How to delete duplicate data (birth, death, marriage, etc.)

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1

Hi i have merged two trees an now for a lot of people i have duplicate datas . How can i delete them quickly ! Thanks
My Gramp version is 5.1.5 and my system is Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS

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There is no quick way that I know of, but you can use a filter to select all persons that have been merged, and then process them one by one.

You can create a custom filter for this, that shows all persons that have the MergedID attribute or something like that. I don’t know the exact name, because that depends on your language settings.

I remove the attribute after cleaning, so that it works like a to do list.

3

You want a Thoughtful method which is not usually quick or easy.

Gramps objects can be Merged. These are People, Families, Events, Places, Sources, Citations, Repositories, Notes and Media. Unfortunately, objects cannot be merged from within a Person’s or Family’s record. Merges can only occur within their list views.

My method is to evaluate which Birth record after merging two people has the best information and remove the unwanted Birth event from the person’s record. Before removing the event I make sure that any Citation or Attribute, etc in the event and moved into the event to be kept.

I do this for every component of a Person’s or Family record going through each Tab in the record to clean it. As @ennoborg points out, an Attribute is created for each person that has been merged alerting you to which record needs to be cleaned.

Note: Removing an object from another record does not delete it. The object remains in its list. There is the Remove Unused Objects tool to actually delete objects no longer need.

Things like Attributes are not objects and once removed from a record they no longer exist.

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It would be nice if Gramps were a bit smarter, like RootsMagic, which recognizes identical facts and events, and merges them with the persons, leaving only data that really differs.

Trying RootsMagic Essentials is a quick and free way to check how this works, but you’ll need the paid version if you want to merge citations, and for automatic smart merges of persons that are exactly the same.

I use the Essentials version next to Gramps because the duplicate search is also much faster, and it allows me to explore candidates that I can merge in Gramps. I also use it to exchange data with Ancestry and FamilySearch.

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To assist merging records, I created a Tag I conveniently named Merge and set its color to florescent pink. This is particularly helpful making sure I am merging the right “John Smith” records. Make sure to remove the Tag once the records have been merged.

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thanks for all your answers. But my asking was not as precise as i i thought. So i ll ask again . I merged the people and i removed the duplicates but now for some ( a lot ) people i have the datas in duplicate ( two or three times the same data for birth, death and wedding !! ) that is what i want to remove .
I hope my request is clear . Thanks

7

What exactly to you mean by “removed the duplicates”? The duplicate people or the duplicate events from the merged people?

Are these people records that were merged?

Tell us a little about the multiple event records. In a person’s record with more than one Birth (or Death, or Marriage)

  1. Do the common events share the same Gramps Id number?
  2. Does one of the common events have the Role “Unknown”

Bottom line. I do not see an easy process. The best method I still see as going record to record and manually removing the duplicate events from the people and family records. Would hate to try any bulk edits and then ending up removing all events from people.

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It’s much like Dave wrote. You have to edit all merged persons, one by one, and remove all duplicate events, one by one. And I recommend that you also check whether they have sources attached, because if they look the same, and one has a source, and the other has not, you may like to keep the one with the source. And of course, if events are not exactly the same, you may need to select the right one, or keep both, if you need more time to check which is right.

Thiis goes for duplicate wedding events too, and they can’t be removed from the person editor. You can select one of those events though, to open the family editor, and remove it from there.

There may also be duplicate notes, and sources, at the person level, which you can remove where needed. And the same may be true for attributes, where I remove the MergedID one once I’m sure that I’m done with the person.

9

Thanks for your answers
I remove the duplicate people not the events . For that i use the merging option
And some people have two or three times the same date of birth, of death or of wedding;
Those events does not have the same Id number

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I systematically merge duplicate Events for merged Persons with the help of 3 custom filters leveraging the following rules:

People:

Events:

After a major merging of persons, I will sort the People (flat list, not Grouped) view by the “Last Changed” column (made visible with “View → Configure…” column editor dialog) and Find the People with the personal <attribute> filter. Select the Person at top to navigate the Active Person focus to them.

In the Events view (with all columns “Configured” to be visible), sort by Event type and Find the Events of persons matching the <person filter> filter.

Select the Duplicate events (paying close attention to differences in the Main Participants column) and consolidate using the Merge Toolbar button.

