Duplicate ancestor lines FTM 2009

[Lloyds]

Hi everyone
Reposting in desperation! - am new to FTM (just got 2009 ed.) and am totally failing to merge duplicate ancestor lines. Have a brother and sister miles apart on the tree, each showing separate ancestor lines. How do I get them to join up on the same line and share ancestry? I've detached father and mother from brother, reattached brother to sister's parents, but although parents' descendant tree (and person details) shows both siblings (and their descendants) the ancestor tree still shows siblings separate but now no parents for brother. Have tried to reattach parents to brother but programme refuses, saying they are already in a relationship... Aargh!! I have ordered Charting Companion with the Smart Cousin facility in case this would help but the supplier say there will be a 3-week delay... Elaine kindly wrote that she thought the 2006 version had a facility whereby you could opt to show duplicate ancestor lines or not, but that this option isn't available on the 2009 verion of FTM. So any ideas would be great folks!! Thanks!!

[John-Nihon]

Don't use FTM myself but just a nudge to bring the thread back into the limelight.

[Lloyds]

Duplicate ancestor line eradication problem FTM 2009

Hi John
Thanks for your message and the pretty thingies but I am very untechie and don't understand - could you clarify please?
Thanks, sorry no pretty bits
Mari

[John-Nihon]

Hi Mari, I'm sorry, I don't have any answers for you. I was just nudging your thread back to the top of the list in the hope that someone on the site with FTM may be able to help you.

[Elaine ..Spain]

I'm in contact with Mari by email to see if I can help.

[John-Nihon]

Thank you Elaine.

[Genealogy Printers]

This has always been a problem with FTM when looking at trees, it's not within the programs capabilities to join the couples together and show their seperate ancestors so what it does is to replicate the couples boxes,it shows the husband as the son with his wife and all his ancestors and it then shows the wife as the daughter attached to a duplicate husbands box and shows all the wifes ancestry. It places a number inside the box so that you know that the person is replicated somewhere else on the tree, each time this happens the numbers change from 1 to 2 then 3 etc. so you can tell how many times boxes have been duplicated.

[Lloyds]

Thank you everyone

Just to say thank you to everyone - to Elaine (ongoing thanks!) and John and to the brilliant info from Genealogy Printers - this explains exactly what the problem is and the limitations I have in rectifying it. For anyone else with the same problem, you can run FTM 2006 and 2009 together, transfer the file info from FTM 2009 to FTM 2006, sort the problem as far as FTM will allow (as the Genealogy Printers post explains) and export the corrected (ish) file back to FTM 2009 to use the extra FTM 2009 features. I've yet to get the Charting Companion with Smart Cousin to try this (it was supposed to come free with FTM 2006 so I am chasing) and I will post another note when I've tried this. Can recommend the TWR Computing catalogue for loads of info plus tree supplies. Cheers to all