How to edit my data

[kahuja 0]

Recently someone emailed me regarding an online tree, the person they inquired about i have no idea who they were or how they ended up in my tree- i have only merged 1 or 2 gedcoms, several years ago,

 

what i want to do is somehow limit my data(?) Project(?) gedcom(?) [not sure of the terminology] to my ancestors, their spouses, their descendants, bascially people who are related to me somehow including by marriage and their ancestors and descendents.

 

I may even want to start a new file/project/ with only those people, not sure why i would want or need 5 generations of ancestors of someone that i am not related to.

 

I also have some "branches" from the gedcoms imported years ago that i would want somehow chopped off.

 

my file is relatively small about 5,000 people,

 

I know there will be several suggestions and various ways to do this so i welcome any and all suggestions,

 

Thanks

Kristina

[Michael Hannah 0]

Hi Kristina,

 

Yes, you are likely to get lots of suggestions but a feature I find very useful in TMG is custom Flags. You might review Terry's Tips about creating a Related-by flag that identifies the people in the dataset that are directly related to you. Perhaps some variation on that flag would be of use to you. If you are publishing basic data by sending someone a GEDCOM file, or using Second Site to publish your own site on the web, or even just printing reports, you can use such a flag to output only those people with specific values of that flag. It makes it easy to restrict your output to specific people. Most people recommend keeping those people in branches in your dataset even if they are only somewhat related. Often you will find later some marriage or other link that causes that branch to be more closely related than you thought. But as with all things in your dataset, it is strictly a matter of personal preference.

 

Hope this gives you ideas,