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A Better Search Function

bruckmak
bruckmak ✭
January 23 in Suggest an Idea

I wish there was a search within tree function that would allow me to search within my relatives. There are times when I'm looking for someone of a specific last name but don't remember any other information about them, or which branch of my tree they're on, so I can't find them as it would take hours to look through my tree.

I have seen previous posts about this topic and how technically a search within a tree could produce millions of results. However, if the search function was limited to a certain number of generations, this could be avoided, even though a search with millions of results would be unlikely if searching by something like a name.

I also wish that there was a search function, either a separate one or combined with the above idea, that would search within the people you've contributed to, as I've contributed to many people I'm not related to. I realize there is the "follow" function, however it's sort of unreasonable to expect that someone would remember to hit the follow button when they could work on hundreds of people in a day, and they might not necessarily want to know when those pages are updated or changed.

Tagged:
  • Family Tree
  • Relative Finder
  • Search Person
  • Contributor
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2 votes

New · Last Updated January 23

Comments

  • LMR188
    LMR188 ✭
    March 27

    Same wish! Would love a way to search a branch for a descendant name, or for an ancestor name.

    0
  • dontiknowyou
    dontiknowyou ✭✭✭✭✭
    March 28

    How I do this:

    Open the branch in View Tree then use the web browser's page search to search the tree for the name.

    0
  • PattiG36021
    PattiG36021 ✭
    March 29

    @bruckmak

    I like the "decendancy view" of the tree for this purpose. It displays the names in a list form. It will open four generations, but you can manually open many more generations, expanding both the ancestors and decendants from the PID of your starting person.

    This is particularly good if you are not sure of the name you are searching.

    Regarding your second wish, under "My contributions", you can see the list of records you have worked on, but it seems to give the list in reverse chronological order. It may not be useful unless you are looking for records you have worked on recently.

    0
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