Use of Filter - update

Here is an update based on the previous two messages:

How to identify Civil War Family Members

How to Identify Civil War era members of your tree (revised)

I wanted to understand what was going on a little what the difference was.

Created a test file with three (3) names. no other information. Using the same steps in the previous blog posts, the use of the Birth fact, "is blank" did not remove anyone.

I then added a birth place to one of the three. Same result, no one filtered out.

To make sure I wasn't missing anything, I filtered out Birth Place is not blank, and the person I had the birth place was filtered out.

Then, Birth Date is Blank, filtered out the same person. So far, it appears that this "logic" works when there is a Birth Fact in use for the person.

Going back to the see how to Filter Out anyone not using the Birth Fact, can be filtered out by using the Birth fact, Any Data, Does Not Exist will Filter Out that condition. Meaning not using the Birth Fact.

The observation from all of this is that the fact must be used to be Filtered Out. Or, If the fact isn't in use, then the conditions in the Filter will not evaluate the conditions in the Filter

Copyright © 2011 by H R Worthington

How to Identify Civil War era members of your tree (revised)

As a follow up to: How to identify Civil War Family Members posted earlier today, it appears that the final step (Birth record Blank) did not remove everyone without a Birth Date by using that Filter. 

After reading a comment in that post, I re-ran the final filter with a much better set of results. I will include the text from that earlier message here.

The first screen is in the People Workspace, Family View, with the Index in the Left Hand Panel. In this file, I have 8,252 people. At the Bottom of that screen is the FILTER feature.

 

Clicking on Filter, will bring up a window where we will start to Filter people who meet our parameters. The first thing we need to do, is to click on Include All >>. This will move those 8,252 people from the Left Window to the Right Window. This is like Selecting ALL or everyone.

 

Notice the same number is in both sides of the window. Now we want to < Filter OUT certain groups of people. In this case, we will Filter Out all Females. So, select Sex from the list of Facts, then Equals, and select Female and click OK.

 

We have a new number (4,343) (see below). Our next Filter will be to < Filter OUT everyone who was born BEFORE 1818, in this example. Selecting the Birth Fact, "is before", and entering 1818. (you can use any date you wish).

 

Again, we have a new number (3,101) (see below). Next, < Filter OUT everyone who was born AFTER 1846. Again select the Birth Fact, "is after", and enter 1846.

 

Down to 2,491. Will now < Filter OUT anyone who Died Before 1861. Selecting the Death Fact, "is before" 1861 will do this.

 

Here is where the change is. In the < Filter OUT window, select the Birth Fact, but this time select "Any Date", just below the Birth Fact, and select Does Not Exist.

 

We now have reduced our list from 8,252, down to 197.

 

Looking at the results again, there are still some names without Birth Dates in the list. BUT each of those people have a Birth Place. Go back to the < Filter OUT, Select the Birth Fact, and in the menu just below the Birth Fact, select Place, then select "Is Not Blank". This action took my list down to 102.

The list of people with the Filter Applied, are Males, who were born between 1818 and 1846 and how have not died, but have Birth Date information. A good place to start to look for your Civil Wars family members.


Note: Will have to do some more investigation into why the last filter in the previous blog post didn't work as expected.



Copyright © 2011 by H R Worthington

How to identify Civil War Family Members

As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, How can we identify who might have served in the Civil War? Perhaps we know some of them, but maybe not all of them.

Here is how to Filter your file down to identify those people.

The first screen is in the People Workspace, Family View, with the Index in the Left Hand Panel. In this file, I have 8,252 people. At the Bottom of that screen is the FILTER feature.

Clicking on Filter, will bring up a window where we will start to Filter people who meet our parameters. The first thing we need to do, is to click on Include All. This will move those 8,252 people from the Left Window to the Right Window. This is like Selecting ALL or everyone.

Notice the same number is in both sides of the window. Now we want to Filter OUT certain groups of people. In this case, we will Filter Out all Females. So, select Sex from the list of Facts, then Equals, and select Female and click OK.

We have a new number (4,343) (see below). Our next Filter will be to Filter OUT everyone who was born BEFORE 1818, in this example. Selecting the Birth Fact, "is before", and entering 1818. (you can use any date you wish).

Again, we have a new number (3,101) (see below). Next, Filter OUT everyone who was born AFTER 1846. Again select the Birth Fact, "is after", and enter 1846.

Down to 2,491. Will Filter OUT anyone who Died Before 1861. Selecting the Death Fact, "is before" 1861 will do this.

Reduced to 2,338. Now to Filter OUT anyone without a Birth Date. Birth Fact, "is blank".

