Trying to detach mystery spouse

[Jacqueline]

Help please. FTM 2010. Somehow some of my people have "grown" unknown spouses. And children are attached to them. How do I get rid of this unknown spouse. I have tried giving them a bogus name, and then deleting them, but still the spouse is there???? It's driving me nuts. In FTM 2005, there is a button for fixing relationships. Problem is when I tried a merge of individuals everyone is there only once. They are not duplicated in the index of individuals? Is this making sense?

Jackie

[Elaine ..Spain]

I presume these unknown spouses don't have names.
You should be able to delete them after you have detached them from the relationship.
With your curson on the unknown spouse, select PERSON / ADD-DETACH PERSON / DELETE SELECTED PERSON
This doesn't actually delete them, but detaches them from the marriage. I think you will then find that you will be taken to a different page which shows just the unknown spouse in the family group - so then go to PERSON / DELETE PERSON ... and hopefully they will disappear.

If by any chance you cannot identify them once you have detached them from the relationship, and you have a lot of unknowns listed in your index of individuals, it might be worth giving them an extra piece of information before you start the process to make them more identifiable and easier to find in the index - e.g. change their name to unknown delete or something similar.

The most important thing, before you do anything like this, is to ensure you have a back up copy of your file ... just in case!!

[Jennie H]

I've had this problem with FTM 2009. I have spent hours trying to get rid off an extra spouse.. Detaching / deleting doesn't work. He comes back to haunt me elsewhere. Problem is he takes some of his children with him!
I have just got FTM 2010 and am thinking of exporting the tree to Ancestry and removing him there then importing tree back under a different name.

[Jacqueline]

Thanks Elaine. I've tried that. Problem is it wants me to give a name when I run the cursor over it. So I gave it a name and tried deleting it but no! Its still there!

[Jacqueline]

Jennie, that might be the way to go, but I'm a bit reluctant to try it incase it mucks up!

[Elaine ..Spain]

Will send you a pm Jacqueline.

[Jacqueline]

Thank you Elaine for your PM. I decided it was too much to send the whole file, and mucked around again. I think I have solved it! This will help Jenny H as well and perhaps we can put it somewhere where all can see.

What I did, was I went to the unnamed spouse....then I clicked on the child which had attached itself to this person. I "right" clicked on the Child's name, and a list came up. Parents X & W Smith, and under that Unknown. I clicked on the parents and made them the parents. WhenI went back and checked the unknown was gone. Trouble was it created another child( grandchild). with the same prob. I just worked backwards till all was correct. When you detach, someone, you can't detach the unknown. But a list comes up asking which family you want to detach from. DETACH from all families you know are incorrect. I did'nt realise at first, but there are more under what you are actually seeing( In the little frame ). An example....J Smith and Unknown spouse. Child/children of J Smith also attched to unknown. Click on child of both. Right click. Real parents names come up. Click on them. Bingo! Do this with each child in family. Go back and do the same with all the families which come up...In one instance I had 4 families....1 was the correct one, two had father and daughter, one had unknown spouse and all children. This one I had to edit 4 times for the one person. But it worked! I hope someone can make sense of all this. I wish I knew how do do screen saves....these computers these day's don't do that!

Jackie

[Jennie H]

I'll try that thanks.
Have copied it somewhere safe for use later.
If you hace Vista it has a little program called "snipping tool" which is very useful. Mine also still has print screen but I must admit I find the snip more convenient!
I tried the renamimg bit but it never worked.