Will merging preserve data from both profiles?

Question

I have been working on my 2nd great-grandfather's sibling group and their spouses tonight. Usually, it shows me potential matches for the person I am adding. However, it didn't do that for one of the people tonight and now my 2g grandpa's sister is in here twice. I've already written to the other profile owner about merging.

Will everything that each of us has added survive being merged? Her profile for my auntie doesn't show her parents, but when I added her, I did it from her mother's profile. I had also added her father (my 3rd great-grandma was married twice).

Thank you. Have a blessed weekend.

Answer 1

The short answer is yes. The long answer is it depends on who is performing the merge. Whoever is performing the merge decides what information to keep (the purpose being to make sure all accurate information stays) but they will have an edit option before the merge is complete.

By default all fields where there is information is included and both biographies with sources are added, with the intent being that the person performing the merge will clean up the information to make sure it is complete and accurate.

Comments

Thank you, Leilani.  Hopefully the parents will survive the merging then. :)

How long should I wait for them to do the merge?

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The first step is to initiate a merge between the two profiles that represent the same person. Then both profile managers need to look at them to verify that they do indeed represent the same person and approve the merge. Once that is done the merge can be completed.

This can happen extremely fast or it could take a while it depends on how quickly people respond. If a profile manager doesn't respond to a request it is automatically approved to be merged after 30 days. Once a merger is approved someone still has to go in and actually do it so it could potentially sit there for a long time but it generally doesn't.

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Thank you, Leilani.  There is no doubt about them being the same person in this case.

So, I need to go ahead and initiate a merge rather than just messaging the other profile manager about it?

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Initiating a merge will automatically send them a message so you don't need to send them a message if it is obvious they are the same person. That being said it certainly doesn't hurt to do both.

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Thank you. I had already sent them a message before I posted my question here.  Then, I got worried that maybe it wouldn't hold onto the information about my 3rd great-grands with the merger. :)

I will go ahead and initiate a merge now. Thank you!

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I believe it also only retains one of the two change logs, so you might lose a small bit of historic information on who changed what and when, but that seems fairly minor in most circumstances.

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Thank you, Scott. That won't be any big deal in regards to changes on the profile that I created. There aren't that many and the information is easily recovered as it's in my main tree.  I can't speak for the other manager's changes though.