[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] How to import GEDCOM files to Legacy

[Gary Warner]

Jeff,

If you are importing new data into Legacy, during the import process 
Legacy will ask you to assign a source to the data being imported. I 
strongly suggest that you always assign a source to any data that you 
receive from others.   That way you will always be able to tell who 
provided specific data by looking at the source ID for any given 
record.   Giving a source ID to all imported records also allows you to 
delete that data later if you determine that it is not as good as it 
first appeared.   Be careful about deleting any records containing a 
specific ID, however, because if you have merged any of the imported 
records with your personal data, then deleting all records that contain 
the source ID imported will also delete your personal data for those 
merged records.

Once you import data into your file, you will have to go through the 
merge process to make sure that you merge all duplicate records. Note 
that if extended family sends you data, that there will ALWAYS be 
duplicate records after the import.   during the merge process in 
Legacy, you will be presented with all of the differences in the records 
to be merged, and you will have to decide which data to keep, and which 
to discard.   If you do not know which data is correct, then you will 
have to add some notes or make some event entries to note the lack of 
ability to merge.

Remember that the merge process is permanent, and it can be very 
difficult to undo merged records, so be careful in what you do. AND 
ALWAYS MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR PERSONAL FILE BEFORE YOU IMPORT ANY DATA, 
AND ANOTHER BACKUP BEFORE YOU START THE MERGE.   I have been doing 
merges almost continuously for more than a dozen years, and I still make 
mistakes when merging.   It is only because I have backups of the 
original file, and a copy of the data being imported that I can manage 
to undo my mistakes.

When you finish the merge, make sure that you do a Search using Legacy's 
Search button (the magnifying glass).  Look at the Miscellaneous tab in 
the search criteria find the following: "Individuals with multiple 
parents".   Sometimes you do not finish a merge completely when you 
think you have, and sometimes you make an error that causes some persons 
in your data to have two sets of parents.   If the parents are the same 
and need to be merged further, than do a manual merge to eliminate the 
duplicates.  If, on the other hand you discover in this search that you 
have records where the parents are obviously different people, then you 
have some un-merging to do.

Gary


On 11/22/2014 2:57 PM, Jeff Krebs wrote:
> Gary Warner
>
> Would you please post the method used to safely import data from shared GEDCOM files into Legacy.  I've received a few GEDCOM files from family over the years and I'd like to import to my Legacy database, but I've been very hesitant about the process.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Jeff Krebs
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ger-Poland-Volhynia site list
> Ger-Poland-Volhynia at sggee.org
> https://www.sggee.org/mailman/listinfo/ger-poland-volhynia