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Merging Two GEDCOMS


Richardxxx

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I have searched this site, and I am sure that this question will have been asked previously in "Gedcoms and Software" but I am unable to find it!

My TNG site has 1042 individuals. I am about to receive a GEDCOM covering some of the same people but in the main having different people and I want to merge the two together.

I use TNG as my main way of entering information.

I do have Legecy on my PC but when I download a GEDCOM from TNG I can't see in Legecy the "Person ID"

My question is

1. What is the best way to combine these two GEDCOMS - I am scared that the Person IDs in the new file will overwrite the Person IDs in the old file and leave me with a huge mess.

Many thanks

Richard Collinson

www.family-trees.org.uk

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1. What is the best way to combine these two GEDCOMS - I am scared that the Person IDs in the new file will overwrite the Person IDs in the old file and leave me with a huge mess.

Since you have Legacy, my suggestion is you merge within Legacy. While you can try merging within TNG, it may not necessarily be an easy process. Make sure you first backup your files including your MySQL database.

What I've done a few times is to load the new GEDCOM into it's own Legacy Database applying a source for all non-blank fields in the new Gedcom.

Then using View Split Screen, do a quick compare of the new data to what you already have to see how much overlap there is. You may find problems in the new data that needs to be normalized to better map to your file - for example the way places are designated, names, and sources in general. Cleanse the new data to improve your chances on a good merge.

If you decide to merge the data, then I suggest you make a copy of your original Legacy database, export the new GEDCOM legacy database back to a GEDCOM. Then import the newly extracted GEDCOM back into your new copy of data. I usually set the import to start Numbering incoming data at a number higher than my highest person ID. After you import the new GEDCOM run the Merge program to be able to combine the new with the old matches. I often quit in the middle of a merge process to reconcile how to proceed, and then restart the Merge. Again backups have often saved me from an overly zealous "merge right with left" decision.

Once you have cleaned up the data, then just export your whole file and import it into TNG - I usually replace all records since the Legacy file is my master, but importing changes usually works too.

There may be better and more elegant approaches, but these are my thoughts having just gone through this pain working with new information from a newly found researcher in my family.

TomK

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