Profile without a first name

[debbieg]

In cleaning up membership data, I found a strange thing. Let me see if I can describe what I see.
There is a household name of "John Doe". The members in that family show as:

1 John Doe
2 Jimmy Doe
2 Jimmy Doe

Both of the Jimmy's seem to be identical as far as what shows on the status and activities/attendance data.

when I look at Personal Profile data, I see the following:

Last Name First Name
Doe (blank)
Doe Jimmy

When I select each of them, they both say that they are in the "John Doe" family. I'm thinking of deleting the profile with the blank first name and see if perhaps the duplicate #2 under John Doe will go away. If it does not, then I'll be really confused because there is really only 1 "Jimmy Doe" profile. How could it show up twice in a family?

Any suggestions? I just don't want to lose the attendance data for Jimmy.

[Tracy]

I suspect the church has been a long time user of PowerChurch. Some older versions (pre 8.5 I believe) had little loop holes that made it possible to create this scenario.

I also suspect the Jimmy Doe and (Blank) Doe both have a Directory Sequence (Dir. Seq.) number of 2. Change the Dir. Seq. of the (Blank) Doe profile to 3, then check the Integrated Data Entry screen again. The second Jimmy Doe should become the (Blank) Doe.

[debbieg]

No, Tracy. We have only had PC for a year (V10). Unfortunately, access was given to a couple of church members to add data but apparently, they didn't understand household/personal profile differences.

The odd thing about this is that the profile without a first name does not show up in a household listing and therefore, does not have a directory sequence number. I can only see it when I look directly at profiles.

[Tracy]

When you look at the (Blank) Doe profile, there is a button to open the family record. Does it open to the same family record the Jimmy Doe profile is in? Or is this an orphaned profile?

The way I understood your first post, you were seeing two Jimmy Doe entries in the Integrated Data Entry screen.

[NeilZ]

When you look at the (Blank) Doe profile, there is a button to open the family record. Does it open to the same family record the Jimmy Doe profile is in? Or is this an orphaned profile?

The way I understood your first post, you were seeing two Jimmy Doe entries in the Integrated Data Entry screen.

Actually, the way I read it is that there are two 'jimmy's under the one family.

What I would do is:

1. see which 'Jimmy' has the most correct data (Birth date, date joined, etc), then I would check the attendance data and see who has the most entries. Hopefully, it is the profile with the most data.

2. Print out the data from the one that does not have as much data, then manually add that data to the other profile. Also do this for any attendance data you want to include.

3. Delete the bad profile.

[debbieg]

The "blank Doe" does point to the same family. but when you look at the family, there is not a member with a blank first name.....just 2 Jimmys with identical info and sequence number. The "blank Doe" has no other info attached to it. I think I am going to go ahead and delete it and then see what I find left with the family.
there is obviously some kind of referential integrity problem somewhere.
I'll let you know what happens.
debbie

[NeilZ]

The "blank Doe" does point to the same family. but when you look at the family, there is not a member with a blank first name.....just 2 Jimmys with identical info and sequence number. The "blank Doe" has no other info attached to it. I think I am going to go ahead and delete it and then see what I find left with the family.
there is obviously some kind of referential integrity problem somewhere.
I'll let you know what happens.
debbie

Debbie,

I'd also do a database Re-Index. You can do this through the Utilities menu.

[debbieg]

Well, I pulled up the "blank" Doe from the Mainain Profiles screen and deleted him. Then I went back to Household screen and there was only one Jimmy left. Weird..... but fixed.

Neil, thanks for the tip about the re-indexing. I think I will do that after I finish all my clean-up. Is that something that should be done on a periodic basis or just when you've had problems?
Debbie

[NeilZ]

Well, I pulled up the "blank" Doe from the Mainain Profiles screen and deleted him. Then I went back to Household screen and there was only one Jimmy left. Weird..... but fixed.

Neil, thanks for the tip about the re-indexing. I think I will do that after I finish all my clean-up. Is that something that should be done on a periodic basis or just when you've had problems?
Debbie

I usually do it at least once a month to be on the safe side. It does it automatically when a restore from backup is done, so there's no need to do it when that occurs.

Frankly, IMHO, whenever you're cleaning up the database, doing deletes in any area of the program, I would run the reindex.