Jay,
While I don't have a direct answer for you, I have some suggestions based on my
own work, which may help.
The short version of my answer: Do some minor pre-processing of your files
before going to the merge. I'll explain why.
My own wrinkle of the problem has to do with Intellishare. Two of us are
researching the same family, and regularly merge results - thus I do use
automerge a lot. When my computer started hanging (eight minutes hang time at a
specific person) during the auto-merge, I tracked down the problem, and haven't
had the problem since - so long as I do some pre-processing.
The problem, for me, is with spouse "unknown", and with parents "unknown and
unknown".
1. When John Doe, no parents, is in Legacy with sister Mary Doe, Legacy adds in
the parents ("unknown and unknown"), because it must. That's basically required
by the Gedcom standard published by the LDS - there is no such thing as a
brother/sister relationship, only a parents/child relationship.
2. Also, when I'm navigating around Legacy, if I accidentally click on the wrong
blank area of the screen, once again "unknown" parents spring into existence.
Legacy does this correctly; but it bites me when I'm doing a merge.
3. There's a similar issue with unknown spouses, but I'll explain that after the
merge explanation.
When I merge the two files, they both contain John Doe and Mary Doe, parents
unknown. After the merge, John Doe and Mary Doe both have *two* sets of parents
- unknown and unknown, and unknown and unknown. Not realizing this, I return the
file for further collaboration. Next merge we have four sets of parents, then
eight, and so on. When I figured out the problem, I had several thousand sets of
parents, all unknown, for the same person! And it's on that person that Legacy
hangs during auto-merge.
The answer has been to search for anyone with multiple sets of parents. In your
case I'd suggest doing that *before* letting loose the auto-merge.
Something similar happens with unknown spouses, especially as a result of a
merge wherein one of us just added in the known spouse. So, after an
Intellishare merge, I do searches for:
- unlinked persons
- persons with multiple parents
- persons with multiple spouses
(There are some of each, legitimately so, of course. I use tags 5, 6, and 7 for
the legitimate ones, and display them when I "create list" during the search.
That way, as I'm scanning through the list, I only need to check on the ones
which are not shown as tagged.)
How does this apply to your situation? As you said, you've done a number of
merges already. It's possible that you've achieved a plethora of unknowns. Clean
them out first, and the merge will go far better.
Also - and come to think of it this might be the reason for the hang - if you
have a single unlinked "unknown" person - and this is easily done when
downloading sections of trees of Ancestry.com - Legacy will offer to match that
unknown person to EVERY other person in your file. If you have several unlinked
unknowns, your problem gets multiplied.
All unknowns have ID [RIN] of zero. That, no doubt, is why Legacy *never* offers
to merge these unknowns - and why I get two, then four, then eight, then
thousands, of sets of unknown parents.
So, my suggestion is to try some cleaning of your files first - no extra sets of
unknown parents, no unlinked unknowns at all - so that Legacy has a better shot
at merging things for you.
Best Regards,
Ed Barnard, researching Herring/Hill/Simcoe of Albemarle County VA
> After four years of downloading GEDCOM files off of the Internet, I now
> have at least sixty Legacy Files, on my home computer. The average file
> contains a little over 19,000 names. The biggest is 1.7 GB in size.
> These files are the consolidation of a multitude of many little files.
> So naturally, there is a lot of duplicate names and data in them. Last
> night, I was working on a consolidated legacy file of 15,000 names. So I
> clicked on the merge button, and them clicked on the find duplicates
> button, and my system froze up on me. I guess the file was too big for
> Legacy to process, or there is an accumulation of too many legacy files
> on my computer. I bought this Legacy software because I really like it
> auto merge function. I also have a hobby of searching the Internet for
> genealogical information, for my family, friends and neighbors. I
> thought the Legacy software would be a help to me in getting rid of
> duplicate names, so I can boil a big file down to a small file. At this
> point, I'm frustrated, disappointed and angry at Legacy. All total, my
> collection of names on Legacy files is about 2.3 GB. I believe that my
> computer should be able to handle the load. Its a Pentium 4 (1.3 GH)
> with 512 MB ram and 250 GB on the hard drive. Can anybody out there
> please tell me how to get Legacy to do its job, or provide me with a
> solution to this problem? I'm desperate. How small or big can a Legacy
> file be and still have the auto-merge function work as it should? Does
> anybody know? If I can't get this problem resolved soon, then I will
> have to start looking for another genealogy software package. Does
> anybody have any idea's about which software package that might be. I
> really need something with an auto-merge function that I can have trust
> and confidence it, and let my computer run all night long if need be.
> How do all the genealogy software packages on the market compare with
> Legacy in the auto-merge function only. Are there any out there that
> can do as good a job or better at auto-merging as Legacy? If so, what
> are they and can they handle files with over 19,000 names? I feel like
> this is one of those times when it's better to be more accurate, than fast.
>
>
>
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