Tree cleanup
Your great-grandmother is in the tree four times
Twenty years of research, three imported GEDCOMs and a few hundred accepted hints, and the tree stops being a record and starts being a mess. We untangle it — duplicates merged without losing sources, dates and places made consistent — and hand it back with a written log of every change.
- Covers
- FTM 2024 · 2019 · 2017 · 2014
- Also
- GEDCOM imports
- Original file
- Never overwritten
You can do a good deal of this yourself, for free. Family Tree Maker has a built-in duplicate finder that most people never open — the section below explains exactly how it works. Come to us when the volume is beyond a rainy afternoon, or when a previous merge has already done damage you'd rather not repeat.
Why duplicates appear
Duplicates almost never arrive one at a time. They come in batches, from a small number of identifiable events — which is why a tree can be fine for years and then suddenly isn't.
| What happened | Typical result | Severity |
|---|---|---|
| Imported a relative's GEDCOM | Every shared ancestor now exists twice, with different spellings and date formats | High |
| Accepted Ancestry hints in bulk | Facts duplicated on the same person; occasionally a whole second person created | Medium |
| Edited the same tree in two places, then synced | Parallel copies of recently edited people | Medium |
| Merged another researcher's tree | Whole branches duplicated, sometimes attached to the wrong parents | High |
| A previous careless merge | Two different people combined into one — the hardest to undo | Severe |
| Manual re-entry over the years | A handful of duplicates with inconsistent name spellings | Low |
That last-but-one row is the one worth dwelling on. Merging two records that look alike but are actually a father and son, or two cousins named after the same grandfather, creates an error that propagates through every chart and report afterwards. Undoing it is far more work than the original merge saved.
How Family Tree Maker finds duplicates
Before paying anyone, run the built-in tool. It's genuinely good and it's free with the software you already own.
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Back up first. , media included. Merging is not straightforwardly reversible, so this is the one non-optional step. Full guide.
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Open .
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Family Tree Maker lists candidate pairs in two columns, with a match score beside each. The higher the number the more likely it's a genuine duplicate — 1,000 means an almost exact match.
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Select a row and click Compare/Merge to see both records side by side before deciding anything.
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Work top-down from the highest scores. Stop when the scores drop into territory where you're guessing — that's where mistakes get made.
A high score is not proof. Naming patterns being what they are, a father and son with the same name, born in the same parish, can score very highly and be two entirely different people. The score tells you where to look, not what to conclude.
What a cleanup project covers
| Area | What we do |
|---|---|
| Duplicate people | Every candidate pair reviewed individually. Facts, sources and media from both records preserved in the merge |
| Merge damage | Wrongly combined individuals identified and separated where the underlying data allows |
| Duplicate facts | Three birth dates on one person reconciled to one, with the alternatives kept as notes rather than deleted |
| Place names | Standardised to a consistent form so reports, maps and sorting behave |
| Dates | Mixed formats normalised; impossible dates flagged for you to decide on |
| Broken media links | Relinked where the files still exist, listed where they don't |
| Relationship errors | Children attached to the wrong parents, or step and adoptive links recorded as biological, corrected |
| Change log | A written record of every alteration, so nothing happens to your tree that you can't see |
How a project runs
You send a copy — never the original. A backup file is ideal. Your working tree stays untouched on your computer throughout.
We survey it and report back. How many duplicate pairs, how much merge damage, how inconsistent the places and dates are. You get a scope and a fixed cost before anything begins.
You approve, and we work. Judgement calls — anything where the right answer isn't obvious from the data — get flagged to you rather than guessed at.
You get the tidied tree, a GEDCOM and the change log. Review it at your own pace. Anything you disagree with, we discuss.
Keeping it clean afterwards
- Back up before every import. A GEDCOM import is the single biggest source of duplicates, and the only reliable undo is a backup.
- Run the duplicate finder after every import, not months later once the mess has been built on.
- Accept hints deliberately, not in bulk. Bulk-accepting is how three birth dates end up on one person.
- Pick one place-name convention and hold to it. Whichever you choose matters less than being consistent.
- Edit in one place. Editing the same tree on two machines and syncing is a reliable way to duplicate recent work.
Frequently asked questions
How does Family Tree Maker find duplicates?
lists candidate pairs in two columns with a match score beside each. The higher the score the more likely it's a real duplicate; 1,000 means an almost exact match. Select a row and click Compare/Merge to see both records side by side.
Is merging reversible?
Not straightforwardly — a merge combines two records into one and discards the second. The safeguard is a verified backup taken beforehand, which is why every cleanup project starts with one and why your original file is never the file we work on.
Will I lose sources or photographs?
Not if it's done carefully. The risk is real though: a hasty merge that keeps only one record's facts will quietly discard citations and media attached to the other. Reviewing each pair rather than bulk-merging is exactly what prevents that.
How long does it take?
It scales with the number of duplicate pairs, not the size of the tree. Several thousand people with a few dozen duplicates is quick. A tree that has absorbed three imported GEDCOMs is a different job — which is why we survey and quote before starting.
Two different people were merged years ago. Can that be undone?
Sometimes. It depends on whether the surviving record still carries enough evidence — conflicting dates, distinct sources, incompatible relationships — to reconstruct who was who. If an old backup predating the merge exists, that changes everything, so it's worth looking before assuming it's lost.
Can you clean a tree from RootsMagic or Legacy?
Yes, via GEDCOM. Some program-specific detail doesn't survive a GEDCOM round trip, so we'll tell you in the survey what would be lost in translation before you commit to anything.
Tell us about your tree
Free to send. You'll get a survey and a fixed cost before any work starts.
Free survey and fixed cost before any work begins.
Thank you — that's arrived. We'll reply within one working day with next steps for surveying your tree.