+ sign before names in People List

RootsMagic
1

I have found several people with a + sign before the name.
It is almost as if they are husband and wife but they are usually the same person.
I have noticed this sometimes happens when I do a manual Merge but not all the time.
To further complicate matters, some of these people have not been merged AND others are not even the same sex with totally different names.
Example of two lines

  • Welf, Adelaide-18612 F 18612 Bef 876 Bourgogne, France Aft 14 Jul 929
    Welf, Adelaide-18612 F 18612 Bef 876 Bourgogne, France Aft 14 Jul 929
    This was not Merged by me.
    Malcolm1
2

A + sign before the name indicates an ALTERNATIVE NAME for the person–commonly used for nicknames William ‘Bill’ Jones or Clarence Joh Smith aka John C Smith BUT I have seen where merges have resulted in an alternative name being added usually because one has a middle name such as Sarah Sue Smith vs Sarah Smith or the spelling is slightly different somehow-- BUT there seems to be no difference in the example given above…

I would turn on the RIN NUMBER to see if these 2 entries are different #–if so, you can merge them-- if NOT , then check to see if the spouses, kids, parents etc are the same

1 Like
4

As an FYI for you, whenever you do a merge, you need to go in and clean up the info for the person-this is an example of a person in my test database that I merged several times and you can see I need to clean up quite a bit…

image

1 Like
5

Good Point- basically exactly matches are merged for “Rows” (Facts) if not exact match items can be “duplicated” and then you need to clean up. I suppose this is case where some items (family facts) would be nice to be able to edit vs delete and re-enter

6

Good day, question please.
What is a RIN number

7

Record Identification Number - assigned by the database system to each person in the database file in the order they have been added. Option in General Settings for it to be displayed after names.

If known, can be faster way to search for a person than by using name.

8

Hello. This is one of those things I find quite annoying.
You, and others, have used this RIN number, title, description, ID?
We are talking RootsMagic and there is no RIN number in Roots.
What we do have is a Rec#.
This is the ‘official’ name at the top of the page, be it a person page or any other.
In Windows we have File, Edit, View etc.
In Roots we have Name, Sex, Rec# etc.
So I have now found a RIN number.
If I may come back to my original problem, why the + sign at the beginning of the name.
Yes the RIN (Rec#) numbers are the same.
That is why I cannot remove the name with the ‘+’ sign without removing the ‘correct’ person.
If this was just a couple of people, that would be bad enough, but I have dozens of these duplicated names with a + sign preceding the family name.
Now for some magic.
I went to the family Welf that I used in my first example and I checked, no, had a look at, the ‘Details’.
Sure enough there were some similar details, like with or without a middle name.
I corrected this in the Welf family and the ‘+’ has disappeared.
So, not only have I discovered RIN numbers but the magic behind some of the software.
So thank you everybody who has sent me assistance with this problem.
All I have to do now is make the ‘Living’ box NOT the default.
I have 24,000 + people on my tree and only 2 living entries in the last three years.
Thank you once again.
Malcolm1

9

That question was answer in a post that you responded to from nkess. I will quote from her post:
“A + sign before the name indicates an ALTERNATIVE NAME for the person–commonly used for nicknames William ‘Bill’ Jones or Clarence Joh Smith aka John C Smith BUT I have seen where merges have resulted in an alternative name being added usually because one has a middle name such as Sarah Sue Smith vs Sarah Smith or the spelling is slightly different somehow-- BUT there seems to be no difference in the example given above…”

I will also further add that many people record every variant of a name as found in records and each of these is an Alt Name which will show the + sign. Many people record a woman’s married name as an Alt Name which also causes a + sign…so in all cases, you will see a + sign for anyone that has an Alt Name of some type entered.

As fort this, what exactly are you talking about? If you turned on the Record Number, it is indeed listed as RIN in the option to select numbers to display so what are you referring to as the “official name at the top of the page”. I am also not certain of your distinct references to Rootsmagic and Roots. Roots is a long dead genealogy program while Rootsmagic is still alive and doing fine.