* Error - duplicated marriage!

[Hardyperennial]

Yes, it's me again! Mr hopeless.....back a year after losing a huge amount of data when my external drive packed up and I hadn't properly saved everything elsewhere. A lesson to everyone.....Here's my problem:

J.J. Barrett married E. Cowley 16 6 1880; I have many ancestral generations of both individuals.

At some point I have duplicated the marriage in error; they only married once. This entry contains the same ancestral generations for J.J. Barrett but none for E. Cowley. I can't simply delete the duplicate because the second one includes several generations of their descendants which would take hours to re-input.

How do I merge the duplicated entries without losing the ancestral and descendant generations for both individuals?

Thank you in advance.

Hardyperennial

[ColeValleyGirl]

Just to be absolutely clear, you've created two family records for the same couple, rather than simply 2 marriage events?

[tatewise]

OR have you two Individual records for E. Cowley?
One has ancestors and the other has none.
What are the Record Id of all the entries for both J.J. Barrett and E. Cowley in both marriages?

The easiest way to see those Record Id is to use Tools > Preferences > Focus Window and tick Record Ids lower left.

Then when you show J.J. Barrett and E. Cowley in the Focus Window their Record Id are displayed in square brackets.
So tell us what they are.

Are they also shown in the Focus Window as two different couples each with a marriage?
Click on the blue bar showing the marriage below their boxes. What is the Record Id of the Family records displayed?

[Hardyperennial]

Hello again! Sorry for the delay in replying - unwell but better now and looking forward to solving .
I'm attaching a Snip which will make my conundrum very clear. Ignore the *s by some forenames - just a little personal foible.

Barrett & Cowley duplicate marriage error.pdf

(128.74 KiB) Downloaded 24 times

Thanks again!

Tony aka Hardyperennial

[tatewise]

So as I suspected, you have two Individual records for *E. COWLEY.
One has Rec Id 1843 and the other has Rec Id 1867.
In the Records Window, on the Individuals tab, you should see those two entries listed.
Whereas, J J BARRAT Rec Id 1865 will only be listed once.

What is surprising is that both *E. COWLEY records have the same Birth, Marriage, Death, Notes & photo details which you must have spent some time entering twice!

Anyway, the solution is to merge those two *E. COWLEY records together.
But first, use File > Backup/Restore > Full Backup to provide a recovery option if things go astray.
So select those two Individual records in the Records Window and use Edit > Merge/Compare Records...
Hopefully, most rows of data will suggest a Null Merge or Keep or Add which should be OK.
If you have any doubts then post a screenshot (just attach the image rather than creating a PDF).
Finally click the Merge button.

Don't be surprised if there are two marriage partnerships shown in the Focus Window.
The difference is that the two entries for *E. COWLEY should have the same Rec Id.
Let me know when you reach that stage.
P.S. I'm going out this evening, so further corrections will have to wait until tomorrow and involve merging two Family records.