Cannot standardize place name: "! Save failed. This data already exists."
Hi, a place name is misspelled, so showing the red "!" indicator. Two days ago I corrected it and saved it, and it saved fine. However it did not change on the person's page. I thought that perhaps it would take a day to move through the system. However, two days later it is still showing the old misspelled place name, and "!" indicator. And when I try to update it again, it returns the message "! Save failed. This data already exists."
It is a marriage event. I tried updating the place name from the man's details screen, timeline (turns out if you click on a marriage event on timeline it opens an edit screen), and from both those places on the woman's screen.
The incorrect name is "Richibouctou, N.B." which does not exist. The correct spelling, shown in the screen below when I tried again today, is "Richibucto".
Should I just wait longer than two days? The changed data is obviously in the database, because a repeated update fails. How can I get the correct place name to display on the person's page?
The people are:
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/M1V3-4SF
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LCTT-CRZ
Example of failed save today:
Here is how it displays:
Best Answer
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Thank you for providing the screen shot of the problem you experienced when trying to standardize the marriage location for your ancestors.
When we clicked on the Edit pencil for the marriage information, we actually see more than one location listed from the details page for Marie Osite Babin LCTT-CRZ. You can click Edit and then Delete for the marriage information that was not standardized to remove that as a Relationship Event for Marie's marriage information.
Click Edit, then Delete in the lower right corner of the editing box to remove the incorrect marriage option. The system will continue to show the Kent, N. B. option as well as long, so you may want to also remove that option so that only the correct standardized marriage information appears.
To help you when you need to edit marriage information, you are always welcome to review the knowledge article that is available in our FamilySearch Help Center which you can access through the URL below.
Thank you for your efforts to use standardized locations to improve the quality of the information we add to Family Tree. We wish you success with your continued family history efforts.
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Answers
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Because this concern is actually about how to correct information in Family Tree, we will be moving the discussion to the Community Family Tree Help Center category where the information can be viewed by other guests. Don't be alarmed when it shows as closed in the FamilySearch Community category. Click the title from that location and you will be redirected to the Family Tree category where the discussion remains open and active.
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I get this message quite often, sometimes in marriages as WilliamStewart44 does, sometimes in trying to merge multiple copies of spouses.
Your solution seems a bit of a workaround, though. Why can't we just standardize all instances of a location for a marriage, instead of deleting the "extra" ones? Doesn't deleting one detach the source record that it came with?
I also get the "this already exists" message when there are multiple records for the same spouse and I am merging them. When I get to the point where there is one husband, say, but multiple records for the same wife, and one of those "wives" isn't already attached to the husband (i.e. there is an "unmarried" mother with children but no father attached), the system won't let me merge the "unmarried" wife to the "married" one -- because "this relationship already exists". I have to create a new "husband" as well, then merge him with the original husband.
It would be so much easier if there was the option, as we get sometimes when linking a person with a previously-unlinked parent -- if I remember correctly, it gives two options, something like, "Add John Smith" as father, and "Add John Smith and Jane Doe" (or "Add couple").
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@JSmith528, no, deleting a duplicate event doesn't do anything to any source attachments, and deleting the duplicate event is not a mere workaround.
The system allows multiple marriage events to be entered, but it does not allow two identical marriage events. If you try to edit an event in such a way as to make it identical to another one, such as by changing the placename to the same standard, then the system will not allow you to save the change, because what you should be doing instead is deleting the duplicate event. If something only happened once, it should only be entered once.
The "this relationship already exists" situation sometimes arises as a result of merges. I think it happens if a relationship isn't brought over in a merge. There are two ways to fix it: create a "dummy" spouse and merge it with the actual spouse, or remove all of the extraneous parent-child relationships. The latter works if there are only one or two children listed; the former is faster and easier when there are a dozen children with the extra relationship.
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Note that you also cannot create two identical pieces of data in Other Information.
If there is an alternate name and you try to add another one that is exactly the same, you can't:
If there is an existing event and you try to create one that is exactly the same, you can't:
There is also no reason to.
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Julia Szent-Györgyi, sorry, I wasn't clear! I know that deleting a (duplicate?) marriage date doesn't delete the source that is attached, but I guess I assumed that it would delete the tag (? not sure) that connects the source record to the data field -- i.e., where that particular data is from.
Say John Smith and Mary Jones have two marriage events, one of December 1866 from "Mystate Marriages" and another of 26 December 1866 from "Mycounty Marriage Book 2". I would have to delete the first one in order to get the correct, full date to display on their page, but does that delete the tag that came with the "Mystate Marriages" record?
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