Merge duplicate sources

RootsMagic
1

I recently transferred several individuals from an old database (1) to a new database (2), both RM9.

On DB1, I have a single source (A), with a single (unnamed) citation with multiple uses, for example:

  • Tom (Birth)
  • Jack (Birth)

When I dragged Tom and Jack from DB1 to DB2, I ended up with 2 copies of source (A) on DB2:

  • Source (A), single (unnamed) citation, Tom (birth)
  • Source (A), single (unnamed) citation, Jack (Birth)
    This was exactly as I expected.

I assumed that ‘Merge all duplicate sources’ would result in a single Source (A) with two unnamed citations each with one use:

  • Tom (birth)
  • Jack (birth)
    This is not what happened.
    I still had two versions of source (A).

I was able to carry out a manual merge of the two sources, resulting in a single source with two citations.
Finally, ‘Marge all duplicate citations’ worked as expected, so I ended up with what I wanted::

  • One source
  • One citation
  • Two uses

Since the two copies of source (A) on DB2 were generated from the same copy on DB1, they must be exact duplicates - apart from any internal system data. So is there an explanation for why they failed to merge - or have I misunderstood the functionality ?

2

I don’t believe it will merge unnamed sources or citations. There is nothing for it to compare against. Try naming it and then run merge.

3

The sources are named. The citations are unnamed, but merge successfully.

I think I may have identified the problem.
All my sources, on both DB1 and DB2 use an identical custom source template, named AGP.
Whenever a source is copied from DB1 to DB2, RM creates a new instance of the source template.
So, I end up with multiple instances of source template AGP - all identical.
It is quite understandable that this should happen with custom templates, but not with built-in templates.

My identical sources do not merge because, although they all refer to a source template with the same name, the templates have different internal reference numbers.
This seems to be a likely explanation.