iFamily for Leopard does a nice job of merging genealogy data from one database into another, but there are many steps and some pitfalls to avoid. This video walks you through the individual steps of the three stages:
- prep
- merging
- clean up
There are potential gotchas if the prep and clean up are skipped as well as one other thing I didn’t go into in the video.
Take special care to check the source citations of the migrated data. The copy person feature copied sources that were cited for the copied people; However, it didn’t cite the sources the way I expected. For example, one person I was copying had a residence citation of a 1900 US census document. A quick check after copying showed that the source and residence event made the trip. Unfortunately, the residence event was not cited with the census source in the target database! This bears repeating: check the citations on the merged people in the target database.
With that caveat offered, I present this video from the MacGenealogist Archives.
I must be doing something wrong.
I want to copy descendants from one data base to another.
I tried two methods and neither did what I wanted:
Method One:
Left click the father in the source data base
Right clicked the same person in the target database
Selecting merge properties
Selected the desired source file
The window which opened showed the kids in the source database I wanted to move to the Target data base but does not provide an arrow for that section of the form although it does for all the other data windows. There’s also a plus sign but no means to move a marriage over, no arrow. If I select the plus sign I get the message: Unable to find an event of type MARR in target database into which to merge the source data. But that’s what I want to put there the fact they got married and the date. Mystery.
Method II
Create a fictive father of the father in the source data base.
Left click the new guy in the source
Right click the father ghost box of the father
Up pops the copy person from ,…. box
Click included ancestors and their spouses so I cant get the descendents and click that
Click select all
click copy
Click backup to make that go away
window pops up saying, “Please ensure that both the child and the parent have a valid birth year – they may be approximate dates.”
I do nothing about this because I have no dates to enter, just names. Do we have to have a birth date to enter someone?
Clicked OK even though I didn’t fix the date issue.
It then tells me:
“0 people were copied to the target model. Inspect the changes and if necessary you can invoke Undo.”
I click OK b/c not ok is not an option.
How does one merge descendants successfully?