Create more sophisticated search filters

LegacyUser

Karen Felt Rider said: I think it would be great to create search filters beyond just marriage, birth, death dates, etc. For instance, searching your family tree for anyone who was divorced, anyone who was married to more than one person at a time (polygamy), anyone who died in childbirth, etc.? It just gives you better insight into your ancestry.

LegacyUser

Juli said: I suggest exploring one of the offline family tree programs that can interface with FamilySearch. On the online, communal Family Tree of FamilySearch, it's impossible to define "your family tree"; do you really want to know about everybody who has a divorce entered in the entire global tree?

LegacyUser

Paul said: But surely the information (divorced, died in childbirth, etc.) would have to be recorded / indexed in a certain way in order for the suggested filters to produce any results?

LegacyUser

Brett said: Paul

I feel that the poster, 'Karen', was referring to "Searching" for such, within "Family Tree" itself, rather than Records.

That is, checking out, the 'Skeletons in the closet', so to speak, within their Ancestral lines.

Brett

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LegacyUser

Paul said: Yes, I thought that might be the case, Brett. However, even using FIND would mean there would have to be added search fields - and where would the detail come from? Take her "anyone who died in childbirth" request. How would that be picked-up from an individual's profile? Not even anything under "Other Information" to cover that, at present. Not that information under these categories can be found from a FIND search, in any case - except an Alternate Name, of course.

Maybe another user has practical suggestions about how Karen's "sophisticated search filters" might be implemented.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Probably needs to be the subject of another topic, but I realised just now how difficult it was to see the details of even MARRIAGES when using FIND in Family Tree.

I wanted to see the details of WRIGHTSON marriages that took place in Middlesex, England and hadn't realised you have to click on the results individually to see the event details, as only Birth / Death inputs are displayed on the "People Found..." screen.

The fact I have never previously felt the need to carry out this exercise probably shows how low-priority displaying marriage event details would be to the FamilySearch developers. Also (thinks whilst typing), the marriage event relates to a couple instead of the one person - who could have married more than once, as well!

Realising the difficulty of being able to view even relatively straightforward detail like this confirms my pessimism as to implementation of search routines along the lines Karen is suggesting.