RootsMagic Source List Bloat

My list of sources has a LOT of duplicates. The vast majority of these duplicated sources are coming from Ancestry.

When it comes to census records, it appears that citations from Ancestry 'lump' all records for a census year into one citation. As shown above, the citation is for the 1930 census. Specific details (such as the county and state) become part of the citation details.

If Ancestry is lumping citations, then why am I getting multiple citations for the same census year? If I'm counting correctly, I have 27 citations for the 1940 census. My theory is that I have a separate citation for each time I have a 1940 residence event in my RootsMagic tree.

To verify this, I decided to work with John Frederick Mentzer. Since I've already worked with this family, I know that I should find him living in Woodson County, Kansas in 1940. His Ancestry screen shows that I don't have any Ancestry sources attached to him and currently have 11 hints.

Since none of those hints are for the 1940 census, I did a search for him in the census.

The detail screen for the 1940 census in Woodson County Kansas helps me verify that this census record is for the John F Mentzer in my database

From the Detail Screen, I can click on Save to get to the option to save this record to John Frederick Mentzer in my tree.

Since I haven't changed my current 'census' event for 1940 to a residence event, Ancestry is prompting me to add a new event. I go ahead and accept the suggestion knowing that I probably need to delete my census event for John Mentzer in RootsMagic.

After clicking "Save to Your Tree" the record is saved to John Mentzer's fact screen on Ancestry. Since this is an Ancestry source, it is appearing in the 'Ancestry' section above the 'Other Sources'

Now that I have a new event on Ancestry (with an attached Ancestry source), I need to transfer that event to RootsMagic via TreeShare. On the TreeShare screen, I have two new residence events in Ancestry: 1935 and 1940.

I elected to add these two events to RootsMagic:

Once the transfer is complete, the two events have been added. Ancestry's citation for the 1940 census is listed as the source.

Now the question: how may 1940 census sources are in my source list? This time, I found 28 references to the 1940 census in my source list. I added 2 events referencing the 1940 census. Based on my original theory, the number of entries for the 1940 census should have increased by 2 to 29. Since it only increased by 1, my new theory is that the duplication of the source is tied to individuals and not to events.

Since I've verified that this bloat is related to TreeShare, I'm wondering:

• Can I merge these sources?
• Am I processing these sources incorrectly and thus creating the duplication?
• Or, is this a TreeShare issue?

There is a discussion on the RootsMagic forum for a related issue: duplication of media files. User mjashby is dealing with the issue of duplicated media by using RootsMagic 'memorize' button to copy/past the source from one family member to another.