Please consider adding a drop down menu for each state's files in Search

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Find a grave Index or Billiongraves index.

Bob Wylie

While I'm at it. Please consider adding a drop down menu for each state's files as we search for someone in Maine for example. A menu that perhaps has a search box for whatever state or country you want to search in. If I'm focused on someone who lived in Maine, I don't need to be distracted by information of someone who lived in Cambodia. It will simplify our searches and hopefully speed them up a bit as well. I'd love to see you go back to the old system.

Thanks! Bob

Gordon Collett

One way to do this is to use the location specific search:

This brings up the Maine research page. Using the search boxes here automatically limits your search to just the 103 collections of Maine records. Or use can use the check boxes beside each collection list to further limit your search to some of these collections.

But like so many parts of FamilySearch, there are multiple ways to accomplish the same task.

Use the More Options link on the main search page to open it then use the Location open to limit your search to a single state:

These both work quite well with the exception that some of the automatic post-processing of some indexes caused problems with the place name. I tried some quick searches and some obituaries that just mentioned Portland the the post-processing put it in the wrong state.