What is the difference between the Unmerge and Restore procedures?
The question is prompted by another recent post (see below). I should know the answer myself, but feel it would benefit me and others to be reminded of the different implications of using one method or the other to revive a "deleted" ID.
For example, do both entail having to detach sources and custom facts that no longer apply to the "other" individual?
Looking again at the post referenced, I believe my query has already been partly answered (thank you, @Áine.ní.Donnghaile!) but perhaps a little more clarification would be helpful for me and other users.
See:
Answers
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Hi, Thanks for the question
The unmerge function can only be used up to the time when an additional change has been made to the surviving profile of the merge. If there have been no changes and you select to do the unmerge, both profiles are returned as they existed prior to the merge. Meaning vitals, relationships, sources, memories etc. are all as they were prior to the merge on both profiles. It is like the merge had never been done.
On the other hand, if any changes have been made to the surviving profile following the merge, unmerge is no longer available and you must use the restore process. You select the profile that was deleted by the merge, open it and select restore. This profile that was deleted by the merge is restored to the same state as it was prior to the merge. However, the restore process does nothing to the profile that had survived the merge. Therefore, the profile that has survived the merge stills has all the information that was added to the profile during the merge and any subsequent changes. This means that vitals, relationships, sources and memories on the surviving profile may now contain information about 2 different people. It is extremely important that you review both the profile that had survived the merge and the one you restored to check that they have the appropriate information. Especially the profile that had survived the merged needs a complete check to make sure it doesn't have information that belongs to the other person. This can be a tedious process but a very important one.
Hope this answered your question.
Here is an article which covers this subjects.
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Hi @Paul W
I don't often have the opportunity to use unmerge. In my experience, it's rare that a contributor merges two profiles and leaves without making further changes.
The Restore option definitely requires us to review both profiles to make sure that there are no artefacts of the merge - a residence, a civil status - on the "wrong" profile.
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The information box on Undo Merge is more informative than before, now including an explanation of why/when the option is disabled.
Perhaps a further sentence could be added referring the user to the Restore option.
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@Áine.ní.Donnghaile said "The Restore option definitely requires us to review both profiles to make sure that there are no artefacts of the merge - a residence, a civil status - on the "wrong" profile."
Totally agree. In fact - a cautionary tale: I carried out a post-Restore review along these lines recently and discovered that a couple of sources were on the wrong profile. Closer inspection showed that they'd been there for years and were presumably at least partly responsible for the confusion between the two similarly named profiles. I only picked those up because I was doing the necessary post-Restore review - if I'd been able to Undo Merge, would I have done that audit check or trusted the software worked? If I trusted it was all correct, I'd have missed the incorrectly attached sources…
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@Adrian Bruce1 I agree 100% that it is important to do a post-Restore review on both profiles following a restore but also when doing an unmerge. There is a reason that someone thought these profiles should be merged. We should do our best to make sure each profile is as accurate as possible for the described individual even when doing an unmerge. Your example is very telling.
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Thank you all for your advice.
Being relatively experienced in working on Family Tree, I do thoroughly review the profile page and check for details and sources that need to be deleted / detached following a profile being restored.
As I'm sure many other users have found, the "review process" can involved a lot of time - especially if there are, say, thirty or more sources attached, together with Residence details that have been carried over to the profile page from incorrectly attached sources. The problem is compounded if you find yourself in an "edit wars" situation (as, sadly, I did recently) and as fast as you have tidied up the pages another user re-merges the different IDs and the detached sources (around 50 of them in my example) all return to the "wrong" profile!
Obviously, this is an example of where (multiple) identical sources (same URLs) can appear, both against the same profile and the one with which it has been merged. The problem is, you can't keep all the individuals you work on on your Following list, so there are obviously plenty of profiles in Family Tree that must really be in a mess, particularly if they have not being examined after being restored.
When inexperienced users come to Community for advice on carrying out the very basic tasks (like changing a name, or adding a parent) I do feel concerned at what they might do when confronting far less straightforward tasks, such as unmerging or restoring profiles!
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I agree with everything above including the need to review both profiles after a Restore to remove stray information. I also agree that reviewing both after an Unmerge is important but not to make sure the unmerging worked properly since I've never seen it not work but rather to improve both profiles to the point that no one would ever have any reason to merge them again. This is particularly important if they immediately show up as possible duplicates for each other. I suspect it is better to add information until the possible duplicate flag disappears than to just dismiss the flag by marking them "Not A Match."
Also, I do like illustrations. So here is a simple way to look at the difference between undoing a merge and using Restore:
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