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FamilySearch - Possible Matches


 
The Possible Matches screen is displayed when you are adding a person to FamilySearch from you Legacy family file.  Part of the process is to make sure that the person you are adding is not already in the FamilySearch database somewhere.

When Legacy completes the search for possible matches and places the results in the upper list, the first, highest ranked name is highlighted.  Your Legacy person is placed on the left side, below the possible matches list, and the FamilySearch person is placed on the right.  The different types of information are grouped (Name, Personal Information, Facts and Events, Family Relationships, and LDS Ordinances) and lined up side-by-side making it easy to compare.  If there is more information than will fit in the vertical space available, scroll bars appear that can be used to move up and down.  The two scrollbars are "locked" together, meaning that if you scroll one person, the other will also scroll, keeping the information types lined up.  

Comparing Information
Information shown with a green background means that your Legacy person's information is the same as the FamilySearch information.  Anything with a yellow background means that you have information that FamilySearch doesn't have or FamilySearch has information that you don't have.  Information with a red background means that your data and FamilySearch's data conflict in some way.  All these color highlights make it very easy to compare the two people and determine if they are the same individual.

Look At Everyone in the List First
If there is more than one person in the possible matches list, you should look at them all before deciding which one to link to.  Many times you will find more than one person who is obviously a match for your Legacy person.  Linking to the first one you see might cause you to miss a better match below it.  Keep in mind that the people in the list who you don't link to will be displayed in the next task, Possible Duplicates.  It is better to link to the best person in the list and then combine information from the other people in the next step.

Linking the Legacy Person to a Person in FamilySearch
If you determine that the two people you are looking at are the same person (and are the best match of all the people in the possible matches list), click on This person is the same as mine.  This creates a link between the two and Legacy now moves on to the next step, Possible Duplicates (see below).

What If They Are Not the Same?
If you can see that the two people are not the same person, or probably are not, move to the next person in the Possible Matches list above.  If there are no more people to compare then there are a couple things you can do:
Refine the search criteria - Click the Advanced Search button and see if there is something else you might search for to find a match.  (See Advanced Search for more information.
Click No match found. Add my Legacy person to FamilySearch - This uploads the known information on your Legacy person to FamilySearch and links the two together.

Potential Problems
You may sometimes see a icon next to a piece of information for a person on the screen.  This can be on either a Legacy person or a FamilySearch person.  This means that there is a potential problem with that particular piece of information.  If you hover your mouse over the icon, a message pops up showing you what is wrong.  (See Problems Report for a list of all the potential problems Legacy looks for.)

The Potential Problems feature in Legacy FamilySearch can be turned on or off from the Potential Problem Options screen.  You can also turn off any of the many problems that Legacy checks for.


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