Family Tree Detective's Genealogy Site: Troubleshooting -- FTD for Windows

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Family Tree Detective for Windows has several tools you can use to fix mistakes in the relationships between individuals in your Family File. These instructions explain what those tools are, and offer some helpful suggestions and guidelines for how to use them.

Detach Child and Detach Spouse Commands

These two commands allow you to remove an individual from a Family Page without deleting the individual from the Family File. When someone is detached from a Family Page, they are no longer associated (as a child or spouse) with the other people on that Family Page. Family Tree Detective still keeps the person's complete record elsewhere in the Family File it just isn't part of the same Family Page anymore. To detach a child or a spouse from a Family Page:

From the Family Page with the relationship you want to change, select the name of the person you want to detach.
From the People menu, choose Fix Relationship Mistakes.
Family Tree Detective displays a submenu with four different options. Figure 1 below shows how the menus appear on the Family Page.

Figure 1: Options available from the Fix Relationships submenu
From the Fix Relationship Mistakes menu, select either Detach Child or Detach Spouse, depending on who the person is on the Family Page.
Family Tree Detective displays a dialog box asking you to confirm that you really want to detach that person. Read the messagecarefully and click Yes if you're sure. Detaching a person is reversible (you would just need to re-attach them in the same place later), but you can still click No at this point if you're not quite sure whether they should be detached or not.
If you later need to find the detached individual, look for their name in your Family File's Index of Individuals. Detachedindividuals have their own Family Page until they are re-attached to another Family Page.

Attach Child and Attach Spouse Commands

You use these two commands to add people to Family Pages. Only people who already exist in your Family File can be attached usingthe Attach Child and Attach Spouse commands. To attach an existing record to a Family Page:

From the Family Page you're attaching someone to, select the empty name field the one where the person will be added.
From the People menu, choose Fix Relationship Mistakes.
Family Tree Detective displays a submenu with four different options. Figure 1 on page 1 shows how the menus appear on the Family Page.
From the Fix Relationship Mistakes submenu, select either Attach Child or Attach Spouse, depending on what type of name field you selected on the Family Page.
Family Tree Detective displays a list of all the individuals for your Family File.
From the list of individuals, select the person you wish to attach.
Click OK.
Family Tree Detective displays a message asking you to confirm the attachment of the new child or spouse.
Click Yes if you want to continue with the attachment, or No if the relationship is incorrect.
At a later point, if you change your mind about the attachment, you can easily detach the individual by following the instructionsin "Detach Child and Detach Spouse Commands."
Notes on Attaching:
If a child already has parents on one Family Page, you won't be able to add the child to a different Family Page without detaching them from their original Family Page first. Before trying to attach the child to the new Family Page, follow the instructions in "Detach Child and Detach Spouse Commands' to remove their record from their original Family Page.
Because each Family Page contains only one marriage, you cannot add a third spouse to a Family Page that already contains two spouses. Add the space to attach a new spouse by clicking the Spouses button (on the Family Page) of the person to whom the new spouse is being attached. In the Spouses dialog box that Family Tree Detective displays, click Create a New Spouse. Family Tree Detective then displays a new Family Page to hold the individual and the new spouse you need to attach.

Suggestions for Successful Attaching and Detaching

Before you begin editing the relationships in your Family File, we suggest you do the following:

Backup your Family File to another file. In some cases, it may easier to restore a file from the backup than it would beto fix another relationship mistake.
Make several printouts to see how people are arranged. Closely examine descendant trees from a generation above the trouble spot, and examine ancestor trees from a generation below the trouble spot. These printouts can be your map through the database.
Keep your reasoning simple. Try to think in terms of child, parent, and spouse rather than abstract ideas like grandchild, great-great grandfather, son-in-law, adopted child, etc.
Take a break from the computer for a few minutes. If you are already frustrated with this relationship mistake, you will be more likely to make another mistake.
When you are no longer frustrated with the problem, look at your printouts and plan a series of attaches and detaches thatyou feel will do the trick.
If you made a backup of your file, don't be afraid to experiment. Experimenting is the best way to learn. Whatever you do, though, always be working from a copy of the Family File. Keep a fresh master copy safe in another file, and use copies of it!