This reduced the 8,252 people in my file to 2,304.

To remove the Filter, remove the Check Mark, on the Filter Line, and that will restore your file to everyone.

Copyright © 2011 by H R Worthington

People Workspace - How To Resize Panels

How to change the size of the Panels in the People Workspace.

Here is the normal view of the People Workspace. The LH (Left Hand) Panel is the Index, or list of people in your file.

In the Center Panel, at the top, is the Pedigree View of your tree, based on the selected person. Below that, is the Family View, listing Parents and Children. The RH (Right Hand) Panel, is selected (user selected fact from the Custom View) information about the hilighted or selected person.

The Index and the Family View parts of this screen can be reduced or removed. Each panel can be selected to drag (open or close) these two portions of the screen, or resize them.

Look at this next screen to see how to Hide these two panels.

You will notice a Left Pointing arrow at the Top of the Index Panel, and a down pointing arrow above the Family View.

Clicking on either of these arrows will Hide that part of the screen.

See the Index (LH) Panel being closed.

And the Family View Closed.

Those same two arrows will allow you to restore the LH Panel or the Family View back to the original configuration.

Copyright © 2011 by H R Worthington

Ancestry.com Announces New Web Search

Announcement from Ancestry.com

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Last October we launched Ancestry Labs to test a few new ideas, and we’d like to thank all those members who contributed a lot of great feedback and discussion around these.  Today we’re excited to announce the introduction of one of the ideas, Web Search, into the main Ancestry.com search.   

Why are we launching Web Search?

We’ve heard from many members that although Ancestry.com has the broadest collections of historical records available, it certainly isn’t completely comprehensive. Every day, digital records are being published on sites across the web, many of which are free to access.

These sites can be a great resource in helping break through brick walls, however, it can be hard to know where to find sites that are relevant to your ancestors, and it also takes time to work out the best way to search them once you do manage to track them down.

To help solve this, we are launching a new feature that searches select websites and brings back any matching results we find, along with a link to the site to enable you to go straight to the original record. Where relevant, we will include these results into your main search results. We will also list each collection we have within our card catalog, which will allow you to search those collections directly from within Ancestry.com.

Principles we will follow

As we’ve been developing Web Search, we’ve spoken with many members within the genealogical community to try to make sure we approach this in the right way. We recognize that this content is really important to every single site owner, and we believe it’s important we respect the wishes of these owners regarding links to their content.

From these discussions, we have developed some principles on how this service will work:

·         Free access to Web Records – Users do not have to subscribe or register with Ancestry.com to view these records.

·         We will always strive to follow web standards for web crawling permissions.  For example, some websites have a robots.txt file that instructs search engines (like Google) to not crawl the site, or to only crawl certain areas.

·         Proper attribution of Web Records to content publishers - we will link prominently to the original site within the search experience.

·         We have in place processes to remove content from the index if a website owner requests us to do that and we will publish how to contact our team to do this.  Website owners can also contact us to ask questions or to request their site be indexed – see this page to learn how to contact us: http://www.ancestry.com/websearch.

·         Ancestry.com users will be able to save key information to their trees but it will list the website as the source and will have an easy way to link back to the original site.

 

How does it work?

When you do a search on Ancestry.com, if we find a relevant match in a record on a site we have indexed, we will include that match in your search results. 

You can view the essential information in the search results list, click on a link to visit the website, or click on the information to view a little more and save it to your tree.  You don’t have to subscribe or even have a guest account with Ancestry.com to find and view this information or to get to the source website.  Of course, if you want to save it to your online tree, you will need to login or create a free account so we know where to save the information.

To designate which of these records are from Ancestry.com and which are found via web search, we are prefacing the source information with “Web:” and then the name of the collection.  For example: “Web: Rootsweb Obituary Index”. There is also an icon next to the name indicating this is a web record.

You will also see a link under the title that will go straight to the website.  If you are using new search, you will also find a special icon next to the title. 

When you click on the name of the collection, you will get to this page:

This page only contains the essential information needed to find the information and to make sure it is the person for whom you are searching. 

In the same way you should always check the image when you look at an index, make sure you go to the web site to see what other information is there.  You will usually find additional information – reference and publication information, grave site locations, ways to order the original record, notes, and sometimes even images.

Going to the Original Website

The first time you click on a link to go to an external website, you will see a message that looks like this:

We want to make sure users know a few things about this experience.  First of all, the content is not on Ancestry.com and the site will open in a new tab, or a new window (depending on your browser.)  Secondly, when you get to the website, you may have to search for the record.  Some sites have static URLs so we can help you get straight to the record.   Other sites dynamically generate the page for the record so you have to search when you get there.

