Batch numbers no longer work
I searched Family Search many years ago (15 years or so ago) and found many relevant BMDs for Germany. I faithfully recorded the batch numbers. Example: M92634-2
This week I have been trying to revisit some of these indexing projects. But they seem no longer to include the records I found in the past. I have tried the simplest of all searches, without filling in any other information. But I get No Results. And of course, if i type in a name or a date, i still get No Results. It is as if the batches have been suppressed. Has anyone else noticed this.
R Pinnell
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That first attempt of mine seemed to work, inasmuch as the results did match the correct batch number for marriages at Auckland St Andrew. Other searches were not so successful, in that I sometimes got the "familiar" error message (since this new search interface appeared): "Try again using a last name" (or similar). In a search of other batch numbers the results were rather "dubious". For example, entering "M016360" (which should have given me a list of marriages relating to Barnard Castle parish, I was presented mostly with results that could not be identified as such.***
So, yes, you can still reach records by inputting a batch number on the Search page, but the results seem to be rather hit-and-miss.
*** See https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?count=20&offset=60&q.batchNumber=M016360. Examining individual records in detail (especially those that showed just "England, United Kingdom" as the place name) revelaed that most results do appear to relate to marriages that took place in the Barnard Castle area, albeit not in the parish church itself.
BTW - when using the previous Search engine I often searched on batch numbers, with consistently positive results.
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@Rick Pinnell We've confirmed that you can still search records by batch number. Also confirmed that the batch number you provided does not return any results. Tested with some other batch numbers and they did provide results. Possible reasons for the failure of the batch number you provided:
--could be a typo in the number
--More likely is that these old German records came from a legacy collection--a product of the old record extraction projects that preceded current indexing. Those collections have been tinkered with recently to try to get them linked to the original images and to break up some of them to be more useful. It is not outside the realm of possibility that this tinkering has included a loss of the original batch number connections.
You might search in Record Collections:
for collections from Germany that might have records for your people. You can also search the catalog:
for the places your people were from to find the records.
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I eventually got there, but only after I had failed on a number of occasions, as the new search page is sometimes insistent on the input of a last name!
Unfortunately, this was not with your batch number, but one I chose from the page at http://www.archersoftware.co.uk/igi/fs-dur.htm. (See my results via the link below - you have to scroll down the right side of the page before you can see my Batch Number input).
I will try other examples to see how easy my efforts are to replicate. However, I did struggle to find batch numbers against FamilySearch sources - perhaps an experienced user can provide additional advice about this.
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