Tuesday's Tips provide brief how-to's to help you learn to use the Legacy Family Tree software with new tricks and techniques.
Renumbering RINs and MRINs (Intermediate)
As you merge and delete people in your file there will be gaps in the RIN and MRIN numbers. This bloats your file a bit. You can compact your file by having Legacy renumber the RINs and MRINs. WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! If you use the RIN or MRIN numbers as part of your paper or electronic filing system DO NOT DO THIS. If you use TNG to manage your website DO NOT DO THIS. However, for the rest of you this is a good way to make your file a bit more efficient.
Go to Tools > Renumber RINs or MRINs. You are going to make two passes. For the first pass you are going to select "Fill all missing RINs from highest RINs (Compacts the Individual Records)" and then click Apply. For the second pass you are going to select "Fill all Missing MRINs from Highest MRINs (Compacts the Marriage Records)" and then click Apply again.
You can also have Legacy renumber your RINs on the fly (RINs only, not MRINs. You will need to use the above tool when you want to renumber your MRINs)
Go to Options> Customize > Data Defaults > Option 4.4
Notice that there is an (ff) which means this is a family file specific setting. In other words, if you have more than one family file you will have to do step 1 and step 2 for each one. Again, DO NOT DO THIS if you are using RINs as part of your paper or electronic filing system or if you are using TNG to manage your website.
If you import a file into Legacy you will see an option to Renumber the RINs and MRINs ("Fill all existing abandoned RINs/MRINs" will become active if you chose the first option, Try to keep original ID numbers (RINs).
This is a simple way to compact your file to help it run a little more efficiently. This is also for those people (like me) who simply can't stand to see gaps in the numbers on the Name and Marriage Lists.
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Michele Simmons Lewis, CG® is part of the Legacy Family Tree team at MyHeritage. She handles the enhancement suggestions that come in from our users as well as writing for Legacy News. You can usually find her hanging out on the Legacy User Group Facebook page answering questions and posting tips.
There is a suggestion in our tracking system for the developers to consider adding the MRIN to the marriage bar on the Family View. There is no place that I can see to put it on the Pedigree View since the marriage information is not displayed in the boxes. In the Descendant View you have the option to display both the spouses MRIN and the Parent’s MRIN as one of the customized columns (Options > Customize Columns)