Exporting indexed search results

Anne_in_va

I love being able to export into excel a list of records based on search criteria. My question is - why don't all of the dates export along with the record data? I can click on any individual record and see that it is a baptism/christening record with the date, but the date does not appear in the search results, and therefore is not exported. I am just wonering why this happens. Thanks

Graham Buckell

My reply

Looking at the record you sent a copy of, the record is of Michael Beringer as a father. The date is attached to his daughter, not to him. This is reflected in the exported spreadsheet. As I recall, the old search system would have allowed you, for example, to search for Beringer with a father Michael Beringer. This would have allowed you to get all the results of him as a father in one go with the dates, etc. The current search system is less flexible and a number of people have complained about it. Hopefully the powers that be will take notice and change the system to allow the old flexibility once more.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

I never used to use it much, so I don't know if this is new because of the new interface, but it appears to me that the export function is faulty. I just tried it on some 1930 census results that I was looking at for a different question, and I couldn't get it to export the "race" field, for example. I was hoping that fiddling with the display options on the More Options - Preferences tab would affect the spreadsheet, but none of those settings made any difference in it.

FS, what's the point of an export function that only includes a few of the indexed fields?

Graham Buckell

@Anne_in_va I too like to do this and have used it a lot in the past although have not used it recently. But I tried it just now and it seemed to work fine. I used fairly broad search criteria so that it would embrace a variety of results such as births, christenings, marriages, burials and deaths. All of these came through.

Can you please post details of the search criteria you used so that I can try to recreate your results?

Regards

Graham Buckell

Anne_in_va

Using the catalog, I search for DGS 4038492, I go to the records beginning 1606, then the 1st set of records that are items 3-4, I click on the magnifying glass to search the index. I enter the name Michael Beringer. There are 170 results. The first 23 of these have events with dates, but then the search results stop listing events and dates, even though if I select a record, it is there. So when I export this information, I get the events and dates when they are displayed in the search results, but not when they are missing. So now I have to manually look at the record information to see if it falls in the timeframe I need. I attached a picture to show what I mean.

Graham Buckell

@Anne_in_va had a problem posting her answer to my question. She sent me the information via private message

The search was done DGS 4038492 for Michael Beringer. Some search results have an event with a date, but others do not, even though the record information includes this data.

I will post my reply below.

Anne_in_va

Thank you, Graham. I will try multiple searches in the future with Michael Beringer, or whoever I am searching, as the principal, as the father, etc, and see if I can get more events to export.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

That sort of role-dependent information-sparse results display is actually not new to the new interface. In the old interface, I'd generally apply a top-level birthplace filter (specifying just a continent) in order to get rid of them. I would assume that the same idea still applies, although implementing it doubtless now takes many more clicks and a bunch more scrolling.

Basically, what's shown in the search results display depends in part on the role assigned to the name in the first column. If that's the primary person represented in the index entry -- such as the child in a baptism, or the deceased in a burial -- then the event itself is displayed in the search result. If the name is for a secondary role in the event, however, then only the relationships are shown, not the event itself. Thus, for example, a father in a birth, marriage, or death record will be shown only as a father, with no information in the results list about what sort of event he was recorded in. I guess the thinking is that it's not his birth/marriage/death, but I do not find this to be a convincing argument.

JamesBarton9

I too have a problem with the export function. It should export what is on the screen, as implied. To do otherwise is completely illogical.

I'm trying to research the residents of particular streets from census to census, but whatever I do, it will not export the street name (the Residence fact in the screenshot), nor the age (though it does export the date of birth range).

I cannot add the street name to the residence field in the search, because that results in nothing found! Even when copied and pasted from the screen output.

Graham Buckell

@JamesBarton9

I have tried your search playing around with the different options under Preferences and I get the same result as you. One can get around the lack of age by using the birth date column but this does not resolve the street address.

I will escalate the issue.