I imported my tree from Ancestry and it gave me this message and I am not sure what to do or what it means.
"The branch for (name kept private) cannot continue automatically because it appears to match other profiles already on Geni."
Does this mean that I can't use the same ancestors that I found on another tree???? Can someone explain to me what this means and what I need to do here please?
It means Geni found that the profile you imported is a possible duplicate of a profile already in Geni.The import for that branche will pause, and will only continue when the profiles are merged or till a user indicates they are not the same. Geni tries to build one big Geni World Tree with only 1 profile for each person. So duplicates should be merged.
If the profiles are merged the next profile from that branch will be imported. if all the profiles from that branch are duplicates you can decide to stop the import for that branch as long as the profile is not merged or the merge is rejected because the profiles are not really duplicates. (Stopping can be the best option when it would not add new/better information).
If you are a basic user Geni allows you to find the first duplicate so you can ask to have it merged. For the next merges it would be more difficult because as a basic user you can use the Geni search screen only to find profile managed by yourself or managed by a collaborator. You can use an external search engine like Google to search Geni for public profiles, so you can find duplicates but it takes more effort. Geni tends to indicate a possible duplicate is the last names match and at least one of the given names and both profiles overlap in their living period (keep in mind that an about date will match with dates + or - 5 years, and with before or after dates there will be if match even when they a far apart e.g. after 800 will overlap with before 2000). This makes it hard to guess which profile is seen as a possible match especially when there are many given names for a profile.
There is some documentation for Geni available, you might want to look at https://www.geni.com/projects/Nederlandse-handleiding-GENI-voor-Dummies/13048#Priv-x00e9-profielen-van-overledenen-openbaar-maken (English version bottom of page)
