Is there an "AND" operator for queries?

Paul Nordberg

For instance, can we look for the marriage record of "John Smith" AND "Mary Jones," not records that contain either "John Smith" OR "Mary Jones"?

Thank you. Very nice addition. I hope you extend the experiment.

AnneLoForteWillson

Yes, you can use a +. So your search would look like this:

"John Smith" +Mary +Jones

You might also watch the video on the Full Text main information page for additional searching capabilities.

https://youtu.be/P00oMDsAsSw

Paul Nordberg

Thank you, Anne, for your simple and very helpful answer. (I had played around with the + sign, but hadn't manage to hit on the right sequence.)

Paul

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Your comment about "nice addition" implies that you're not asking about Search - Records (which searches indexed historical records) or Family Tree - Find (which searches profiles in the collaborative Family Tree). I'm guessing that you're talking about the combined search that now gets pride of place on the home page.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has found absolutely no use for the combined search, but having explored it a bit just now, it appears to handle multiple inputs the same way as the single-species searches, which is sort of halfway between a logical "OR" and "AND". If you put X Y in the primary search fields and M N in the spouse fields, then every result will have some degree of matching to X Y, and the top of the list will likely also have some degree of matching to M N, if there are any such results to be had. Once you run out of results where X Y was married to M N, you'll start seeing the ones where it's X Y married to L N and X Y married to M P, then eventually the ones where it's just surname = Y.

I've never explored in sufficient detail to discover how it ranks W Y + L N versus X Z + L N, and all the other possible variations. I likewise haven't needed to deal with a common enough combination of names where I needed to know how it ranked search results using multiple family members: if there's a record that matches the spouse but not the father, does it come before or after the one that matches the father but not the spouse? (The answer is likely "sometimes one, sometimes the other", because the ranking is actually the sum of a bunch of different numbers quantifying the degree of "matchiness" to the various inputs.)

Paul W

I'm usually unaware of any new options added to my Home page, as I rarely find the need to visit it.

The best ways of carrying out researches of an individual and their spouse in FamilySearch are:

(1) If you are looking for them in Family Tree, use the FIND option.

(2) If you are looking for indexed records in the FamilySearch database, go to https://www.familysearch.org/search/ and enter the first and last names of one of the couple, then click on Spouse and input the name of the other. If you are confident they will be found under these precise names I would also check the "Exact" boxes.

Here is an example of results found when looking (using Search) for a John Wright who married a Margaret Smith:

https://www.familysearch.org/search/record/results?q.givenName=John&q.givenName.exact=on&q.spouseGivenName=Margaret&q.spouseGivenName.exact=on&q.spouseSurname=Smith&q.spouseSurname.exact=on&q.surname=Wright&q.surname.exact=on

and here is the page produced when carrying out the same exercise using Family Tree's FIND:

https://www.familysearch.org/search/tree/results?q.givenName=john&q.givenName.exact=on&q.spouseGivenName=margaret&q.spouseGivenName.exact=on&q.spouseSurname=smith&q.spouseSurname.exact=on&q.surname=wright&q.surname.exact=on