User Question: Multiple / Duplicate Birth, Marriage, Death Facts

A question from a Blog Reader:

Thank you for your Knowledge Base series. They are a great resource.

Sometimes one or more B/M/D facts have two dates and, no matter how hard 
you research the problem, you just can not figure out which is correct.

I had the problem with a birth date and kept the two Birth fact entries. 
FTM's error checking routines did not like this and kept flagging the 
two Birth entries as an error.

So, what to do? It finally hit me, the solution to duplicate facts is to 
eliminate the duplication. I kept the original Birth fact and added a 
second "Birth - ALT" fact to hold the alternate fact. The same could be 
done by creating "Death - ALT" and "Marriage - ALT" facts.

If I ever manage to resolve the conflict, all I have to do is put the 
correct date and citation(s) in "Birth" and delete "Birth - ALT."

If needed you can create a custom Report to keep track of these 
additional facts by filtering in "xxx - ALT" as "Is Not Blank."

Thought this might give you an idea for one of your video demos.

First, I am sure I have done more than one video on this topic and a number of written blog posts as well.

But, I'll try to answer your questions here.

 In this example. there are six (6) Birth Facts and three (3) Death Facts. You will note that the 3rd item down, birth fact, has 24 Citations. You might say, well that MUST be it. 

Same with the Death Fact. The 3rd from the bottom, on the right, has 24 Citations. BUT, in evaluating the Citations, I have made the determination as to which Birth and Death Fact is PREFERRED. 

Usually, the preferred fact will be the most complete set of information.

You did NOT tell me what error messages Family Tree Maker was providing. A HINT, however, IF the error you are talking about is from the Data Error Report, try selecting Preferred ONLY.

I submit to you that these are NOT Duplicate Facts !!!!! They are ALT Facts. To be "duplicate" facts ALL of the Fields in that Fact MUST be Exact. Alt Facts are see above, where a couple of Citations will give the Year only. (BMD Facts I ALWAYS use Abt. YYYY). There are a couple facts that had the full date, but not Place Name.

Bottom line: (for me)

I record what I see on the Record and Cite the source. So, when it comes time to Evaluate my data, to make that Preferred Fact determination, I can do that very quickly.

My preferred facts change all of the time, until I get what my "current thinking" is about that Fact or event.

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