Tech Forum

Interesting hiccup in the records. Anyone know how to fix this?

If I go to the lds tools app on my phone, the last name of this couple is incorrect. Instead of showing the proper last night, it shows the maiden name of the wife as the family last name. Their individual records are accurate.

For example, if these are the individual names:

John Smith
Kate Smith (Jones) (Maiden name = Jones)

On LDS tools the household looks like this:

Jones, John and Kate (Using her maiden name instead of their married name)
-- John Smith
-- Kate Smith
-- Child #1 Smith
-- Child #2 Smith

When I look up their household through the online leader and clerk resources, everything looks ok.

Obviously this is bothering the member. Any thoughts on what I could do to clean up their records so that the ldstools app has the proper name? There doesn't seem to be a hiccup on the mls side, just the app.

In MLS, there is a household name field. I think you have to be looking at the household to see it. It may not be on the individual records. I'm not sure if that field is available or editable in LCR.

That is the field you seek.

Renaming the household in MLS is straightforward, as russellhltn suggested. If you don't want to go to the building, however, you can probably clean this up in LCR by following these steps:

1. Look up John Smith in LCR and go to the Household tab.
2. Click the Change Household button at the bottom.
3. When choosing individuals to create a new household, select only John Smith, and click the Continue button.
4. Enter the address and contact info for the household, and click the Create New Household button.
5. Look up John Smith again and go to the Household tab.
6. Click the Add Household Members button.
7. Search for Kate Smith, and select all the remaining family members that you want to add to the household, and click the Add to Household of John Smith button.

williamjackson wrote:Renaming the household in MLS is straightforward, as russellhltn suggested. If you don't want to go to the building, however, you can probably clean this up in LCR by following these steps:

Note that if you do this you should first look for any home teaching assignments and reassign the appropriate companionship to the new household after it is created.

williamjackson wrote:If you don't want to go to the building, however, you can probably clean this up in LCR by following these steps:

I wonder what that does to HT and other things attached at the household level?

I did not think about possible effects on home teaching assignments. But I just tried it out on my own household, and it looks like the assigned home teachers stay with the head of household.

Consider my household: I am the head of household, and I have a wife and two children. I have home teachers assigned to me. If I split my household and move my wife into a new household, that new household does not have home teachers assigned, but the remaining household of me and my children keep our home teachers. This makes sense.

If I then move myself and my children into my wife's household, she is now the head of household. If I look at her Member Information page, it says there are no home teachers assigned. If I look at my Member Information page, it says there are no home teachers assigned.

But if I switch to the Home Teaching part of LCR, things get interesting. On the Overview tab, our household appears on the list of "Households Not Assigned to be Home Taught". On the Households tab, our household does not show any assigned home teachers. But on the Companionships tab — and this is the interesting part — my household is listed as part of my home teachers' assignment.

I now reverse the process, splitting myself into a new household, then adding my wife and children back into the new household with myself as head of household. Lo and behold, my assigned home teachers are back and are being displayed in all the right places.

Based on these observations, I speculate that home teachers are assigned to a member that is a head of household (which is a subtle distinction from home teachers being assigned to a household). If that member somehow gets moved to not be a head of household, a home teaching assignment remains in the system, but the logic that displays home teaching assignments is slightly different in different places.

• On the Member Information page, the system looks up the head of household for the member being displayed, and shows the home teachers that are assigned to that head of household.
• On the Home Teaching Overview and Household pages, only heads of household are listed.
• On the Home Teaching Companionships page, the system shows any assignments for a companionship of home teachers, even if the assignment is to a person that is no longer a head of household.

So, after this pleasantly diverting exercise, my suggestion is this: If the head of household is going to change, consider unassigning home teachers before changing the household, then reassigning home teachers after you are done.

I think my takeway is: do the change in MLS (until LCR allows editing of household name.) Otherwise, you don't know what else will get messed up. Like household mapping.