I am trying to get started indexing and the first item I have has to do with marriage banns.

Virginia Fox

I cannot see extractable information on the images other than the names of the spouse and her husband to be.; Perhaps I should not have stated that this has to do with marriage as there does not seem to be an actual date of marriage that I can see.

tndavis

What project are you working on? Sometimes there is very little to index, but it doesn't mean it's not important. If you have dates of the banns, but not the marriage itself, usually you enter the third (or last) date of the banns. Check the project information to make sure that is acceptable for your project.

Marian McDonald_1

Virginia, you can share your batch number with us and we can take a look at it with you and perhaps provide you with some assistance. You will find the batch number at the top of the batch it might look like this: Part O][XXXX_XXX]. We are here to help.

Glad you want to help us index these precious records for families. Thank you.

Melissa S Himes

Hello Virginia. Welcome to Indexing! The most important things to do to start indexing is to read all the project instructions and click on each example to see how the records are indexed. The project instructions can be pulled up at any time by clicking on the last icon on the toolbar.

In addition to these instructions, each field has its own unique instruction. To view those, you click on the purple question mark that appears when you click on the field. So, for marriages, even though it says Marriage Date, when you click on that question mark it is going to give you a priority listing for what dates to use. One of those listings is most likely the date of the last bann (or 3rd bann). Many of the fields will be marked blank since there is no information to index. We use the combination of the Control or Command Key + B to render the field blank when it is required (an asterisk will identify whether the field is required). Additionally, many projects have a preset number of entries. Once you index all the information on your image, you will need to delete the unneeded entries by clicking on the trash can icon and select "all blank entries", then delete. Now your batch can be submitted.

Since you are getting started, I like to recommend an excellent video that has indexing instructions! When you click on the blue link, it will take you to the video. The actual lesson starts at the 8 minute mark, but, the discussion with Wendy and Jason of FamilySearch is also delightful.              Indexing Discussion (Jason Pierson Live)      

Good luck! I hope you enjoy indexing and keep coming back with more questions.