While everyone else is out at the beach or setting up the barbeque, I’m going to be indoors under the brand new a/c merging my three databases.
I’ve written previously about how I initially separated my genealogy into three database. This was because way back in the days of DOS the genealogy software I was using had a limit on individuals in each database. It seemed to make some kind of sense to keep my Mom’s lines separate from my Dad’s back then. But, it doesn’t any more.
Today I took the first step. I created a brand new database in RootsMagic. I selected my Pacheco-de Braga database as my base. It was my largest with 7,000+ individuals. I cleaned it up a bit deleting my Dad’s side.
After that, I sent rover over…or dragged the Jones/Jackson and Lassalle/Mazeres databases into the newly created one. I was going to work from GEDCOMs, but this seemed easier. It worked quite well.
Next, I have to do some clean up.
1. Merge the duplicate people. It was impossible to delete everyone who might be a duplicate. Also, I was afraid I might have input something into one database but not the other. So, now I’m identifying the duplications and merging them together.
2. Clean up duplicate fields after merging. Merging is a great way to get rid of duplicates, but it creates another problem–duplicate fields within individual entries. I am cleaning each person up right after I merge them, so I don’t forget what I’ve done.
3. Go over my place list to make sure I don’t have any duplicates.
4. Go over my source list to make sure there isn’t anything screwy.
I hope that I’ll have all this done this weekend. I shouldn’t have too much clean up since I removed duplicate people prior to combining all three databases. I think my biggest problem with be cleaning up the place names. We’ll see how careful I was about being uniform.
I’ll be happy when I have this done. I won’t have to think about who is in what database. And, I won’t have to worry about updating a person in one database and not the others.
