Genealogy Chat

I have made a couple of mistakes on my tree, and I cannot find how to delete the names. Any help would be appreciated.

Annoying isn't it Margaret! Surely there must be a way because it must happen so often.

You can edit or delete on the old tree programme but not if there are any descendants. Heather

I know Heather, and it is making me quite cross!! There are always going to be descendents aren't there, if you are working backwards.

You just have to delete the people around them until there is only one link. Remember that if you have duplicated a name then you have to change the one you don't want to differentiate it from the one you want to keep before you can delete it.

It's easiest to use a home program......(like Family Tree Maker, or whatever....there are loads. I use Brothers Keeper). These programs are totally flexible, esp when compared to GR!! Mistakes are easily corrected, you don't have to cobble things to make the best of a bad system etc etc etc if you have a tree on here you can download it onto your home program....sort it out......and then upload it again! Hey Presto!! Also by this method you can fool GR into accepting things like cousin marriages etc,but if you create your tree directly on this site you have to duplicate individuals to make the relationships!! Merry

Thank you Brian and Merry - I understand (I think!)

Sally Do you want to change the name because you have put the wrong one in, and you have the right one, or delete the person completely. If you are just changing the name as wrong one inserted, that is easy. I find the old tree system better to work with. Find person, click on edit, change name and insert new one. Scroll down to bottom, click on Save Changes and hey presto. I have had to do this a couple of times because I was given the wrong info. Ann

grrrr - thank you for all your replies, but each time I try to amend something, I just get a flipping extra box!!!! I have gone with the suggestion of retyping name as error. It has made a mess of my tree tho. Perhaps this is something that GR could address in future. I know that deleting the head of a line of descendents is not a good idea, but we only want to do it when a mistake has been made. Thank you all again.

The GR tree is not as sophisticated as software such as FTM and does not allow orphan branches. All the names must be linked to another, and ultimately to you. This means that you can only delete a person that has only a single connection, otherwise you would break the link between any others attached to this person and the main tree, and they would simply float off into space. PC tree software such as FTM allows for this contingency, by allowing you to unlink connections and let them float in space, until you find thier new connection and add them back in.