If you don’t want to see this message in the future, just check the box in the lower right hand portion of the screen “Don’t show this message again.”

 

Can I search just one collection of web records, like I can with Ancestry content?

Yes, you can do this.  There are a few ways to search just one set of records from a website.

If you are looking at a single record on Ancestry.com, just click the title of the collection and it will take you to a search page for that collection.

This will take you to a search page that will look something like this:

You can also find the individual search forms by going to the card catalog and searching on the name of the collection.  If you don’t know, just search on the word “web” in the title since we will include the word “web” to denote they come from an external source and not from Ancestry.com.

How fast will we grow the Web Search service?

We plan to add sites to our index gradually so we can learn about how useful they are to users. Today, we are launching Web Search with select websites but expect to add many more websites to help our users find more information about their ancestors.

Go try it out

The best way to understand this is to try it out.  Since we are starting out small, you may not see these results in your search results for your ancestors, yet.  (If you do, please let us know if it was helpful.)

You can see it in action by doing a search for Louise M Chrisman, died in Indiana, USA or click here to see the search results.

In the example above, the first result is for Louise in “Web: Allen County, Indiana Deaths 1870-1920."

 

We would like your feedback

We hope this answers many of your questions.  We have appreciated all of the feedback we have gotten so far and look forward to continuing to learn from our users, from web publishers, and from others in the community.

We have a page with general information on this service at www.ancestry.com/websearch.  On this page, you will find a summary of some of this information as well as ways to contact us. 

If you own a website or publish content, we have a special message board where you can ask questions and share your suggestions with us at http://boards.ancestry.com/content-publishers-feedback/mb.ashx.

If you publish family history records on the web, you can ask your site to be searched, or request your site not be searched, by emailing us at websearch@ancestry.com. 

We also invite any of our users to share their thoughts and suggestions with us at the same email address – websearch@ancestry.com.

Happy Searching!

 

Copyright © 2011 by H R Worthington

Family Tree Maker 2011 - Smart Stories

One of the new features in Family Tree Maker Version 2011 was the introduction of "Smart Stories™". I have posted about this in the past.

Family Tree Maker 2011 is coming

The Smart Story™ feature was briefly described.

What new features are available in Family Tree Maker 2011?

This was a Question and Answer page about the new features, Smart Stories™ being one of them.


Family Tree Maker Webinar on September 15th 

This Webinar discussed the feature and is in the Webinar Archives. The Webinar can be viewed by clicking on the above link.

Family Tree Maker Version 2011 - Smart Story - Biography 

This posting was based on my first attempt at using this feature.

Just a little background on this article and feature. My mother had just passed away. Version 2011 had just been released and I hadn't really used the feature before. As has become "something I do", I created a Book for the Celebration of her life that I made available for the gathering the followed her memorial service. The purpose of this book, and others,  were to share her life with those who attended this Celebration.

The article above tells how I used the Smart Story™ feature to create a piece of the book. There are step by step instructions on how that story was created.

A fellow Genea-Blogger, and friend, Randy Seaver has posted a couple of posts about this feature as well.

Adding a Smart Story to Family Tree Maker 2011 - Post 1

Randy describes his experience with this feature. I encourage you to read Randy's Blog Post. He goes into some different uses of the Smart Story™ feature.

Then earlier this week he posted this article.

Adding a Smart Story to Family Tree Maker 2011 - Post 2

Again, Randy goes into great detail on this use of this feature. He also raises a couple of interesting findings in his use of the feature.

Then, today, he posted this article:


Dear Randy: Do Family Tree Maker 2011 Smart Stories have any practical function?


He was responding to a Comment made on a previous Blog post.

So, I would like to take a minute to talk about the "Practical Function" of the Smart Stories™ feature.

For me, this feature works very well, at least for me, when I created the book for my mother's celebration  that I talked about above.

One of her Ancestors was a Revolutionary War veteran who served and traveled with General George Washington. Trying to tell "his story" in the book, since I know this story would be missed in a bunch of genealogy reports that were also include, I wanted to have a Chapter in the Book that told Jacob Lurvey's story.

 Without going into the step by step for either the book feature, nor the Smart Stories feature, I want to show some screen images that will show a little more detail.


This first one is within the Book Feature, with the Chapter shown on the Left (Jacob Lurvey, Revolutionary War), the Smart Story information screen on the Right, with the Edited story in the center.

All of the FACTs about Jacob are in the Right Panel. They are inserted in the Center Panel then Edited. As a reminder, the FACT Name and Text (Date, Location, and Description) can NOT be edited from this screen. Going back and make the changes in the Person's Page has to be done and then the FACTS brought into the Center Pane. So, I found it best to try it once, and look carefully at each Fact and Edit on the Person page as required.

