Open a file that has been through a few imports and there are often people who are not connected to anyone recognizable. Not through parents, not through a spouse, not through a child. They are in the file, but they float.

GED-VIEW finds them by starting from a chosen person and walking every parent, child and spouse link. Anyone it never reaches is listed on the Issues page as disconnected.

The three usual causes

An import that never got joined up. A relative's tree, or a chunk from a website, came in as its own island. The connection point was a person who already existed in the file, so now there are two of them, one in each island. Find that duplicate, merge it, and the island joins the mainland. This is the most common cause, and the duplicates guide covers the merging.

Someone added on purpose for context. An in-law's parents, a neighbor who appears in the same census, a witness. They were never meant to connect. The report is saying they are there, not that they are wrong. Hide them on the Issues page once identified.

A relationship that was deleted or never entered. You know how these people connect, but the parent link is missing in the file. Look at the two profiles, find the person who should be the bridge, and add the relationship in the desktop program.

Whole disconnected families

Sometimes it is not one person but a hundred: a complete branch with its own generations and marriages, and no link to yours. That is almost always an import that came in as an island. Somewhere at the edge of that branch is a person who is a duplicate of someone on your side. The People table, sorted by surname, is the fastest way to find them.

Deciding what to keep

A disconnected person is not hurting anything. But they show up in charts, counts and exports, and if the file goes to a relative they will ask who these people are. If you cannot say how someone connects and do not remember adding them, it is reasonable to remove them from the working file, keeping a copy of the original.

Tools > Remove branch does that without touching the original: pick the person (by name, or on a small tree where a dragged box picks several at once), choose "Just this person" or the whole island as descendants or ancestors, read the Review, and Download the file without them or Open it in app, or Preview it first with the going-away people in red on every page. The sources and notes only they used go with them; anyone who would be left with no link goes along too, so nothing new is left floating.

Next

Open Issues and look at the disconnected list. One or two people, you probably know who they are. A hundred, look for the duplicate at the edge.