* Cleaning up Names After Import Question

[ChrisF_33]

G'day everyone, (yes, I'm from Australia),
This is my first post here, but I have been using FH for quite a few years, but as I have recently (thankfully) retired, I am now getting the time I need to work more solidly on my Family Tree. I really DO like Family Historian. It is a wonderful piece of programming, so well done all!

My first question is one of housekeeping. I had imported my GEDCOM file from Ancestry a long time ago, and perhaps because of this(?), the import has brought in multiples of people's names - probably due to merging issues in Ancestry? Anyway, they now show in the Boxes of Charts in FH (BTW, I am using FH7). Is there an easy way of cleaning this mess up? I've attached a small screen capture to show the problem.

Cleaning up multiple instances of names.JPG (15.39 KiB) Viewed 389 times

I did read this post, but I couldn't spot an exact one dealing with this issue, so I hope I am not wasting anyone's time if it has been covered before (or elsewhere). I'm happy to read and existing reply if it has been covered before, just need to know where to look. TIA.
ChrisF_33

[davidf]

Good Morning (it is in the UK - well morning at least, good if you like the cold)

Welcome to FHUG.

Many of the names you supply look very similar, even identical.

Identical names can be "merged" - only you can't, as far as I know easily do that!

If they are identical and have identical sources, I would delete all bar one of the duplicates. Alongside the name in the property box is "more ..." that takes you to a dialogue which allows a bit of "name management" - except you can no longer see the sources!

The key is the "All" tab:

All tab showing name

Screenshot from 2022-12-13 09-29-06.png (38.84 KiB) Viewed 379 times

This allows you to see all names - This example has just one.
I have adjusted the column with slightly to show the field names and I have clicked on the junction icons to open up the details for the name.

If you highlight a name as in the example above, pressing delete will remove it.
In the sources part of the window (V7 is somewhat different to this V6 example above), you will see icons to copy, paste and delete citations.

In your sort of situation I just use these icons to consolidate all the sources for a particular name variant on to one example of that variant and then delete the other examples of that variant.

Get back if you then still have too many name variants, and we can go into the next stage!

[tatewise]

Hi Chris.
Cleaning up Names needs different techniques to Events and Attributes so I've started a new thread for this new topic.
I'm not sure why David says the "more (+)..." Names & Titles dialogue does not show Sources because it does as long as the Show Sources For yellow pane is displayed. (Maybe it behaves differently in his FH V6.2 as opposed to FH V7.)

It should be possible to write a custom Query to list those multiple Names and their Sources.
Then it may be possible to delete some in bulk or at least provide a checklist for manual deletions.
If you need help with the custom Query then please ask again.

Any import from Ancestry may need other cleanup investigations too which we can discuss later.

[ChrisF_33]

G'day all,

Thanks for the replies.

Some are intriguing (I haven't delved into queries yet), but for those names that are indeed identical, they seem to have been the result of my very first forays into data merging from Ancestry Trees when I was using a different Family Tree application - and probably due to the lack of study / understanding of the process on my part. Where the names are identical, I have removed them using the More (+)... method. My Charts are looking much tidier now, so thank you.

I'll have to start looking at Places now, as most of my forebears are from the South and South West of England. Some of the imported (Ancestry again) data put my Ancestors in Somerset, Queensland (Australia) and I never knew there was a Somerset in Queensland!

BTW - temps in Western Australia are now heading up to the 30 degree C range (finally).