Record ID's - reusing numbers

angel50 · Post by **angel50** » 17 Feb 2007 12:43

As I am new to FH and genealogy, I was wondering if there is any way to 're-use' record numbers/IDs, when I've made an error and had to delete someone?[rolleyes]

ID:2183

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 17 Feb 2007 12:51

Personally I never worry about missing numbers, as your tree grows and you merge data from other sources your numbers may well get non sequential. You can use the Work With Record Identifiers Tools to renumber if you want to by

Copy the existing record IDs to the Custom Ids
Edit the Custom ID's as you want them ensuring you don't make any duplicates
Copy the Custom ID's back to the Record ID's using with Work With Tool again.

pwe · Post by **pwe** » 17 Feb 2007 18:58

If you just want to close up the record IDs you can do this by going to 'Tools' then 'work with record identifiers' then select the record type that you want to adjust the IDs on, then make sure that there is a dot against 'generate new record ids by re-numbering records, starting from 1' then press 'perform task'. This will make the IDs close up and use the unused spaces.

Peter E

RalfofAmber · Post by **RalfofAmber** » 17 Feb 2007 22:04

At the expense of sounding pedantic, it isn't best practice to re-use record numbers - they are what is called a unique key.

Although it probably hardly matters, if you had a utility that ran against the .ged file, you would be invalidating the other software if, e.g., Fred Blogs moved record number from 101 to 99 and the other utility would have no way of knowing

angel50 · Post by **angel50** » 19 Feb 2007 06:05

Thanks for the advice - I think, for safety, I wont bother trying to fill in the gaps! It may mean that ALL my records are renumbered and that's not what I want at all.

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