Trees differing between family members
My parents and I obviously share the same family tree, yet when logged in to one of their accounts, there are more branches filled in. For example, signed in on my mother’s account, I can see her great grandmother’s parents and go back several generations. However, when signed in on my own account, her great grandmother’s parents aren’t there. This is the case for several branches on the tree. Do I have to go in and redo all of the work that’s already been done? Seems ridiculous.
I understand that on Family Search it’s one big worldwide tree, but that makes this issue seem even more strange. If the research has been done and family members are linked to the tree on one account, shouldn’t it be viewable on another?
Best Answers
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When you are signed in to your account, your mother may be living, and perhaps some of your grandparents are also living. You may have people in your account who are listed as living, but have deceased. You could add death dates, and merge any duplicates. Once you get back to deceased persons, you may also have duplicates that should be merged. You may have some instances where your account has multiple parents listed. You could clean up those, and compare them with what you see on your mother's account. You should be able to clean up your account so that you can see the same ancestors that your mother sees.
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@Anna Louise Sears, as jlwestra implied, the source of the confusion is most likely in the "intersection" between private spaces and the public tree: you probably have different profiles attached to the living people in your private space than what your mother has attached to the same people in hers. The way to fix it is very likely to merge some duplicates, because those different profiles are obviously believed to be for the same people.
The other possibility is that some profiles are mistakenly marked as "living" in your mother's private space, and that's why you're not seeing them.
Specific steps you can take: check the profile ID for the great-grandmother in question when you look from your account, and compare it to the ID for her when you look from your mother's account.
If the two IDs are the same, then look using your mother's account at the profile Details pages for the great-grandmother's parents (the ones that are missing from your view): is there a yellow stripe across the top indicating "Living Person"? If so, edit the Death field and change it to Deceased. This will make the profile public, so that it will be visible from your account as well as your mother's. (Another possibility: have the missing profiles been marked "Private" for some reason? That'll be indicated across the top of the Details page, too, although I have no idea whether it's also yellow or some other color, and fixing it will take administrative assistance from someone at FamilySearch.)
If the two IDs are not the same, then you'll need to merge the profiles. Copy the ID from the version that's attached to you (via however many steps), then go to the version that's attached to your mother, and click Merge By ID (under Tools in the right-hand column). Paste the copied ID into the box and follow the onscreen instructions to merge the two profiles into one. You may also need to do the same thing with the great-grandmother's children and spouse(s). When you're done, both you and your mother should have the same view of the same deceased relatives.
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