Search in Our Own Family Tree
I wish there was a way to search for a name in our own family tree. My tree is very large and I forget where some of my ancestors are in my tree. If I use the Find button, it pulls up too many similar names from other family trees. What if I only remember the name but not the year, etc. ; then, it is very hard to use Find. Also, it would be nice to quickly go to that name instead of following up my family tree line to that person (if I do remember where that person is). And, if I don't have the ID number, than I can't get to the name fast.
If the program had some Find that was for our own family tree, that would be very helpful.
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There sort of is. Instead of accessing Search Family Tree (or find, they bring up the EXACT same screen), click recents and search that list. That list is limited to people whose pages you have accessed.
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In addition to your recents list, you can go to your "My Contributions" page, which is searchable by name. Both are somewhat limited, of course: Recents only has up to 50 profiles, and doesn't include the ones that you added via Source Linker but did not subsequently visit/look at, while Contributions doesn't include profiles that you merely looked at but didn't make any changes to.
The problem with the oft-recurring suggestion of "only searching my tree" is, how should FS define and delimit what is "yours"? Should it do the equivalent of a full tree download, going up N generations from you and then down M generations from each of those people? When you do such a download in one of the third-party software solutions that can synchronize with FS, it can take several hours. Or, should the "pruning" be done after the search, running the "View Relationship" routine on every single search result? That would make each results page take several minutes to load.
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The request of finding out where you are in the family tree is a must and very reasonable request. The replies are from people who obviously do not understand the problem or have not made a large tree within the shared shared tree. Anyone with a family tree than exceeds 15 generations will tell you family search is nearly impossible to use and very frustrating. The most frustrating part is when you actually find a relative and a random refresh happens it puts you back to the start of your tree losing all context that painfully set up!! Why on earth it behaves like this is for others to explain. Why local contexts are not being maintained also beggers beliefs!!
Comments about not being able to search your part of the tree is simply thought out and as for processing times of more than 15 generations taking hours to process are either ignorant or disingenuous my friends! Other genealogy programs manage it ! OK with private trees (or with a shared tree a local context could loaded at startup) or pointers context maintained.
- if you Press home button in the pedigree window then a tree on based on your home person is displayed! This is a sub part of the tree!!! Yes???
- Transverse up and down the family network in the pedigree window and seemly a local copy of this part of the tree is kept in this process memory or pointers to a shared memory maintained. Thus a local search should be possible at least the part of the tree that has been already been transversed !!! Better than nothing !!! Maybe a look ahead of say 10 to 15 generations even better
- If it takes several hours to do a simple relationship more than 15 generations that I might suggest your design needs looking at . I have downloaded approx. 50K relatives via gedcom and managed to search across 30 generations in seconds and definitely a fraction of a minute in a IDE!!!! Should not had to write this!
Please I am trying to help and push under paid over worked developers to excellence and making this app the very best. I am on you side and wish to help. Presently, FamilySearch a brilliant concept and wonderful because it is free is becoming unable and probably never designed for 50 plus generations with such a huge tree ! But we are where we are and the apps needs some serious rework.
Hoping for a positive response so I can keep adding to the community tree but getting very frustrated like many of the most active and successful contributor's are as well. Contact me directly in the app if u want more and better description . Please do not respond with half thought out excuses as this does not help. Moderators do not edit or destroy the meaning of this message like my previous attempts
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@PaulHarrison61 wrote: "If it takes several hours to do a simple relationship more than 15 generations that I might suggest your design needs looking at."
Why? Keep in mind the sheer scale of things: the shared Tree on FamilySearch has 1.46 billion profiles (as of last year: https://www.familysearch.org/en/blog/2022-familysearch-year-in-review). In contrast, Smithsonian Magazine ran an article last year with the title "Largest Human Family Tree Identifies Nearly 27 Million Ancestors". The FSFT contains over fifty times that many profiles. Or consider Ancestry: I can't get the internet to cough up an official number, but various posts indicate that a 230,000-person tree there is generally agreed to be ginormous. How long would it take Ancestry to sort through over 6,000 such trees?
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1.46 billions . if cleaned up removing repeats, removing disconnected records , removing records named ? this would be greatly removed.
FYI Traversing a tree from a to b involves the number of records associated with the path between them and very little with the total number of records especially those not even connected. Again look at your design its very possible
If you provide me a download of all 1.46 billion records I will give provide you with Kotlin code that does this search . Even if u provide me a complete download from from my sons id onwards plus duplicates i can demonstrate across over 30 generations plus. Again I am talking actual demonstration not hot air!!!
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@PaulHarrison61 This forum is primarily comprised of users of the website. We regular participants help others with their research, in general, or with specific issues on the website. You are not communicating directly with anyone who could/would provide a download.
