add by ID under “Attach Historical Records to Family Tree”

W Andrews

 Under “Attach Historical Records to Family Tree” is a name with an option to “add”. When selecting “add”, I can “Create New Person”. The person I need to add already exists in FS. There needs to be an option to add by ID.

Gordon Collett

Where are you seeing this? There are so many places one can attach records that it is impossible to know which one you are looking at. Please go to this spot you are seeing this problem and copy the URL and paste it here. Be sure to having some other character on the line in front of it for pasting to work best. Or post a screen shot that shows where you are.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

I think W Andrews is talking about Source Linker: that's labeled "Attach Historical Records to Family Tree" at the top.

Source Linker does sometimes find and offer existing profiles to add to a family and attach the indexed record to, but if the index does not have enough matching information in it, then it only offers the creation of a new profile. If you know the profile exists and you have its ID, then it's best to add the appropriate relationships on the profiles' Details pages, then refresh the Source Linker tab.

If part of the problem is that the relationships are incorrectly indexed, then you can use the "Change" drop-downs to force Source Linker to make the appropriate attachments. The right-hand (Tree-side) drop-down has a "By ID" option.

Gordon Collett

OK, if it is the source linker, it could on a rare occasion be convenient to be able to add a child by ID and not just by the ADD link that is available:

I could picture, however, that it never occurred to the programmers that if you had the ID for the child and you had the parents, that there could be situation where the child was not already in the family.

Anyway, while you wait a year or two for such to be considered, prioritized, designed, programmed, and tested, you can make use of the current very flexible features of the Source Linker to accomplish this.

Now don't look too closely at my images. We're going to be doing a little pretending here and use some images where the child does actually exist. I'm going play like he doesn't.

When entering the source linker, it does try really hard to find a match for the initial focus person. If it can't, it offers you your recents list. If the person you want to link the source to is not in your recent's list, you can use the ID option to put the right person on the right hand side:

If the person you want to add by ID is showing as a missing child:

Use the left sided Change Link to move that child to the focus position:

When you do, just ignore the right hand side. It will be a mess. Click on the Change link on the right hand side and use the Go To ID box to put the correct person there:

and then attach. This takes a bit of staying organized and a few extra clicks, but it does work.