but NOT with that Query, which includes Descendants!

Provided that the (correct) grandparent, and any of his (correct) siblings, have already been unlinked from the (incorrect) great-grandparents, as advised by David, deleting or exporting any remaining descendants of the incorrect great-grandparents is OK because they are not part of the correct family.

Another approach, after doing the unlinking, would be to run the Search for Orphans query. You should find that all the 'wrong' people are in a Pool of their own, i.e. they have a different Pool number from your main family. Select all those in the Pool and use Add Selected Cell Records to Named List (from the cog menu in the query toolbar). You can then delete all records in the Named List.

To find any orphaned Source records, Media records, etc, use the Records window and click the heading on the Citations or Links column, as appropriate, to bring all the records with no links together. (You may need to hold down the Alt key at the same time to bring the ones with zero links to the top). This gives you the opportunity to review them to make sure there are none you'd like to keep. They can then be added to a Named List for deletion. You would need to use this technique for unused Place Records even if you did the main deletion with the Split Tree Helper, as it doesn't have an option for deleting Place Records with no links.

Yes, once you have unlinked the erroneous Great Grandparents, there are any number of options.
The deletion of redundant Place records is a good point that I overlooked.
Also run the Check for Unlinked Media Plugin to purge any orphaned Media files from deleting unused Media records.

Provided that the (correct) grandparent, and any of his (correct) siblings, have already been unlinked from the (incorrect) great-grandparents... deleting or exporting any remaining descendants of the incorrect grandparents is OK because they are not part of the correct family.

Yes, that is exactly what I've done. Everything with the new, correct great-grandparents is correct.

Everything with the old, incorrect great-grandparents has been un-linked. All of their ancestors and descendants can go. It's basically data that never should have been entered.

Before doing anything, make sure you have a Full Project Backup, just in case things go awry.

Always!!

I actually use Subversion to keep everything backed up and versioned... media, projects, GEDCOM files, etc.

Another approach, after doing the unlinking, would be to run the Search for Orphans query...

Ooh, I like this approach!

I ran the Search for Orphans, verified all the people in the other pools are the people I want deleted, and added them to a Named List.

To delete them, I first tried Edit > Delete, but that seems to be to remove the records from the Named List as opposed to actually deleting the records. Then I found the Lists > Delete Named List Records.

To find any orphaned Source records, Media records, etc, use the Records window and click the heading on the Citations or Links column, as appropriate, to bring all the records with no links together

So this is odd. After deleting the orphaned individual records, I thought I'd run the plugin Check for Unlinked Media. To my surprise, it told me "No Unlinked Files Found". When I bring up the Media tab and sort by Links, it shows quite a few media files with 0 links. Did I do something wrong??

That Links column is the number of Links from other records (Individual, Source, etc).
i.e. Those Media records have been orphaned by your deletions.
After they've been deleted via a Named List their associated Media files will be orphaned and handled by the Plugin.

BUT don't do any of that until you have deleted any Note, Source, Repository & Place records that have become orphaned by your Individual record deletions, because that may orphan more Media records.

That is why I advised using Split Tree Helper as it deletes all those orphans in one go (except for the Place records).

Ah, gotcha!

The Media Records Link column indicates how many other records in FH are using that particular Media Record. Zero indicates the Media Record is "orphaned".

The plugin Check for Unlinked Media finds (and optionally deletes) actual hard drive files that don't have an associated Media Record, meaning the physical file itself has been "orphaned".

Yeah, maybe the Split Tree Helper would have been easier / more automatic. But I like the control over seeing and reviewing what's being deleted. I learned some things, and also found some orphaned records that were somehow accidentally unlinked and should not have been orphaned.

Thanks for the help!!