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

[Earl Schultz]

One more thing about importing data.  If you are importing the data from a Legacy file then you will also be asked to merge locations that may have slight difference especially if the giver of the data is not overly careful to record locations correctly or uses another method.  If importing from a GEDCOM, I think you will end up with some locations being in your master list twice because of the differences.  You'll eventually have to merge those.

I would start by importing the Gedcom to a Legacy file and then look over the data carefully and either select only what you want or fix anything that may need fixing before merging it with your data.

Re the merging process that Gary mentioned, yesterday I imported a file of 195 people that I selected from someone else's Legacy file.  It resulted in 2781 potential "duplicates" (some obviously existed before the import) and I find I can manage only to review about 1000 "duplicates" a day so this is about 3 days work on-and-off to complete the merge.  Make sure that if the two that you are comparing are definitely not duplicates that you mark them as such or they will keep coming up again in future merges.  For example two people with different death dates or someone who died as a child compared to someone who had a spouse.

Importing and merging is an important function to learn for the very reason you want to do it, Jeff.  I suggest you start small to learn the process.

Earl
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Message: 5
Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 21:48:37 -0800
From: Gary Warner <garyw555 at gmail.com>
To: Jeff Krebs <jeffkrebs at shaw.ca>,
	ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] How to import GEDCOM files to
	Legacy
Message-ID: <54717535.9030108 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

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