* Relationships linking gone wrong

[jsphillips]

I want to unlink a male and spouse within a large database who have children and several generations correctly beneath him and them from a wrong father.
Then to relink him to a new father same name
I have followed the book "getting the most from Family Historian 6" and also the knowledge base.
To no avail all went wrong and I had to restore.
(1) In Focus window do I use the spouses and children tab or the parents and children tab first ?
(2) Do i then click on the wrong father and unlink OR
(3) click on correct son (and therfore spouse and all beneath him) and unlink him from wrong father
(4) and then to relink him his spouse and all generations beneath him to new father.
Very confused !
Help Please

[RogerF]

John, John, John,

I have read your latest misfortune over and over, and I still have no idea what you want do and why you seem to unable to. You really do need to take a lot more care in describing your problems. Unless your query is carefully and clearly worded, other users will not be able to understand what is apparently not working in the way that you wish, and so everybody's time is wasted (especially that of the indefatigable Mike Tate).

Now, try to rephase the situation in a word picture, perhaps along the lines of:

In my tree:
M1 is married to F1, and have children M2, M3, F2 and M4.
M3 is married to F3, and have a child F4.
M4 is married to F5.
...

I have discovered that F3 is married not to M3, but instead to M99. How can I make this correction?

The more precise your word picture, the better (and quicker) will be full instructions. Okay?

[tatewise]

John, are you saying the husband in a family has the wrong father, i.e. wrong parents?

In that case, on the Focus Window select the Spouses & Children tab.
Ensure the 'wrong' Father is the Focus person who you want to unlink from his Son.
Single-click the errant Child so that his Property Box is displayed (wee need that later).
Right-click the errant Child and choose Unlink Record.
That will unlink that Child from both his parents (father & mother).

Now in that Child's Property Box we opened earlier, click the blue Up arrow at the top.
Click Link Existing Person as Parent and choose the correct Father (who may also have a wife).
OR click Add Father (new record) if he does not yet exist in your database, and subsequently add his wife, and any other ancestors, etc.

BTW: When things go wrong like that, simply use Edit > Undo several times to get back where you started.

FYI: Using that Unlink Record option on the in Focus person will unlink them from their Spouse not their Parents. So Unlink Record for the 'wrong' in Focus Father will unlink him from his Spouse not his children. Similarly, Unlink Record for the 'wrong' in Focus Son will unlink him from his Spouse not his parents/children.

[LornaCraig]

As Mike has indicated in his last paragraph, using the Unlink operation in the Focus Window does involve thinking very carefully about which relationship you want to unlink the individual from. This may be why things went wrong in your first attempt.

An alternative approach, which I think removes the ambiguity, is to do the unlinking in the All tab of the Property box. Open the Property Box of the person who is linked to the wrong father. Go to the All tab. There you will see a line labelled Parents family, followed by the name(s) of the parent(s). Right click on those parents' names. Select Replace Link With... and then select either Link to New Family Record or Link to Existing Family Record as appropriate. You can then either select the correct (existing) parents or add the names of new ones if they are not in your file already.

If you do it this way it is quite clear that it is the Parents you are unlinking from and replacing with new Parents.