Why must I add the same person twice when trying to establish a relationship?

Redhededkewty

I clicked under my name to add one of my children. I created a person for him, added his wife and child. I look up, and the system shows me a window that has him related to MY parents, as if he were my sibling. So I removed that relationship, and went back to me. to add him as my child, again. The system did not recognize that i had already created him (and his family) as a person when I entered his name earlier under the Children heading for me.

I clicked his name in another window, and his little family tree was all there, including his relationship with his father.

Why did I have to recreate my already created son as a person to add him as my son? I had to create my paternal grandfather twice, too, first as my father's father, second time when I added him as my paternal grandmother's spouse. The system had no idea he had been created. Is that the way this works, create a new person every time you want to show a relationship?

Also, Ancestry has found all my relatives, but Family Search has not. Why is there such a discrepancy? How do I validate my relatives for Family Search?

The interface is confusing. I can now no longer find my own tree. I've been working from it for half an hour, but I can not see how to get back to it now. I can see myself in the Contributions list, but clicking my name there does nothing. Very confusing. Thanks for any help on this.

Gordon Collett

Once you have created a person, you do not need to create him or her again. However, the program will not always recognize a person already exists when you are in the process of creating the person. Basically, you cannot always trust this message:

Often you will create a person, be told the Search routine could not find a duplicate, then five minutes later have the record you just created flagged as having a possible duplicate. This is OK. It's just that this wonderful program we have is extremely complex and does not want to error on the side of suggesting duplicates too liberally. Once have created a person you can add them as a child, spouse, or parent by using the Add by ID function. You get to it by clicking on the Add link then choosing it instead of By Name:

So if you know you have already created a person, instead of creating them again, search for the record you know you already made, copy the ID number and paste it in.. The easiest way to do this is also the way to always find your way back to yourself. it is by using the Recents menu:

Click on Recents on that second menu line. The top entry will always be you. Next come the last fifty people you have viewed in Family Tree. Click on the name to go directly to that person's detail page or on the tree icon to go to that person's pedigree chart.