Adding Related People
Adding Unrelated People
Recording Strays or Potential Relatives
Add Person Using Search
Sex/Gender
Moving Forward or Backward in Time
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You can add people to your family file as children, parents, or spouses — depending on their relationship with other people in your family file. Or, if you don't know how a person is related to someone else, you can simply add an unrelated person.
Thebrown plus signs.
buttons appear asBefore you add a person to a family, you should decide whether you need to add a new person to the family file. Ask yourself if the person is already entered in the family file. If not, you add a new person. You can peruse and search the People sidebar if you're not sure. Or, try the Add Person Using Search feature.
On the other hand, if you're about to add a child, parent, or spouse to somebody, and you're certain that the person is already entered in the family file somewhere, just show the People sidebar, find the person in the list, and drag the person from the sidebar over to the correct position in the family view.
Situations where you would add (or link) an existing person include when...
Adding new or existing people is also explained in the context of adding children, parents, and spouses.
If you know how someone is related to another person in your family file, you should navigate to the proper family record and click one of the
buttons to add the person as a new child, mother, father, or spouse.If you have information about a person but can't establish a link to someone in your records, you can still enter the person by choosing
If you later learn that this person is the child, parent, or spouse of somebody else in your records, you can easily link the people together by...
For example, if you enter an unlinked person named Eugene and later discover his parents are also in the same family file, he can be linked to his parents by...
Reunion will mostly be used to collect information about people and families who are related to you in some way. However, while doing research, you may stumble upon information about people who you believe might be related to you, although you may not be certain at the time of discovery. Some refer to these people as "strays," stray people, or potential relatives. Rather than discard this information, you can use Reunion to record these people, even though they may not be linked to each other, or to any other people in your family file. Using Reunion in this way is like using a notebook to record fragments of data for later use. To facilitate locating these records down the road, you can use the Islands feature, or make a custom flag for strays.
This feature can simplify adding and linking (or connecting) people who may already be in the family file.
For example: If you're about to enter a child of a couple and you're absolutely certain the child has already been entered as a husband/wife on another record, then it's probably quickest to find the person using the People sidebar and drag/drop them into the Children area in the family view.
However, with large family files and in cases where you're not certain — i.e., the child may or may not be already entered — then the Add Person Using Search feature can assist.
This feature appears in the following locations...
Selecting any of these menu items will open a window where the first name, last name, and sex can be entered. In the example below, we are searching for a female child; but we don't know if the first name is Martha or Mary. Or it might be Maude. So we just enter "mar" in the First & Mid Name field.
Simply entering a first name, last name, and sex will give Reunion enough information to quickly search your family file and evaluate potential matches. Reunion performs this magic with a sophisticated evaluation of event dates associated with people connected to current couple.
The degree of searching precision can be specified independently for First & Mid Name and Last Name. If Reunion finds too many possible matches, then select a higher precision. Doing so will help to limit the number of potential matches.
After entering the names and sex, click
. A list of possible matches will appear, with the best candidates listed toward the top of the list.Single-click to select a person in the list of possible matches on the left. More details about that person will appear on the right.
Clicking
will be connect/link the person as a child, parent, or spouse, and a confirming message will appear before the link is completed.Note: This feature will not search if the Last Name field is empty.
If you don't know the sex of a child, you can click the Edit Person panel.
button and choose Add New Unknown Sex Child. Then, if you discover the child's sex later, you can change the sex in theThe sex of a child can also be changed in the Edit Family > Children panel.
As you learned in the tutorial, when you add a child to a family, the child's parents automatically appear in the parent buttons on the child's family record. We generally refer to this as entering information by moving forward in time. Usually, this is the most efficient way to add new information. However, you can enter information by moving backward in time — first entering a child and then entering the child's parents.
Reunion lets you delete individuals and families. However, if you need to correct data entry mistakes, it is almost always better to edit existing information or links. For example, if you misspell someone's name, you don't have to delete the person! Simply rename the person in the Edit Person panel. Likewise, if you put a child on the wrong family, you don't have to delete the child; just remove the child from one family and link it to another.
Removing links and deleting individuals and families is discussed here.
Moving a child button is explained here.