Resequencing IDs
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This feature allows you to assign new, sequential ID numbers to all of your people, families, sources and/or repositories. You must be in Maintenance Mode to run this utility. To enter Maintenance Mode, go to Admin/Setup/General Settings and select the Maintenance Mode option in the "Database" section. |
Re-sequencing Process
Warning
WARNING: Performing this operation could have serious side effects! It could break links or bookmarks pointing to your site, it could corrupt search engine indexing, and it could cause your ID numbers to be out of synch with your original GEDCOM file (if you had one). It is highly recommended that you back up your tables before proceeding, just in case you don't like the results.
It will break image maps that have been previously generated. If you proceed with resequencing, you will need to manually update any image maps for personIDs that have been re-assigned.
Tree
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You must select a Tree. This operation can only be performed on one tree at a time. |
ID Type
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Choices are People, Families, Sources or Repositories. Re-sequencing one type without doing the others should not have any adverse side affects not covered in the above warning. |
Minimum Digits
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This number dictates how long your new IDs will be. If the number of any given individual is less than the minimum number of digits, the remaining digits will be filled in with leading zeros. For example, if your Minimum Digits value is 5, your smaller numbers will be i00001, i00002, i00003, etc. If you don't want any leading zeros, leave this number at 1 (does not include ID prefix). |
Questions regarding "Re-sequencing IDs"
Will links be broken?
Question
- If I do this ... will any hyperlinks I have embedded into a web page or into a desktop program linking it to a persons TNG data page no longer work ... because there i#### has changed??? I assume the link will be broken!
Answer
TNG renumbers all the items linked to a person, family or anything else you renumber. Two areas that TNG will not resequence are:
- thumbnails made as treename.ID##.jpg
- image maps for IDs that have been re-assigned
Of course, in an ideal world nothing ever goes wrong with servers and their programs, but unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world, so it's wise to make a backup before you start doing anything like this. To be on the safe side, download the backups and make one, once more, just to make sure that in the very rare case, that Murphy's law hits in, you can return to the status before you started re-sequencing.
After re-sequencing it's also wise to make a few random checks in the beginning or the numbers, the middle and the end.
Note that search engine pointers and user saved bookmarks to specific person IDs will likely be broken. See Resequencing_IDs#Warning above.
