Family Historian User Group

why do some of the record ID match the custom ID whilst other do not and also I now find that some do not have a custom ID
John

ID:6432

The RecordID is the important one, the CustomID is there as a tool.

If you enter a new individual, a new CustomID will not be given automatically, a RecordID will be.

If you merge individuals you may get two CustomIDs  

If you want the RecordID and the CustomID to be the same, then BACK UP YOUR DATA (because this is where things can go horribly wrong) use
TOOLS > WORK WITH RECORD IDENTIFIERS > INDIVIDUALS (in the box) and then pick the fourth radio buttons to set the current records. To be honest, I don't see the need.

Chris, thanks for that, but why is it there and no way of accessing it is in the manual, also why have some of my records have sources via my name and others do not, and some have no sources via file merged,some have 2 and some have 5, and does this contribute to adding other members of families who should not be there?
John

johncommins said:
Chris, thanks for that, but why is it there and no way of accessing it is in the manual,

Not sure what you mean - if you go into the help and search on Custom ID there are about 10 pages where Custom ID is held.

also why have some of my records have sources via my name and others do not

The only ones that will have sources are those that you or someone else has added. Sources are not mandatory - but are really helpful when you look at the record and think 'How do I know that?' Some sources are rubbish, some absolute truth

, and some have no sources via file merged,some have 2 and some have 5,

The person creating those record has put them there (or not). Also FH will add some if you tick the appropriate box when merging.

and does this contribute to adding other members of families who should not be there?
John

Can't see why. You might have a number of RecordIDs all of 1 - the thing that differentiates them is that an individual is i1, a family f1, a source s1 etc

Looking at my granddad, I must have 20 or 30 different sources (censuses, army, his personal stuff etc) against him.

The most important things that differentiate Record Id from Custom Id are:

(1) FH automatically assigns a unique Record Id to every Record, which ensures each one can be uniquely identified, even if two or more Records have the same Name or Title, or even none at all.

(2) If any Records are deleted, then their Record Id are deleted with them, and not usually re-used, so there may be gaps in the numbers.

(3) The user optionally assigns Custom Id to any Record for any purpose, but they do not have to be unique, do not have to be numeric, and can be edited or deleted.

thanks for the info so far, but I know that each person entered gets record ID, but if I have never entered a custom id why have some got the same numbers,some different and some with no custom id, surely this must make a difference in how FH reads the information
John

It makes no difference what is in the customid field.

As to how have they got there? Have you merged any files in?

If you don't want them in, you can delete them, either individually or by including CustomID as a column in a query and deleting them in there en masse.

As a result of your first enquiry, I checked my records and about 15,000 had CustomIDs and about 30 had more than one.