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@PaulHarrison61 is quite right in asserting that FamilyTree could provide a "context-sensitive" Find feature that looks in your "branch" of the tree. There are many areas where they are doing this internally (how is it otherwise that you only get Hints for people that are fairly closely related to you?). Searching only in your direct ancestors would be easily done. But I imagine that most users are interested in finding someone that is a "cousin", where they can't remember exactly how they are related. Providing a search through those cousins would be a little more complex; limits would have to be set (siblings of direct ancestors and their spouses?)
The suggestion to use the Recents list is valid, but it does not solve the root issue. It is a fairly long list, but it is limited to a set number of entries, and it can be filled with a lot of recent activity that does not cover the relative in question that you are seeking.
I have worked with "newbie" researchers for years, and I believe that every one of them has asked how to "search in my tree only" at some point or another. I think it would be a very sensible feature to have.
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David thank you for your reply. Yes I agree unlimited search for relationship will not be possible except maybe as batch offline process and in fact I never requested it! In relativity no-one using familysearch actually accesses the entire data range and as you point out with hints there is a context or range of interest already imposed. I agree a range of limits with search relationships or even different ranges of contexts e.g. online immediate up to say 20 generations with 2 or 3levels of cousins . Another one go away and a cup of tea with more and finally offline overnight . The later is already done with the famous relatives option!
I understand the system administrator also may not want a resource hogger either and want to limit each individual access of resources and may only want to grant access to this feature to advanced users with large tress
FYI without this capability FamilySearch app becomes unusable for anyone with a family tree with more than 15 generations family tree and bye the way these people are not newbies (attitude issues prevalence on this site is very disturbing and is limiting its full potential). I
This "must have feature" is technical possible and may require experienced developers to think outside of their box and not just using brute force. We actually develop need these necessary features that allow the ambition of FamilySearch. FamilySearch wants a worlds share family tree and its the app and its developers job to support this ambition. If the developers and spokepeople do not think they can provide necessary infrastructure and architecture to achieve this , then its time to change the ambition and go induvial trees like others. I love FamilySearch ambition of a shared tree supporting by onlines document's and hope they can widen their vision.
I quite willing to help even develop a mock up code assuming a data dump can be provided. My own family tree data dump of 23 25 generations (thats all i can download due to limits of the 3rd party sw i use to get my gedcom file takes a few 10s of seconds to match relatives. If someone can provide me either a complete data dump or a complete data dump with all my ancestors starting from my sons id I would be willing to write some search functions to demonstrate possibilities.
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I think we can be pretty confident that FamilySearch is well aware that a limited search feature would be welcomed by many users since it gets requested here about once a month. I also think we don't have to worry to much about the expertise of the people developing FamilySearch. They have done quite amazing things on the site.
This leads to three possibilities.
1) They have a team working on such a feature and in a few more years when they have solved all the problems with getting such a search to function at a reasonable cost of time and processing power we will see it released.
2) They would like to have a team working on it but have other, higher, priorities such as getting the current search function to always work without crashing. Currently when the site is busy I often get an error screen when searching historical records and have to refresh the screen three or four times before the results load. It would be nice to have that fixed.
3) They have clear and convincing reasons why they do not want such a feature as part of Family Tree which they have not seen any need to share with us.
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Still looking for a download of my complete family tree. Gordon can you arrange that. Unfortunately the 3 party tool runs out of memory before completing and I only get some of the 29 to 32 generations.
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If the 3rd party tool runs out of memory, perhaps that is a signal that the project is larger than you think. It is HIGHLY unlikely that FamilySearch would give an outside party a full download of all the contributions of the many users.
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This is a community discussion board for users to toss ideas back and forth and share perspectives and experiences in working with the FamilySearch website. You will rarely find any developers or programmers here. They get ideas and problems forwarded to them as appropriate by the moderators. But they almost never post any replies.
I try to sprinkle in as many "I think"s, "probably"s, and other qualifiers as needs to show these are just my thoughts as another user of the site.
If you do not find any discussion helpful, feel free to post your idea and never return to look at any user comments. If a developer wants more information from you, they will find you. But not through these boards.
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No Áine. the memory limitation is my laptop and the size of my familytree. It indicates the size of my family tree not the size of familysearch total db size which never resides locally
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Mod note- code of conduct violations are removed from discussions. Please refrain from attacking others and using aggressive formatting.
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FYI 1.46 billion records in modern times is not big .
Modern sw systems are capable of processing 1000 times that per second back in the 1990s and now even quicker. Even my middle of the road latop top processes 50K tree in seconds.