If I have multiple people merged into single person or there are 3 or more duplicates for each Event, I will use the Isotammi MultiMerge addon gramplet instead of the Merge button on the toolbar. The built-in Merge can handle 2 (and only 2) records a time while the MultiMerge is not so limited.

When there are no more duplicates for that Person, navigate the Active Person focus to the ‘next person’ in the People view’s list, then (in Events) click Find to show that ‘next person’ duplicate events to merge.

I try to rename the Merged Gramps ID attribute (to former Gramps ID) to maintain history. But this also keeps track of People who have been processed. (Use the Type Cleanup addon tool to save the hassle of doing this one-by-one.)

Note: the easy way to sort persistently when doing a long-running task is to… make that sort column into the 1st column (with drag’n’drop) via the View → Configure… Column Editor dialog. (There is currently a reported bug related to adjustable column widths not being aware of the re-ordering of Columns. So you will probably have to re-size column widths again after re-ordering them.)

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Here is a way to select the duplicate events but it hinges on the ability to select the people.

If the merged people still have the Attribute “Merged Gramps ID” create a custom filter for these people; People with the personal <attribute> “Merged Gramps ID” (leave the value blank) Thanks @emyoulation

If these attributes have already been deleted maybe try sorting the people list by Last Changed and tagging each person’s record that has seen activity in the last week, 10 days, back to when you merged the databases. After selecting the desired records go to the Tag icon and create a new Tag “Merged”. Instead of the attribute filter create a filter People with the tag <tag> “Merged”

Now go to the Events view and create the filter Events of people matching the <person filter> and put in the name of the filter you created for the people. Make sure to check the box to include Family Events. Again thank you @emyoulation

In the Events’ sidebar filter select the custom filter for people’s events and select Birth in the Type selector. Apply the Filter “Find”.

This should give you the list of duplicated Birth events. You can sort this list by Date or Main Participants to bring the events to be merged together in the list. After merging birth events, reset the sidebar filter for Deaths. Repeat for Marriage. Any other event types to merge? Divorce?

Once you are done merging events, you may still want to check each person’s record. The order of the remaining events may not be in date order. When merging events, keeping the event with the lower ID number may minimize this. There is the Sort Events tool but be warned. Any event without a date will sort to the top of the list.

When all is said and done, you can delete the Tag you created for the people or there is the addon Set Attribute tool to remove all the “Merged Gramps ID” attributes.

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12

I am using Windows 11 and Gramps AIO64-5.2.3-r1-aa03f5a. After setting up my new computer with Gramps, I can see in both the Gramps people tab, and the Gramps media tab there are multiple entries for each tab. How would I go about deleting the multiple entries in both of the Gramps tabs, in some cases up to 5 or 6. I found the feature that identifies the duplicates and compares them, but I can only delete them one at a time.

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When you say the People tab, are you referring to the People View? and the same for the Medi View? There are Gallery tabs in many other views and edit windows so just want to clarify.

Are these records complete duplicates of an existing record? and How did you add these duplicates? An Import?

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Here is a screenshot of where the multiples are.

duplicates in views
duplicates in views132×558 16.3 KB

Referring to the people and media tabs, I do not see the word view on this screen shot. By multiples it can be up to 4 or 5 copies of an existing record that also show up in the chart view . As I am working to get Gramps up and running on my new computer, I have imported files multiple times. So as you likely suggest it could be imports-I’m guessing.

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In general, Merging is safer than deleting. And when merging more than 2 identical copies, the Isotammi MultiMerge does not have the limitation of only doing 2 at a time.

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That’s right. Imports add people, so if you import the same data again, you get duplicates, always, again and again.

I only get duplicates, when I import a new branch for which I know that is has a few overlaps, or adds new data to existing people.

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Was this a recent switch-over to a new computer? It reads as if the backup was accidentally imported multiple times. If you have not added new data since then, You should create a new blank Tree and try importing the backup again. See if the duplicates recur when there is a single backup.

While it is possible to clean up the duplicates, it is an error prone process and merging redundant fresh imports not a good use of anyone’s time.

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18

Thank you for your help . I made a big mistake i import a tree with some ( few changes ) in the older one and now i hade a lot of duplicates people, informations and even pictures !!
I will make a back up and add the new people in the old file .

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