When merging people, you choose which facts and relationships to keep and which to remove. So, it's better to merge duplicate people than to delete one of them.

For help preventing duplicate people in the future, see How to Avoid Creating Duplicates in a Tree. For information about merging entire trees, see Merging Family Trees.

Finding duplicate people

1. Go to your family tree.
2. In the toolbar on the left, click the Find button.
3. In the opened side panel, click on List of all people.
4. Look through the list of all people for duplicate people in your tree—they'll share names and details.
   • Names are sorted alphabetically, starting with the last name, followed by the first and middle names (or initials).
     • Names starting with a number or a symbol appear at the top of the list, and those without a last name will be at the end.
     • If someone doesn't have birth, death, or place information, those columns will be blank.
   • By default, 20 people are listed per page. You can load more names at once by increasing the number per page in the bottom-left corner.
   • To see more names, use the left and right arrows in the bottom-right corner to change pages.
5. When you find a duplicate person, click on their name to view their profile page. It doesn't matter which of the two names you click on.

Making sure duplicate people are duplicates

Sometimes, when biologically related people marry each other, they and their relatives show up as duplicates in the tree. This happens because those people have multiple roles in the family, and the tree displays them in both roles. Before merging duplicate people, find out if they're listed more than once in your tree's list of all people or if they appear more than once because of various roles in the family tree.
 

1. In your tree, click on one of the duplicated people.
2. In the opened card, click Profile.
3. In the URL at the top of the page, record the number after /person.
   
4. In the top-left corner of their profile page, click the View tree button to return to your tree.
5. Repeat this process with the second version of this person.
6. Compare the two numbers.
   • If the numbers differ, they're two separate people/entries in the tree; follow the steps in the next section to merge them.
   • If the numbers are the same, you’re looking at the same person; see our article about intra-familial marriages.

Merging duplicate people

Merging duplicate people will combine their facts, media items, and sources into a single version of that person. Merging duplicate people is permanent and cannot be undone. Before merging, make sure duplicate people are duplicates.
 

1. Go to your tree, find, and click on a duplicated person.
2. In the opened card, click Profile.
3. In the top-right corner of their profile page, click Tools and then choose Merge with duplicate.
4. In the Person 2 column, select the duplicate person(s) we found or search for them in your tree.
   • We'll automatically add any duplicates we find to the Person 2 column for you. To merge these people, click Select.
   • To manually search for the duplicate person, enter their name and select it when it appears.
5. Click the circles next to the most accurate and complete facts to save them as primary.
   • Matching facts are labeled "Same" and will be merged automatically.
   • Sometimes, a fact may have more detail in one than the other. For example, one might only provide a year, while the other gives the whole date. In those cases, choosing the one with the most complete information is best.
   • Any facts you don't choose will be saved as an alternate fact.
6. Click Merge.
7. (Optional) Check your family tree for any missing people and relationship mistakes that may have happened during merging. Mistakes can happen if people get wrongly connected or disconnected from others in the tree. If you find any problems, refer to the following articles for help:
   • Restoring People Missing from a Tree
   • Fixing Relationships in Trees