To look a little closer at the details:

Focusing on the Military FACTs a bit, you see that the Dated Military FACTs are at the top, as all of the FACTs are 'sorted' in the Right Panel by Date, and the Undated Military FACTs are at the bottom.

The Editing that was done, was to put all of the information in Date Order and putting all of the Military FACTs together.

The end results looks like this:

To add a little more to his story, in the chapter before this was a Time Line, still within the book feature, and also introduced in Family Tree Maker Version 2011, helped set up this Smart Story.

 The time line shows that the Revolutionary  War started when he was 13 and joined Washington's army at 14.

This is one example, for me at least, of the Practical use of this feature.

Thank you Randy for reminding me to post this blog.


Disclosure:  I am not an employee or contractor for Ancestry.com or its subsidiary entities. I have accepted travel expenses and Family Tree Maker software from Ancestry.com in the past.  I was not remunerated to write this post.


Copyright © 2011 by H R Worthington

Family Tree Maker Webinar - 02/16/11

Family Tree Maker Webinar on February 16th

Posted by Tana L. Pedersen on February 3, 2011 in Family Tree Maker, Webinars

Share

Family history is a great way to connect with your past. And Family Tree Maker can help you illustrate your family story and share it with friends and family members. Join us on Wednesday, February 16th at 8:00 pm (Eastern Standard Time) for a free webinar that focuses on creating charts, reports, and slide shows. You’ll learn how to design and print charts, run effective reports, discover what print functions are on each workspace, create individual and family slide shows, and more. To attend the Family Tree Maker 2011 Charts and Reports webinar, click here to register.

If you have questions you’d like answered, please enter them in the Comments section below. We’ll try to respond to them during the webinar or on the blog. (Please limit your questions to functionality available in Family Tree Maker 2011.) We appreciate your questions and look forward to talking to you soon. Thanks!

Have you missed past webinars? You can view them any time at FamilyTreeMaker.com.

About Tana L. Pedersen

Tana has been writing for the technology industry for fifteen years. She is author of The Companion Guide to Family Tree Maker 2011, five editions of The Official Guide to Family Tree Maker, and co-author of The Official Guide to RootsWeb.com.

Copyright © 2011 by H R Worthington

Family Tree Maker for MAC Helpful Links

Here are a couple of links to documentation for the MAC Version of Family Tree Maker.

QUICK START GUIDE (PDF)
"This helpful guide will help you begin your first projects in Family Tree Maker for Mac and to master the program's basic features." - Ancestry.com
http://www.familytreemaker.com/Content/Downloads/Guides/QuickStart_Mac_US.pdf

FEATURE LIST, SCREENSHOTS, REQUIREMENTS
Select "Buy now" on the webpage for more information.
http://www.familytreemaker.com/Pages/Overview/Mac/Features.aspx

For more Board Information, see:
http://boards.ancestry.com/topics.software.ftmmac/mb.ashx

Copyright © 2011 by H R Worthington

RE: Creating Source Citations in Family Tree Maker 2011 - Post 3

I have been following Randy Seaver's Blog for a while now. Of late, Randy has been moving is Version 16 Source-Citations, into the Version 2011 Source Templates. In this Blog Entry: http://www.geneamusings.com/2011/01/creating-source-citations-in-family_12.html. He was struggling with how to get this specific record, into the Template. As I also have been cleaning up my Source and Citations in my own file, I thought I would take his example and see how I would approach this record type. I have not run into this type of record (yet), but know that I haven't gotten down to this type of record.

The record is from the Ancestry.com online database. It's a Marriage Record that can be found in the Ada County Courthouse in Idaho.

To start, I created a new file in the Plan Workspace, New Tree Tab  and entered the Name, William E. Sebring. Because I wanted to cite where that name came from, I first went into Source Workspace, and clicked on Add (on the right), but wanted to use the Template feature for information from a Blog. Clicking on NEW and when this screen appeared typed BLO (and stopped. The Keyword BLO brought up this screen for the Blog Template.

This brought up the screen for a Blog (not shown here) but after filling in the Blog fields, this is the Source screen that was generated.

This Source is the Specific Blog entry that details the issue that Randy is working on. The Name, in this file came from that Blog entry, AND since the Source was already created, I went to the People Workspace, Person Tab, and selected the Name Fact for William. In the Right Hand (RH) Panel, selected the pull down menu for a New Citation, but selected the Use Existing Citation.

