Yesterday, we’ve introduced you to the new cycle relationship feature. Today, we’ll be getting further into the details of this new feature and present you the three possible cases of cycles.

Today: Mark double profiles as identical

A person appears twice in the tree (so there is a cycle relationship) and the profile has already been added twice to the tree. With the new feature, the two profiles can be marked as identical. This should only be the necessary if you already added the double relationship by means of two profiles before we introduced the cycle relationship feature. In the following example, “Jim Jones” appears twice.

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To add a cycle, click on the icon in the lower right hand corner of your family tree:

Then you pick the two profiles with a click in the tree. From the options of possible cycle relationships suggested in the popup window, you choose “Person 1 and Person 2 are the same person“. A click on “Save” marks the two profiles as identical and the profile you clicked on first (i.e. Person 1) inherits all information stored in Person 2’s profile. Person 2 will be deleted.

Tip: It is always better to click on the profile with more information first so that less information will be lost with the deletion of Person 2.

After saving, the tree looks as follows:

 (Click image to enlarge)

Let’s have a look at the tree from “Hillary Joyce’s” persepective. In this view, the cycle relationship nodes change, too. Now, it’s “Jim Jones” who appears with a coloured and a grey node.

(Click to enlarge image)

As the two connected profiles can be quite far away from each other in large trees, you can jump to the other by clicking on the little “+” in the upper left hand corner in the two profiles.

 There are three important rules for “marking persons as identical“:

• To mark two persons as identical means that Person 1 inherits all information from Person 2 and Person 2 will be deleted in the process. That means that Person 2’s profile cannot be a claimed one, i.e. it cannot be a profile of an active relative in your tree.
• No person can have more than 2 parents. Explanation: When you mark two persons as identical, Person 1 gets Person 2’s parents. When the persons are “marked as siblings“, Person 1 and 2 get each others’ parents (and siblings). This, of course, cannot mean that they have 4 parents. That is why the options “mark as identical” and “mark as siblings” are not always available.
• If you delete a person you added, the action cannot be reversed. Explanation: Person 2 is deleted when you mark two persons as identical. Even if you delete the cycle relationship later, Person 2 will be deleted for ever.