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Record hints

An2028
An2028 ✭
September 29 in Family Tree

Just wondering, why do record hints suddenly disappear? This has happened multiple times on and off. Recently I had over 700 and now it's dropped to 16. I've had this happen many times before. The records may suddenly reappear just as fast as they vanished.

Just wondering why? And is there anyway to make them come back sooner? They've been missing about 5 days now.

Thanks 😊

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Answers

  • dancingintherain
    dancingintherain ✭✭✭
    September 29 edited September 29

    @An2028

    Records become unavailable when the agreement between FamilySearch and the organization that owns or manages the record changes. FamilySearch may lose access to the record or place new restrictions on how a user can view it. Read this help article to learn more about this. https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/why-have-some-historical-records-disappeared-from-familysearch

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  • ColinCameron
    ColinCameron ✭✭✭
    September 29

    I don't think that's the reason.

    In my case my homepage list of hints has dropped from 400+ a few days ago to 11 today. But looking around the tree perhaps 5 or 6 generations I can see dozens, perhaps 100+ profiles with hints. So the records are still available and the hints are still there on the individual profiles, but not on the homepage like they were just a few days ago.

    1
  • dancingintherain
    dancingintherain ✭✭✭
    September 30 edited September 30

    @ColinCameron

    I can definitely look into the issue. It would be easier if you could share a few examples from your tree. If you could provide the PID for some of your individual profiles.

    Try https://www.familysearch.org/en/campaign/temple-tools and scroll down to Record Hints. Let us know what you think of the Temple Opportunities Campaign.

    Screenshot 2026-09-29 at 6.28.43 PM.png

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  • An2028
    An2028 ✭
    September 30
    https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/637752#Comment_637752

    Same here. I have to search for hints the hard way.

    0
  • Alan E. Brown
    Alan E. Brown mod
    September 30

    @An2028 @ColinCameron

    The hint lists are not intended to show you all the available record hints for your ancestors. That could be thousands of hints. Instead, it chooses a depth in your tree to look for hints so that you will see a reasonable number of hints in your list. That depth might be 5 generations back and one generation down. If that depth shows 15 hints, for example, then the system doesn't need to look any deeper to find hints. But if that depth produces only 5 hints, then the system looks deeper — it might look 6 generations back and one down. It's entirely possible that going back one more generation might produce hundreds of hints you hadn't seen before, so a large jump is quite possible. Note that the numbers I used are just for illustration purposes — I don't know what the actual thresholds are.

    The reverse is also possible. Because of changes in the Tree, availability of records, or attachments or detachments made by you or others, it may become true that a few more hints are available at a lesser depth than before, so that lesser depth is used, and you see the member of hints in your list drastically decline.

    But whatever happens, rest assured that FamilySearch will do its best to make sure that hints are always available to you, even if the size of the list may fluctuate up or down over time.

    5
  • SteveLinke
    SteveLinke ✭✭✭
    October 1

    The same thing just happened to me. I was down to about 12 hints on the main start page, then one day it ballooned to around 1,500 hints. It was clear that FamilySearch had gone back another generation (many hints for second cousins, etc.). However, as I was working through many of these hints, it suddenly went back down to the same 12 hints that were there before the expansion. It would be nice to be able to select the numbers of generations up/down for which to show hints. Or, at the very least, this should not suddenly change back-and-forth.

    2
  • An2028
    An2028 ✭
    October 1

    Yes, mine is still stuck at 9. Keep hoping it will return to the 700 plus.

    https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/637854#Comment_637854
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  • An2028
    An2028 ✭
    5:29PM

    I really think there's a glitch somewhere. My hints have still not returned. Stuck at 5.

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