Unfinished Attachments--a simple fix for instructions

LegacyUser

Carol Jo Menges said: For the Sources pages where a link says there are Unfinished Attachments (I hope I've remembered the correct link name): This happens a lot and I didn't yet know how to fix this until just a minute ago while talking with a missionary at FamilySearch on the phone. Often times I'm finding that the only people brought up in Source Linker through that Unfinished Attachments link who aren't already attached are not able to be dealt with from that Person's Source links at all. Such as, a husband's page will allow us to match the record to his father and mother and himself, but his wife and her parents are often separated from the live cyber action on SourceLinker. The solution to fixing the unattached people in that case is to go to the wife's Person page and Source link, bring up Unfinished Attachments, and then attach the record to the rest of the people--in this case, the wife and her parents.

It would be exceedingly helpful to have this information in the directions of how to go about attaching people who are as yet unattached; directions in the link so they won't be missed. For weeks now I've been trying to figure out what I've been missing because obviously I can't electronically attach a record to anyone who isn't set up to allow that to happen. We have to go to their pages, as I said above. Now that I see how it works, I'd like to strongly suggest you guys write a succinct addition to the directions so it won't continue to drive anybody crazy like it was doing to me lately. It's a simple fix: more information, please.

LegacyUser

Juli said: It is actually possible to do it without going to the wife's page, but it gets complicated and confusing. (It involves the "change" drop-down menus in the top blue stripe, but I haven't done it often enough to know which side to do first.)

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: The trouble with the instructions is that a very important feature of the Source Linker doesn't seem to be mentioned. It is one that a huge number of people overlook but it is what makes it possible to attach everyone on the left side from the source record to the correct people on the right side in Family Tree.

In other words, like many other people you have overlooked the Change Focus Person link.

Using it, you do not need to leave the source linker to add every record. Here is how you do this.

In this census record, Tom Gierdivik is listed as a boarder. He is actually the right age to be Brita's father, Torbjørn Gjerdevik, so let's pretend it is him, just for the sake of illustration.



In this situation, you can actually just click and drag the record to the right person:



but let's ignore that since that does not always work.

Instead follow this procedure:

1) On the right hand side in the blue bar, click on the word Change to open a list of everyone on that side.



2) Click on the name of the person you want as the Focus Person, that is, the one you want right under the blue bar. If the person happens to not be in the list at all, such as a grandparent or a nephew, you can even paste in his or her ID number. In this case, I want Torbjørn there.



3) Now on the left hand side, click on Change in the blue bar to open a list of everyone in the historical record.



4) And click on the person in the list, in this case Tom, who corresponds to the person you put as the focus person on the right to properly line them up so you can attach the source.



This always works. Sometimes the Source Linker is a little to helpful as it tries to line things up automatically for you and you have to shift people a couple of times. I've found that it does typically work best to set the right side first.

I should mention that with marriage records, shifting positions on the right is often a two step process. In order to attach parents of the bride if the groom is in the focus person position, you usually have to move the bride to the focus position then move one of her parents there since the list in the drop down menu is based on the focus person.

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: Here is an illustration of how to move the the father-in-law of the focus person to the focus person position.

1) Here is the original configuration:



and I want Johannes to be the focus person.

2) Click on Change on the right:



Johannes is not there because the list is based on the focus person's family. However I can click on Siri and make her the focus person which moves her father, also.



3) Click on Change on the right again. Now the list is based on Siri, the new focus person:



and I can click on Johannes to make him the focus person:



4) If necessary, I could now click on Change on the left to select the correct person in the historical record to line up with Johannes:

LegacyUser

Carol Jo Menges said: I don't think I ever paid much attention to the blue stripe. I tend to find one way or two to do something and then stick to them. Because of the amount of work I feel driven to do, it's helpful to me to not have to deal with an overabundance of new things to learn all at once, and to use well-practiced methods of doing as much as I can. There are always so many new things to learn--and I'm grateful for the new ways FamilySearch surges the work forward--but many like me who keep at it are also wishing it didn't always wash over us with immense amounts of new things to learn all at once.

LegacyUser

Lorraine Morton Ashton said: Thank you for sharing this. I've been stumped as to what to do.

LegacyUser

Carol Jo Menges said: I think this will help with the amazing amount of what I've been calling "cross matches: wife to husband, husband to wife" (for want of a better phrase when I'm asked to write in a field my explanation for what I've done, in those times when the genders on the left are opposite to the people on the right). I've been using a definitely Mickey Mouse approach that I tried which seems to work, in order to get a chance to eventually match record people to the proper people in the tree. But it takes several steps, and the hope that I'll eventually see the left and right sides match.

So far what I've done hasn't seemed to screw anything up, but I've wondered why the cross matched people are occurring so often lately. I'm sure that whoever tries to follow all the changes I've made, back and forth, has probably wished it made some sense to them.

I've been chalking up the need for these semi-creative self-fixes to FamilySearch having glitches as it works to right itself after another new process gets instituted. As a very long-term family history consultant of no real tech status, I have to have *something* that sounds reasonable to suggest to a person I'm trying to help, who is thoroughly confused and wonders if he/she wants to keep slogging along.

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I'll try these things. For older people like I am, it's the *practice* that gives me confidence that I know at least a portion of what I'm doing. Over and over practice. While doing it, I try to see the logic of the process, too.

LegacyUser

Carol Jo Menges said: "Get emotional! Describe how this topic makes you feel."

Believe me, that wouldn't be pretty... But I'm working at it.

LegacyUser

Cindy Hecker said: I only learned about changing the focus person about 4 months ago and it has been a life changer. Makes attaching marriage records SOO much easier. Love it! Been working in FamilySearch for a long time and I still learn new tricks.