Linking persons to files is a work-around to get stuff going initially. Added for users who have 100,000 files with faces.
The final goal should always be real face annotations of course.
Why would somebody ever want to go the reverse way...?
You can just Ctrl+A all face annotations, delete them, and add links instead if you really would need this.
Or move all existing face annotations to the right edge, where links are placed. Then you have the same as links, right?
Or just hide the face annotations if you don't want to see them.
Replacing real face annotations with links will severely cripple the IMatch face AI and prevent it from assigning persons or the correct persons.
This makes absolute no sense.