Is it possible to duplicate a person? i.e., I would like to right click/Duplicate and have it make a copy of the person, all his facts, etc., as if you were copying a file in Windows.
If it is not possible to copy a person, is it possible to “drag” or in some way move facts from one person to another?
Actually, I don’t think either of those are possible, sigh, but I’m asking just in case, because it would make it so much easier to separate this person with tons of facts into two people.
Not ALL facts for a singular person. Family facts (Marriage etc.) won’t be preserved if you Drag ‘n’ Drop the individual to a fresh new temp database without spouse(s). Then Modify the Given/Surname for uniqueness. Drag’em back to the originating database. Trim facts from each
File > Create a New RootsMagic File > then drag over from originating database.
That’s a great idea! I think I can handle that, I’ll give it a try. Thank you for the help!
Holly
I have experimented with drag and drop a person to a temporary database and then drag and drop them back. My results were very unsatisfactory.
In my particular case, the problem was that I ended up with duplicate sources that could not be merged and I ended up with duplicate source templates that could not be merged. I’m using source templates of my own design. I suspect you wouldn’t encounter this problem if you were using RM’s free form source template or if you were using RM’s built-in source templates.
Well, I haven’t tested but you might end up with duplicate sources even if you are using RM’s free form source templates or if you were using RM’s built-in source templates. You wouldn’t end up with duplicate source templates, but I suspect you would have duplicate sources. If so, the duplicate sources should merge ok. You would have to know to find them and merge them.
A “copy a person” tool would a much better solution. A “copy a person” tool would need to be sure not to create duplicate source templates. The tool would need to make a decision about duplicating sources or not (you might wish to change the source for the newly copied person) and to make a decision about including media from the first person with the copy. My thinking is that a “copy a person” tool should be very literal and should just copy the person - lock, stock,and barrel. Then let the user make any needed changes to the newly copied person. Just make sure the tool doesn’t duplicate any source templates or sources.
Why? Is it because the accumulated facts and sources for the first person are really for two different people and you want to uncombine them?
Thanks for the heads up, I will watch for that. I use standard RM source templates.
Holly
Yes, over time I have been collecting anything and everything that might pertain to this one person into one person record, but I have learned some things that allows me to split them out.
Holly
That worked very well, thanks for the advice. I made a copy of my database file, and in that copy, I changed the name of the person I wanted to split up. Then I dragged him back to my real database. Then I deleted the facts from each that belonged to the other one.