After one 3 rd party tool run out of memory for reasons that will come apparent later, I tried using a 2nd 3rd party tool to download my family tree. Well according to this tool there is repetitive loop in the 19th generation in my tree {hence 1st tool running out of memory!}! FamilySearch expert users please advise me how to locate this would be verý welcome indeed! This produce instead of 50+ records but a mere
Before I go I am going to give a data quality report (real data not hot air) of my family tree. Naturally this is data that became joined to my entered tree the raison d'etre of FamilySearch !!!
instead of 50+ records of the 1st 3rd party tool but a mere 19642 before finding the loop. Of this 19642 there are actually 13819 induvial peeps with the following data problems
- 32 records named ? that I cannot find or see on FamilySearch . Help please
- 15 records named unknown that I cannot find or see on FamilySearch! Help please
- 3512 Individuals with burial date after death date. This could be corrected automatically!
- 1247 Individuals with birth date greater than christening date. This could be corrected automatically!
- 362 Individuals with dates inconsistent with their parents dates . Needs genealogists and research cool! Thats why peeps use FamilySearch
- Stats 3 to 5 was processed Gedcom file on my laptop by sw a newbie sw grad could have written and therefore FamilySearch could with not much effort . I have other stats!!!!!
In conclusion our family tree that was entered by myself and my sister have connected to 1000s of other peeps which would be great if these peeps were of good data integrity! A lot of these data issues could be corrected automatically quite easily see points as points 3 and 4 above. The records in points 1 and 2 should be removed automatically has they have no real data just noise!!!
Please note people reading this post. Its better to have a smaller family tree of definite and a local sandbox with what if records of uncertain accuracy than a huge tree with data uncertainty! The later is just rubbish and a waste of time. I have spend a lot of my valuable time just cleaning up data and have done very real genealogy recently. With the prevalent attitude in here i unfortunately come to the conclusion things will worsen considerably in the future and possibly reached a critical point that is beyond what is a savable.
I sincerely wish everyone I am wrong and wish everyone good luck and enjoyable and rewarding time.
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For numbers 3 and 4: no, they could not be corrected automatically, because how is the computer supposed to know which date is the correct one?
Here's the Help Center article on fixing a looping pedigree: https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/how-do-i-solve-a-looping-pedigree-in-family-tree. Of course, it kind of skips the hard part: finding that incorrect relationship that needs to be deleted. Having never dealt with this myself, I have no practical advice to offer.
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The consistent advice is that the FSFT should not be the ONLY repository for our genealogical research. I maintain an offline database as well as working in other collaborative trees and with individual trees on other platforms. Having my research on other websites supports DNA. Having it offline and backed up multiple ways helps ensure my extensive work will not disappear.
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None of the data inconsistencies mentioned can be fixed by automated systems. (As a side note, I think there is a typo in #3, since burial date after death date sounds just fine to me.) Obviously some have 2 or more pieces of information that conflict. An automated system can't know which piece of data to trust; if a burial date is before a death date, is the problem with a death date that is too late or a burial date that is too early, or both?
As for point #6, Family Tree uses data warnings and research suggestions to make people aware of these things. These are shown in the Research Help section of a person's page, and also many of them are shown in the various tree views. The exact list of inconsistencies that you value may not precisely match those that are flagged in Family Tree, but there is great overlap. In general, the collaborative philosophy of Family Tree is best served by making users aware of inconsistencies and encouraging them to research and fix them, rather than making hard rules about what may or may not be entered (especially when such rules might depend on comparing with other data that could be incorrect at this point).
My advice is to embrace the shared, open-edit tree. Have your heart filled with gratitude to the many thousands of people who have contributed to help get Family Tree to where it is now and who continue to contribute. Have patience and humility, realizing that although some of those contributions have mistakes, we all are imperfect and will make mistakes and hope for grace from those who encounter our mistakes. Diligently make your own contributions to the tree, correcting errors, adding sources and other documentation, and adding new people to the Tree. With so many people involved, this process can sometimes feel a bit chaotic, but it's amazing to behold what those people's combined efforts have been able to produce. The data in the Tree gets better and better in so many cases, and in those cases where it might temporarily be less than perfect, we all can help make it better.
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The BYU Family History Technology Lab has a nice little program called Tree Sweeper at https://treesweeper.fhtl.org/start Unfortunately they list it as a Legacy project so I'm not sure it is something they continue to work on to keep updated and functioning. It has a setting to check seven generations of ancestors but seems to choke if checking more than four. You can set anyone in Family Tree as the starting person and have it scan to generate this type of report:
From the report you can jump directly to the person on Family Tree. Here, although the setting says Possible Errors Only, the scan does include Definite Errors. Here all the possible errors are like the one I have open in which grandparents adopted a grandchild. The program does not distinguish between biological and adopted children.
Maybe we should be sending in requests for them to continue to improve this program. It works directly from Family Tree without any need to download then import a GEDCOM.
To reiterate and explain my opposition to any type of automatic data correction in Family Tree, I am totally against such because it completely violates my personal principles of data correction which are to look at each interesting piece of data and evaluate:
- Why is this data on the record?
- Where did it come from?
- When was it added to the record?
- Who added it to the record?
- How was it added to the record?
- What is the best way in this particular situation to reconcile, repair, restore or remove this data?
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