Deleting entire branches of a tree
November 06, 2006
Question from Laura:
. . . I need to know if there is a way to delete a whole line, as in choosing a patriarch born about 1500 and then deleting all of the related ancestors to both parents.
Answer:
Yes, Legacy Family Tree makes this easy to do. Follow these steps:
1) First, tag the individuals that you wish to delete. (See the help file, manual, tagging video, or this article on tagging tips.)
2) Click on Tools > Advanced Deleting. Select the appropriate tag level (that you did in step 1 above), and click Apply. We also recommend that you select "Confirm each deletion" so you have more control over who is being deleted.
Legacy will then proceed to delete all the individuals that you have marked to delete.
Caution:
Before deleting entire trees, keep the following in mind. Perhaps you disproved someone's parentage. In other words, you learned that the parents that are currently linked to an ancestor in Legacy are not the real parents. Yes, you would probably want to permanently remove these parents from your ancestor.
However, be cautious if you are going to delete these parents, plus all of their ancestors. Even though the parents might be wrong, their ancestors may interlink with the ancestry of one of your other lines. If you deleted the parents and their entire ancestry, you could be deleting people that you should not. So before deleting an entire ancestry, verify that part of the ancestry does not link to another family line.
You might want to "unlink" the incorrect parents instead of deleting them. By so doing, you will still have easy reference to them in the future when you need their information to distinguish between other individuals of similar names.
Has anyone found an easy way of tagging a whole family 'branch'?
Legacy is a very good program in many respects, but trying to separate off a branch of your family - eg to email your maternal grandmather's line as a gedcom to someone interested in that part of the family - is very difficult.
Posted by: Joan Kemp | June 09, 2007 at 04:23 PM
Hi - the last request re tagging a whole branch either for deleting or reporting is an old post but not responded to - I am after the same information pls, cheers, Steve
Posted by: Stephen Smith | September 10, 2011 at 09:00 PM
Steve - see the Legacy News article at http://tinyurl.com/r7oc46
Posted by: Geoff Rasmussen | September 12, 2011 at 02:51 PM