Searching for people in FamilySearch
"They" have made it so that I can only search for an individual in the tree once. Then, I must go out and begin again. Are they going to go back and fix this?
Answers
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Probably if you can post here the exact procedure you are using. There are so many different ways to search for people that they will not be able to have any idea where you are finding this problem if you do not explain in detail. Screen shots really help.
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This may relate to a problem that I have found in searching for a profile using the Search / Family Tree / Find by ID method. The problem appears to have started at some time between about 06:00 - 12:00 on 4 January (UTC). If I search for any profile using this method, the information for the profile is displayed, but the full display of the screen is not completed. The column headings are not displayed; they show as pulsating grey blobs. Also, the filter buttons that usually appear at the top of the result list are not there. In this screenshot, I have used one of the ubiquitous Joe Bloggs profiles, but any other one would do.
Once the browser tab is in this state, if I attempt to do a Find by ID search for any other profile, I get a screen which is the same as the one that appears when I do a Find by Name search with no criteria specified.
To do another Find by ID search, I have to reload the search screen from the menu; a screen refresh (F5) is not sufficient.
I have reset my FamilySearch cookies, which had no effect. I'm using Windows 10 with both Chrome and Edge browsers.
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That looks an internet failure or a server failure. Wonder if the bad weather system moving through the country with its predicted power failures are causing trouble in some way.
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I do not believe you are right Gordon, it looks like an Ad Hoc change in the code to me. I do not know your background but I was a software engineer for a number of years and then a computer systems administrator. Of course I can not say for sure but that is what I think. I am a missionary at a center and when a pattern comes in with a stack of family names and they are not sure if the ordonnance have been accomplished or not, I do not wont to go back to FIND every time I wish to look at another name.
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I've typically found that when a page won't load that has loaded and functioned fine up to that day, that top on the list is an internet connection problem. But, yes, there could have been some system maintenance routine running or an update being posted or a power failure somewhere. In any event, such glitches always seem to be very short term.
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Still broke
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@Glen P Baker, @Gordon Collett, I assume that you are seeing the problem that I described. I have found that there is another variant of the problem. If I go to the Find page, do a Find by Place search, then switch to Find by ID in the side panel and try to do a search, that request is completely ignored. The residual results from my previous Find by Name search remain on the screen.
I have also found another fault relating to the Find process. In this case, I open the Find screen, select Find by Name, select MORE OPTIONS and enter a name. Then, when I start entering a place name, a pop-up list containing possible matching entries appears as expected. What is not expected is that the pop-up appears in the wrong vertical position. Depending on the exact letters I enter, the pop-up may be too high on the screen, or it may be too low the screen. In the following screenshots, I am entering NZ which is an alternate name for New Zealand. The first shot shows what happens when I type the N; the second is after I type the Z.
In the second shot, the list has dropped from the top to the bottom. What's in the shot is exactly what I see; I have to scroll the browser window to see the list's contents. It looks like there is a fault in the arithmetic used to determine where the top of the list should be.
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The "Find By ID" glitch is weird but not an impediment. (If I have the ID, I don't need to find it, now do I?)
The place-entry glitch, on the other hand, is weird, not restricted to the circumstances that Julian described, and rather more of an impediment.
It also occurs if you're modifying a search in the side panel; in this case (for me), the "drop-down" is invariably down at the bottom, below the "show exact" slider.
(I suppose I should be grateful that it didn't jump up and down as I typed, like it sometimes did in Family Tree at one point.)
I guess the fact that there aren't more reports of this behavior is a sign that I'm not alone in not using Find very often.
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi, as you say, I have the ID, but I'm trying to get to its profile. In my case, I'm frequently using the ID that I have in Family Tree Maker so that I can review the FS hints that FTM finds. Up until December 2023, FTM could display FS screens in its own embedded browser and I could review and attach or dismiss the hints without needing to go into the FS website. That largely stopped working over a year ago when changes were made to something; whose fault that was, I couldn't possibly say. Sometimes, FTM will find hints that FS doesn't even offer to me in its website. On even rarer occasions (like today, by chance), FTM and FS will actually talk to each other properly for a short period, and will allow me to link (match) a few profiles in FS with the corresponding people in FTM, attach sources in FS and update my FTM file from FS. Negotiations usually break down after a few transactions, and I have to revert to using the Find by ID process to attach or dismiss the hints.
That is an overly-long explanation of why I find the Find by ID invaluable. It is why I think these very recent faults are a significant disimprovement, if I may use your term. (I've just added that word to my spell-check dictionary; it is in the OED, etc.)
With regard to the jumping up and down, that is what it does in the Find by Name on the initial Find screen. It seems that it depends on how many items it finds to populate the drop-down; it repeats that with potentially as you type each letter of the place. It is also dependent on the vertical location of the Place textbox and probably on the monitor size too. When the list is displayed below the Place textbox, it is positioned below the SEARCH button. This would explain why it is almost off the bottom of the visible screen when MORE OPTIONS has been selected. The ergonomically-friendly position would be just below (or just above) the Place textbox itself regardless of whether MORE OPTIONS or FEWER OPTIONS is selected.
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Straying a little from the precise topic: the reason I find "Find By ID" superfluous is that I can just use the box at the top of Recents — or, if I I'm done with an open profile page, I can just paste the new ID in place of the old one at the end of the URL. The Recents box even works to open profiles in a new tab, because the buttons/links are right-clickable. (I don't use FTM, or anything else that's supposedly able to talk to FS directly, so I don't know if either the Recents or the URL method would fit into the process with it.)
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Workaround for Find or Family Tree under Search (they appear to work the same still)
Maybe it isn’t a workaround but the way it is moving forward.
About two weeks ago if you wished to find another person in the family tree:
- Click RESET
- Enter the PID
- Click SEARCH
When the person would be on the page to the left.
As of this morning, the easy way that I have found to do it is:
Click on Family Tree.
This will send it back to the initial page.
When enter the PID and click SEARCH.
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