Hi, I’m wondering if anyone else has come across this problem, or better yet, a way to fix it?
I have a family in my file where 3 of the siblings had duplicates in FamilySearch. I went into FS on their website and merged the duplicates. But I can’t get RM8 to let me link the person to the new FSID#, or to let go of the old number.
Here, the person is still showing with the old FSID# (993M-QHH), even though I already used the “unlink” option, and the ‘FS Person Tools’ window is no longer showing her as being linked to that number. If I try to link her to the new # (L6R6-3F5), under the ‘Find Matches’ tab, I get a window asking me if I want to merge the two IDs on FS.
I know that these two people are already merged, but I go ahead and click “Review Match” anyway, just to humor RM. This opens FS in my browser window, where it shows me that person 993M-QHH was already deleted, merged into person L6R6-3F5. I go back to RM, and select “I’ve merged the dups on FamilySearch’”.
This should now link my RM person to the new number, but it does not. If I then open the “FS Person Tools” window for Mildred’s daughter, it shows that RM still has her linked to the old number, rather than the correct FSID# on FS.
Thank you for the suggestion, Lorna. Yes, I have run the database tools several times. Also restarted my computer after downloading the latest version of RM8 yesterday. Still having the same problem.
I ran into this problem a few days ago, and couldn’t figure out how to fix it within RootsMagic - seems some kind of button or tool is needed somewhere to unlink this now “vanished from FamilySearch Family Tree” person.
In the end, I used DB Browser for SQLite to peek into the inner workings of the database and delete the offending row from the “FamilySearchTable” - look for the row with the offending ID in it and delete that - that’s what worked for me.
Right click on the row number (to the left of the LinkID column) and choose Delete Record.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Roger! That did the trick.
You are supposed to be able to “unmatch” a person from a FSID# within RM, but there is a bug preventing that from working, apparently.
I assume that while working with the database in DB Browser, you should have RM closed, and vice-versa, so that the database is only open in one program at a time?
Yes - that would be the safest way to do this. Sorry I forgot to mention that initially.
You’re probably OK having it open in the DB Browser for SQLite while working in RootsMagic, since the DB Browser doesn’t change anything until you click the button to “Write Changes” (which I also forgot to mention), but I’d for sure close RootsMagic before making any change with the DB Browser.
I had it happen twice to me - once when I saw the list of other candidates offered after I’d made the first link, then went off to FamilySearch to merge the duplicates there, then came back to find it broken because I’d merged the one I initially linked in RootsMagic so it was gone. The second time RootsMagic crashed and when I reopened it there was the problem with the link to the FamilySearch person. Both times deleting the affected row from the FamilySearchTable fixed it.
Thought you might have Helen_CO_USA
I wonder how often re-indexing of such things happens on the FamilySearch end of the API?
And it will, eventually, come right?
I have a similar problem. In my RM8 file are 877 people with malformed FamilySearch IDs – they have the seven characters, but lack the DASH after 4th character. These individuals show as already matched to FS but provide no information on them in that row other than the malformed FamilySearch ID with the the DASH. There is currently no way to UNMATCH such a person. I have reported this to RM Tech Support, but am curious if others have this problem.
My solution would be to have the UNMATCH button available and then I could rematch to the correct person with the correct FamilySearch ID. This could also imply that the person may have been deleted/merged in FS.
Ugh! That is a lot of people to re-match by hand, even if you use DB Browser (mentioned by Kiwi, above) to delete all the bad ID#'s. If you haven’t done much work in RM8 yet, maybe you could delete the file, and re-import from RM7 (or wherever you imported from), and see if your database comes through better this time? (I’m assuming you did not have this issue in your previous program?)
I did import from RM7 so the problem existed there, but I have not visited those persons. FamilySearch changes person’s ID when merges happen, etc. I have never used DB Browser so will try looking at that too. Thank you.
Well, it is a year later, and this problem is still in RM8! I have been doing a lot of merging in Family Search, and was very frustrated until I found your post. It seems that if I only merge one or two times, the unlink/relink options still work. But 3 or more, no luck! Yesterday I was able to restore my linked deleted record, unlink it, then re-merge on FS and relink to the surviving person. Not fun, but it worked! So that is another “fix” option. In the future, I plan to un-link people from FS before merging duplicates to help prevent this from happening.
Any way to do a report/figure out what Family Search links records are “broken” and need to be fixed? Thanks for any help!
Since this thread was opened we added an UnMatch button on the Find Matches screen. So you should be able to UnMatch is the person has been deleted. It all depends on if the person was deleted or merged with someone else as to if unlinking first is necessary. Sometimes moving to a new person and coming back you will find the FSID updated.
If you are needing to merge duplicates on FamilySearch there is a confirmation button in RM when returning that confirms the merging is done. If you use that it will update to the new FSID if there is one.
@rzamor1 Thank you for the quick response and suggestions. Unfortunately, I have tried everything you suggested and it didn’t work for my people whom had a lot of merges – at least 3 or 4.
In these cases, the UnMatch button on the Find Matches screen doesn’t do anything. And the confirmation that merging is done button doesn’t either – both these issues are the same as described in the original post. I repeated the steps multiple times, have also tried rebooting my computer, closed and re-opened RM, and even waited several days and come back to see if there was a delay in updating, All to no avail. I have noticed that when there are only 1 or 2 merges on a person, unmatching and rematching does work fine just as you describe. So that is why I posted.
Ok. I was able to recreate the problem using a copy of my database from several months ago. I will do a ticket when I get a chance. Thank you so much for pointing me in the right direction!
I am also having this problem again recently, which is weird because for several months it was fixed, but within the last couple of weeks it is broken again. I am on a Mac computer, running Monterey 12.6.1. I have the latest RM update, 8.2.7, from 12 Nov 2022.
I’m still having this problem with Monterey 12.6.2.
In the FamilySearch Person Tools, with a person selected, I click “UnMatch”, and a pop-up window asks if I want to “Unlink from FamilySearch?”. I click “Yes”, and the pop-up goes away, but the person is not unlinked.