In doing so, this brought up the Source Citation List and selected the Source that was just entered and clicked on the Link To Citation.

When that was completed, the Cursor was placed over (not clicked) on the Source for the name.

 You can see that I had Randy's blog open behind the Family Tree Maker screen, but you can see the Citation for the Name Fact. Since the Blog also had Mable Shown and a Marriage Date of 19 February 1900, that information was entered and a Citation place on the Name and the Shared Marriage Fact.

Just to see where we are at this point, went to the Publish Workspace, Relationship Collection and brought up the Family Group Sheet.

Because we want to find that Marriage Record, switched to the Web Search Workspace and did a Web Search for William E. Sebring. The Lower Left window of the Web Search Screen shows the information in our Data Base, and the first result was the Idaho Marriages, 1842 - 1926, where William and Mable are listed. By selecting that result, the Lower Right panel showed the information that Ancestry.com has in that record. Looking between the Left and Right Panel (information in the file, and information online), it looks like a good match.

Just to be sure, the link that is in the Blue was clicked to see a little more about this record. This is the Printer Friendly view of that page.

A couple of things to note, for later, is that 1) there is NO image, and 2) the Source Information is what Randy had in his blog. Just confirming that we were looking at the same record. For this example, we went ahead and did the Web Merge. Verifying each merge screen to make sure what was going to be merged. Please note below that what was entered for the marriage was just the Date. In the Web Merge, the Date AND Place (location) was in the Online Record. So, the bullet item next to Make Alternate was selected, making the Online Record information as the Preferred Marriage Fact.

The completing all of the web merge screen and before the merge is executed, the Summary Screen is presented. Please note, that there is no indication that there will be a Media File, with the merge. We didn't see one online either.

Note the Source citation what is coming from Ancestry.com. That is just like the earlier screen that was in the Printer Friendly view of the online record. So far so good.

However, this is not in the Template Format. Returning to the Source Workspace, selecting this Source entry and looking at the RH Panel, we see the old Citation.

This is what we want to change from this format to the appropriate template.

Clicking on the Pencil ICON at the top of this panel, will open the Source Screen.

In this case, rather than using the Keyword search, a manual selection will be made to locate the appropriate template.

In this case, we were looking at a Local and State Record - Courts and Governance record. It was a Derivative that was found in and Online Database.

Note the Bottom of that screen about the Database Outline and at the top of the screen referring to the QuickCheck model that can be found in Evidence Explained!.

Making that selection brings up the Edit Source Screen, where the Source Template is filled in, at the time, so completing the Database Title, Webside creator/owner, Website Title, URL, and Year fields are filled in.

Clicking on OK, takes us back to the Source Workspace and the Citation screen, which has taken the information from the old format, and is now in the Template format.

Information from that Printer Friendly screen where the Source talked about "This record can be found ..." was put into the Citation Text, along with "Entry for marragee of William E. Sebring and Mable Shown, 19 February, 1900.

Because I wanted all of the information to appear in the EndNotes, a check mark was put into the Include in ref. note.

Returning to the Family Group Sheet, we now see the Facts that now have that citation, and the new citation.

Returning to the Source workspace and selecting this Citation, the facts will also be listed in the Center Panel.


Copyright © 2010 by H R Worthington

Family Tree Maker Tutorials

Family Tree Maker Tutorials

Posted: 10 Jan 2011 07:00 AM PST

Have you ever wanted a personal tutor to sit at your computer and show you how to use Family Tree Maker? We have a solution. Family Tree Maker has a variety of short video tutorials (each about 3 to 5 minutes long) that can help you quickly learn how to add, organize, and share your family history. They’re perfect for visual learners or anyone who wants a little direction or help using the software.
Here’s a list of the eight tutorials that are available:

Workspaces–teaches you about the seven workspaces that make up the Family Tree Maker software.

Building Family Tutorial–Shows you how to add spouses, children, and parents, and navigate in the People workspace.

Building Person Tutorial–Explains how to add events, facts, and media items for an individual.

Places Tutorial–Explains how the place authority works and teaches how to resolve unrecognized place names.

Media Tutorial–Illustrates the various ways to add media items and record details about them.

Sourcing Tutorial–Shows you how and where to create sources and source citations.

Publishing Tutorial–Explains the Publish workspace and also chart/report options and settings.

Web Search Tutorial–Illustrates Ancestry hints and search results and shows how to merge this information into your tree.

You can access all these tutorials online on the Family Tree Maker website. If you’re using versions 2009, 2010, or 2011, you can also access these tutorials within your Family Tree Maker software; simply select the Help menu, and choose Training Tutorials.

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Copyright © 2010 by H R Worthington