I have a gal who married a guy and they have two children. Not sure how I got here, but the same guy shows as her spouse twice in her edit person screen, and vice versa she shows up twice on his edit person screen. In one instance the couple have their two children, not in the other instance.
The gal was also married to another guy and he shows as her spouse as he should.
Both of these people show up once in the people list.
Fake surnames inserted for anonymity purposes.
How do I correct this? I’ve tried several things with no success.
Make a Backup. I would Unlink each of the children from parents, then on the Family View showing the parents, Add the offspring and you should be good.
Actually, I wouldn’t unlink the children at all because there is no no need to do so. Rather, highlight one of the spouses who is double linked and switch to Descendant View. In Descendant View, change to displaying 2 generations rather than the default of 7 generations.
At that point, you will see the double linked spouse listed twice. One of the listings will show the children and the other listing will not show the children. Right click the instance that does not show the children and choose Unlink => Unlink From Spouse.
One thing I forgot to mention was to check on the status of any Marriage or Divorce facts or anything like that for the couple after the unlink. You can have two people linked together as spouses without a Marriage fact but you can’t have a Marriage fact unless they are linked together.
If they are linked together more than once, then the Marriage fact can go with the first linkage or it can go with the second linkage. I doubt it would have happened, but if the couple had a Marriage fact and if it was for the linkage that did not include the children, you will have lost the marriage fact and you will need to put it back in.
By the way, I have a number of couples in my database who were married, divorced, and then remarried. I even have one couple who was married and divorced twice and then married again for the third time. In these cases, I only link the couple together once and then I add the required Marriage and Divorce facts to the one linkage as many times as necessary. I don’t create multiple linkages just because there were multiple Marriage and Divorce facts. I have never quite known if that is the best procedure or not, but it is the procedure I have chosen to use.
I have run into this “problem” multiple times, when distant cousins marry distant cousins. Mine happen when I already have an entry with his/her spouse, and then enter it down the spouse’s line (weeks or months later). This may not apply to how you got there. I then merge the husbands and then the wives and clean up their individual data.
I have the same type of problem where the same spouse is listed as 2 different spouses of the same husband. However, the couple is in my line twice (first cousins married each other 200 years ago) so if I unlink her I’m afraid it will unlink the other connection. What do I do?
Should be no problem. If they are first cousins, that’s not because they are linked once or a dozen times as a couple; it’s because they have a common ancestor in your tree. You still need to unlink the spouse having no children as Jerry described.
1st–Backup your database
Then go in and see if you have more than one Abigail and more than one Elizabeth in your database-- if so Merge MANUALLY all instances of Abigail and all instances of Elizabeth
Then go in and unlink EVERYBODY from Benedict Sr-- then go to Benedict Sr’s page-- add SPOUSE when the screen appears
Use Select Existing Person-- find Elizabeth then attach her–after that attach the kids to the couples page…
edit-- then check to see if everything is correct ( probably need to reset --set relationships)-- if everything is OK, backup the database-- if not skip backup-- then open the old backup and get back with us
edit again-- you should also check to see if there is more than one Benedict Sr in the file-- if so manual merge him before the unlink
Looks like two different Elizabeths. Turn the record numbers on so you can tell for sure. Go to Settings, General Settings and under Number to display select RIN. Once you confirm they are duplicate people and not duplicate links then use manual merge under the Tools (wrench) icon. You can also right click on one and select Manual merge.
@rzamor1 is correct that it does look like you have 2 different Elizabeths ( one has a birth info–one does NOT) – it also looks like there are 2 different Abigails as 2 have a birth of 29 June 1739 and the 3rd says 1739, June 29… hopefully just merging them will take care of the problem BUT if not follow the instructions for unlinking everybody and then relinking them
Abigail Hammock- her dates are in the data base (?) on the L. but won’t list in the picture on the R.
For some reason the dates are in reverse order on the left (death is listed 1st, birth is listed later).
I’m afraid to touch it . There seems to be a flaw somewhere when the information that I input on the Left side is not reflected on the right side.
How is the date order for Abigail (29 June 1739 and 1739, June 29) reversed? No matter how you type it, the program switches it to the chosen order for all dates. They should be the same.
No flaw-- this is how the pedigree view works-- you need to go into to Family view and then you should see the same birth etc on the left and right
Sorry to say BUT your going to have to STOP BEING AFRAID to touch something or you are going to have to LIVE WITH the duplication–THAT IS WHY I TOLD YOU TO MAKE A BACKUP 1ST— if it messes up, you can always get out of the current version by skipping backup and restore the previous version–so there is nothing to be afraid of–that is also why I said to CHECK TO MAKE SURE EVERYTHING IS OKAY BEFORE YOU HIT BACKUP…
As for why one date is backwards, I am guessing here BUT it appears you have imported info from some other file into your original file and the imported file user listed their dates backwards-- UNTIL MERGED, this will NOT just change on it’s own-- this is also why you have the duplication as RM wasn’t sure Elizabeth b ca 1700 and Elizabeth no birth info were the same as well as the Abigails
Your “1739 JUne 29” date is invalid. RMdoes not recognise it as a valid date and therefore it cannot or will not extract the year from it to populate the Pedigree View, the sidebar Index and other places that show only the year. I suspect that it is highlighted in yellow on the Edit Person screen, which indicates that it is handled as a text string, not as a date. That it shows June as JUne is a clue and I doubt that the format yyyy monthname dd is a format even offered by RM.
While NOT offered by RM, RM will allow you to use almost any kind of date
( Hebrew./ Quaker etc)-- but as you say it will turn yellow ( not Quaker that is allowed) and can NOT be used in the sort date-- it will show up in reports, family page or anywhere a normal date would-- just not the year only dates…
Since @DAP didn’t understand how it could be recorded backwards that made me think it was an import from somewhere else into her main file…
Dates were typed in, not imported. The only place I imported the old information from was RM7. All of the information I’m having trouble with has been typed in (lots of information from a family source book of two families that intermarried constantly 200 years ago) since I upgraded to RM9.
I merged the spouses. Then I unlinked Benedict from everybody- my entire tree is gone. I thought I could add some back and eventually it would connect others back in. I closed it out and my tree was back . This time I unlinked Phillip Combs/Abigail Hammock (original problem that showed Abigail has his wife 2x - they had children whose children married as first cousins. It created Phillip as having 2 spouses when I added the 2nd child back in. Everything was fine until I put their 2nd child in and it led to the marriage of the first cousins.
Now Abigail is in the list 3x and Phillip 2x in the people list. I added them back in and when it asked if i wanted to merge it with the first one I answered OK but evidently it created another one for each.
Looking over my pages of notes, the program asked me if i wanted to merge with the “first one”. Having no idea what the “first one” represented, I thought it meant the “first one” listed on the page as the first time I put their name in. I cked “OK” to merge the two for Philip and later for Abigail and when I checked the “People” page I now had another Phillip and another Abigail. Evidently, that is where I misunderstood the directions. After unlinking Benedict from everyone I relinked one sibing’s (John Combs) side and left the other (sibling Nancy Combs) until we clear up the numerous spouses problem.
