Duplicated sources
So this is the 2nd time I have seen this in the past week. I was working on Bessie Keirns L5T1-VWS and I finally got her unmerged and sorted from a similarily named woman. But before I even did all that work I saw that the exact same sources were attached for the 1920 and 1930 census. The URL is the exact same, When I go to remove the duplicate, it shows that I need to add unfinished attachement and attach it again… but the source is on her list showing as attached. There is a marriage record on her list and it's unfinished attachment is asking me to attach it to her again. So she is my example but I saw this with a different profile eariler this week. What is going on and is anyone else seeing this?
Answers
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When going into the Sources, there were a few that had the comment: unfinished attachment - relating to Bessie specifically. I re-attached in source linker.
It is possible that they became Un-linked during your unmerge project. Now linked correctly, the question will be - do they become unlinked automatically?
During UN-Merging, it is good practice to go through and confirm all sources after, for both parties; insuring that individual sources are correct after separation. The 'restoration' in restoring a previously merge deleted individual does not restore all prior sources. You will want to clean up the Vitals and Other Information sections on the details page as well. For example the previous merged individual will still show residences of two different locations at the same time (that likely caused you to look into fixing the bad merge in the first place). You will need to delete these (now bad) residence entries on the now un-merged survivor.1 -
I've run into this sort of thing a few times where it seems the source linker and the source pages get somewhat confused. Don't have any idea why.
I've found the the best thing to do to completely clean up the database linkages is to open the source so you don't loose it, detach it from everyone where you might find it, then reattach it properly.
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@Jack Hern I saw the duplicated sources prior to me making my unmerge and I had cleaned up all the residences, children and other vital information it was just the weird duplicate sources I was concerned with. This is new behavior that I had not see until this week.
@Gordon Collett I followed your suggestion and unlinked both duplicated sources then relinked and it was listed only once. Very weird and new behavior in the source list. I will be on the look out if I see this behavior again. Seems like an error in some program and programmers need to know when weird things happen.
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Yes, they do need to hear about weird things! This one is fairly uncommon, however, and I wonder if it stems from a time when the process of attaching sources was allowed to do things that it can't any more. It used to be much easier to attach a source to more than one person than it is now.
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I must admit I was waiting for a "definitive answer" to this issue myself! Where I have encountered it I'm sure an unmerge or restore action has always been involved. This might not be related to your recent work, but an action by another user in the past. I wasn't able to work out how this has come about in this example from scrolling through the change log, however.
The other issue that confuses me - and I saw this a couple of days ago - is when I see the message, "This source is attached to two individuals…" (might not be the exact expression).
Apart from it being great to receive a simple explanation of how this situation arises - particularly with Cindy's example - the "solution" in removing the duplicate (when knowing the URL is identical) is at least quite simple: just detach one of these exact-same sources. If another user (or yourself) then makes a search for the record concerned, it will still show as being attached to the individual from whom you detached the copy (i.e., have the "tree" logo alongside it). I believe that this action (removing the duplicate source) will also not make the item appear again under Research Help - which sometimes annoyingly happens (straight away) after a source has been detached and reattached to the correct profile.
Jack's and Gordon's comments are appreciated, but would anybody else care to chip-in, by illustrating the exact breakdown of the procedure, which has led to the example Cindy has encountered?
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This example, at MXGX-J8G, might be related to the problem. (I have marked the duplicate sources with three asterisks to highlight.) When I clicked on the URL link it showed the source was also attached to MN13-L1N. I restored the latter profile last week, after I found it had been incorrectly merged with MXGX-J8G a couple of weeks before.
So what appears to have happened here is that, upon the restore, the source remained with the individual to whom the merge had been incorrectly made (MN13-L1N), but then added again to the individual (MXGX-J8G) to whom it applied. (Hope I have got this the right way round!)
If you examine the dates the identical sources were originally "created" you will see the user "FamilySearch" one is dated November 8, 2014, but the duplicate (attached to MXGX-J8G) has the date added by the user when they made the incorrect merge - March 14, 2025.
I'm sure none of this will make much sense to many Family Tree users, but along with Cindy's example maybe should be examined by the engineers to see if this is the "expected behaviour" when an incorrect merge, then subsequent restore takes place.
A further point: would an unmerge instead of restore action make any difference to this ("duplicated sources") issue, I wonder - or does this only happen if the individual is restored?
BTW - I know I need to detach the source from MN13-L1N (should have done that at the time I restored the other ID) and can easily detach one of the duplicate sources from MXGX-J8G, but have left things as they are so others can examine. So, please leave the sources in question as they are for now - I will deal with them appropriately later on.
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