I changed the master source for 1 person, I should not have done that. It was changed to 1870,
now I have 1870 as the master source for people that it is not the right source. This affected many people in my file. How do I fix this mess, or do I have to do each person individually? Does RTM8 have a built-in fix that I can locate in the program?
If you have a backup file from before that mistake, restore that version.
Changing a Master Source, affects every citation of that source. So you cannot fix it one citation at a time because every change to a citation’s Source affects every other citation of that source. You will be chasing your tail.
RM does not allow you to switch citations to a different Source. You have to create new citations of the different source and delete the unwanted citations. If you’ve exploited the Merge all duplicate citations feature, you would be deleting the unwanted ‘uses’ of the old citation and adding uses of the new citation.
I suggest doing a new backup before trying to fix this so you have a recovery path. To add to what Tom said, it’s ok if you don’t have a recent backup, restore an older one (to a different directory), so that you can find and copy the original details of the master source you edited. That should let you put the master source back to the way it was in your main db, which should fix the bulk of your problem. (You’ll need to compare each field in the master source to similar field in the restored db). Then create a new source for the person & fact that caused you to edit the master source in the first place.
While RM8 does not have an automated way to fix this, it does allow you to see exactly where the source has been cited. Find the source in question in the ‘Sources’ View. Click on the ‘Citations’ column and then click on the ‘Used’ column of the appropriate citation. It’s a bit tedious if you have cited the source a lot. RM7 does not have a similar capability so if you are still on 7 it may be worth it to migrate your db to 8 just to identify all the citations and then fix them in 7. That way you can verify that you’ve fixed the issue everywhere.
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Thanks for getting back to me. I will use my backup to get things running again.
Thanks for the reply. I just didn’t think, now I will watch more closely what I am doing. Thanks again for the advice. I do have a backup.
We’ve all made that mistake… some of us more than once!