Is there an easy way to reattach multiple sources?
There is someone who keeps detaching sources from family members I have been working on for YEARS. This is the second or third time she's done it, and she seems to be confused about her tree versus the the public tree.
At any rate, this is going to take HOURS because she's done it to an entire branch of the family. Is there an easy way to "undo" the detached source? Because I haven't found one yet …
Best Answer
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Since most everything we can do in Family Tree is by working one profile at a time, efficiency is not exactly a prime component of such work. However, to restore all the detached sources on an individual profile can go pretty quickly depending on the exact situation. Try the following if this fits in the category of "Because I haven't found one yet …" If you already use this process, just ignore my post!
I went to a profile and detached to sources. Here is how I can put them back on most efficiently:
A. Go to the profile and open the Change Log:
B. Click on Filters and choose Sources:
C. This will give you a list of all the sources that have ever been on the profile. The first column shows what occurred to a source such as attached, edited, tagged, or detached. The last column has notations that sometimes are links such as reference, current, or, most important for you, restore.
Here you can see that the two most recent events were me deleting two sources.
D. Scroll down through the Change Log looking for the restore notation:
E. Click on Restore and you are asked to confirm you want to do this:
F. A nice feature here, is that after you restore a source, the restore link is removed so you do not accidentally try to restore the same one multiple times:
G. Going back to the top of the change log, you can see that the two deleted sources are back on the profile:
The only potential difficulty here, is that the source titles of indexed sources are so generic, it can be hard to know if you really restored the correct source.
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Answers
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Hi @AlexisVictoria
You can try the "Report Abuse" option, but the bar is very high for FamilySearch to intervene and "undo."
The situation described in my thread from last year took many months to resolve.In the interim, I had many responses from FS Support that This is not abuse. Stop reporting these issues.
Eventually, FS Support reverted almost all the profiles to their original status.
Best of luck!7 -
Thank you so much! I wasn't aware of the process, and it looks more efficient than what I've been doing at least!
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@Áine.ní.Donnghaile, that is just horrible … I'm so sorry that happened to you!
Fortunately, this lady seems to just be genuinely confused and not malicious. I'm not even sure HOW she's doing all this … but I'm about ready to offer her some free Zoom lessons on the FamilySearch tree or something!
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Thanks and good luck @AlexisVictoria!
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I'm sorry you're having to do all this restoration work @AlexisVictoria. I wish there were easier ways to restore profiles or at least all the individual notes, reasons, content & sources, if someone makes a bunch of incorrect changes. It's so discouraging to do so much work and then have to re-do it to fix someone else's errors, even if those errors were made accidentally. Sadly, they're not all accidents, either, like in @Áine.ní.Donnghaile's case.
I spent quite a bit of time today trying to figure out how to "restore" years worth of research Notes that someone had deleted from a profile. There was no "restore" button to get back these notes, many of which included complex analysis, explanations about why things had been disproved or other things proved, identifying other people with the same name, etc. Some of the notes and debates got a bit contentious at times, but they reflected a lot of hard work by many committed genealogists. It was not completely fixable.
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I’m a bit confused by your comment, specifically the part about “her tree versus the public tree.” All users—regardless of experience level—work in the same shared FamilySearch Family Tree.
If she is somehow accessing information from a private area of your account, that would be a completely different issue and would need to be reported. But for deceased ancestors, everyone is contributing to the same universal tree.
Reaching out to the other user, as you did, is usually the best first step. When that doesn’t lead to a response, the most effective approach is to make sure every change you enter includes complete sources, clear reason statements, and any relevant explanations. That way, anyone reviewing the record can easily understand why your information is more accurate than what was previously entered.
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@sc woz Re: "I’m a bit confused by your comment, specifically the part about 'her tree versus the public tree.'" This has been a common problem for years. There are users, sometimes new or inexperienced, that don't understand the workings of Family Tree. They think they are working with just their family. Then they find their Aunt Jane Smith, add her to their pedigree, can't understand how she got a birth place in New York in 1940 and correct it to be California in 1950. It's polite to say they are confused. It's harsher to say they are hijacking profiles.
@AlexisVictoria , one item that has not been mentioned yet in this post, is the common advice that if you think this other user has taken your family lines and is trying to turn them into her family lines, then to try to determine the key person she is confused about, create a new profile for her for that person, and document it so thoroughly for her that she will never confuse your relative for her relative again.
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