# Advanced tips and tricks

### Data input

If you need to add to the database a large number of individuals from a census or a register of births, and you are sure that not one of the added individuals already exists in your database, you can create a source record first, and then use that source as a person filter. After completing those steps, you can start to add new data. Each new person will get the source automatically. It makes providing a correct source for a person easier—all you need is to add page numbers and an authenticity index for the person reference in a source. If you add an individual who already exists in your database, you have two possible solutions: not filtering the content, and using the merge duplicates tool after completing the data entry.

When you process a source and know that your large database already has the person being processed, you can use the Time line plugin to quickly find that person. After you move the "slider" to the necessary year, you get a list of individuals who were alive in that year. When this technique is combined with location or name filters, you can speed up data processing noticeably.

### Data processing

When you continuously process large databases, you may need the Check connection of families and Check database tools. The former discovers data fragmentation: it shows all unrelated groups of person records. Sometimes this reveals errors made at the time of heavy work, when a person was disjoined from a family, but was not attached to another one. Thus, such a person remains "free". The Check database tool discovers all logical errors and inconsistencies in the database. There is little criteria currently, but, for example, this tool reveals erroneous years of birth in families (when one of the parents or their descendants have an incorrect year and age differences are less than a reasonable limit). Another example, heavy work with sources may end up with empty family records. GEDKeeper does not remove such records automatically, but this tool finds it and can remove the records from database at your prompting.

### Tips and tricks for easy handling

You can use the button in the person editor window to copy a person's full name to the clipboard.

Text fields for names in the dialog for person adding, can change case of the first letter in a name and remove leading and trailing spaces in text. To use those function just press the [`Ctrl + Down`] hotkey while you are in a text field.