Can FTA help find a list for me to enter at LC?

Red, am I right in thinking that for those members who haven't yet entered anyone at all on their My Ancestors page FTA will produce a list of everyone who was alive in 1881, even if there is no census information recorded?

 

Red seems to have gone offline so maybe I can answer?

There are 2 key reports. The first is on the Lost Cousins Tab, where you can display each census separately, and it will show you a list of people with a recorded census entry in your family tree that you can add to Lost Cousins. There is a very handy summary table as well.


By pressing the 1881 button, you get a report like this with the census details and names.


The other report Red mentioned is found on the Search Summaries tab. Select what relationship types you want, i.e. Direct Ancestors, Blood Relations, or even select them all and press the View Colour Census Report. On this report there is now a further filter on the top line which you can now limit what is displayed. Red Dragon mentioned he was looking at Yellows, which are the records that have a census recorded but he hasn't entered a Lost Cousins Fact to say that he has entered it on the LC site. Here is mine for 1881.


The Colour Census report is very very useful. You can see at a glance which censuses are missing so that you can go and look for them. It even allows you to double click on a cell and it will go and search Ancestry or one of the other providers for you.

While we're talking about the reports, the sister report to the Colour Census report is called the Colour BMD report. This also shows in colour the status of each person's BMD. Each colour indicating whether you have an exact date, an approx date, no date recorded, children but no partner, no weddings recorded etc.


Regardless of which FHS you use, everyone will benefit if they used FTA as well.

 

Thanks, Tim - what FTA does is certainly very impressive, but I'm conscious of the fact that amongst the thousands of members who have yet to enter any data there will be many people who have trees like mine, with no recognisable census facts and (since they haven't entered anyone) no LostCousins facts either.

If FTA can provide those people with a list of relatives who were alive in 1881 it would make it much easier for them to get started. I can't find any way of producing such a list but that may be because I'm not as familiar with FTA as you and Red.

 

No Problem.

I'll raise your new report as a suggestion over on the FTA site. And then I'll have a look to see if there is a way to give you what you need.

 

Actually it already can Peter what isn't clear from the graphic Tim displayed but what would be clear if you loaded your own GEDCOM into FTAnalyzer is that the colour census report would show red boxes for the 1881 census for people who are alive and grey boxes if they aren't alive.

Also on the census tab the default option is the 1881 UK census clicking on the "show missing from census" would immediately list for the user everyone alive in their tree on that census date.

So this functionality is already available and in the case of the census tab report has been available for years. Note it will work exactly as you describe on YOUR tree ie: a tree without any census fact tags recorded. Adding a census tag to your tree just makes the report smaller by letting the program know you've already found them on a census. Similarly adding a Lost Cousins tag just makes the Lost Cousins report smaller by letting the program know you've already entered them on the Lost Cousins website.

So simple steps

1) load GEDCOM into FTAnalyzer
2) click census tab
3) leave the defaults alone for the 1881 census and click "show missing from census".

Very quick very simple and gets users an excellent starter for ten to get entering into Lost Cousins by showing them everyone who was likely to have been alive at the time of the 1881 census just as you wanted.

 

Note users can also double click on a name in that census report and instantly search Ancestry, Find my Past, FamilySearch or FreeCen. So the users could do the following...

Follow the three steps above, double click an ancestor and search on Family Search, then get the reference numbers and follow the rest of your guide you asked about yesterday and for which I'm still due you a reply.

So from a few clicks users could end up entering data directly into Lost Cousins and rapidly add new ancestors to the site. It doesn't require them to have ANY PRIOR CENSUS data flagged. ANY user with ANY family tree program could be auto searching FamilySearch with a couple of clicks and then typing that straight into Lost Cousins. Fast easy and ANY user can do it.

 

Alexander has already replied, but here is a screenshot that you will get if you have no census info recorded.


You can either then use the info that you've recorded in your notes or change the Census Search (top line) to the free FamilySearch, double click and review the results to locate your person. You may have to press the Search all Collections link to bring up some results.

 

Version 3.6.1.1 should fix the issue of not immediately finding the census entries. However like all searching it is only as good as the data supplied to the search engine and as good as the search engines indexes. Whilst double clicking will usually find a lot of entries users may need to manually tweak the search criteria (eg: if its a commonly mis-spelt name).

 

Thanks for fixing that, and good advice on the search criteria.

 

In case it isn't clear what I mean by tweaking the search criteria, when you double click it will open a search page on familysearch with a lot of the boxes already filled out. You may get no results initially but if you then change the search boxes on the left hand side and click search again it often finds your people. eg: If you know that you need to tweak the name as its commonly misspelt, changing it and clicking the familysearch's search button again may find it.

FTAnalyzer has done the hard work of listing who you haven't yet found for that census and taking you to the census search page and filling out a lot of the boxes but sometimes you need to apply your personal knowledge of how your tree works to tweak the data on the form and search again to get the best results.

 

Tricky one Liberty. Its a tidy up exercise really as you want it to show green all done clean as you know you won't have a census entry. I'm not sure how best to fix this as entering a dummy census record whilst it would make it neat it wouldn't really be right as the point is they weren't on the census.

Perhaps we could have a custom tag, that FTAnalyzer could recognise and show green to indicate it was known they weren't present and were never going to be present on a census. Not sure what you'd call it though. ABROAD? Whatever it was called (it would need to be agreed as the way to show it so I could code the recognition of a custom tag) you'd enter it similar to entering a Lost Cousins tag ie: the tag and a date. The program could then assume that there would never be a census for that date.

 

Abroad is a good suggestion. I do however have some that just seem to be missing, I routinely go back and try them again, and now with the help of FTA they do stand out like a red sore thumb when I run the Colour reports!

 

I'm in favour of those you haven't found standing out like a sore thumb as it does help you realise that the census is missing despite your best efforts. To gloss over that just to make the report look tidy would be a bad thing. However as Liberty suggests there are others where you KNOW they are out of the country. Actually Liberty do you have any residence, military or similar data in your tree that says he was in India, or is it just that you know that but haven't entered it in your tree. I ask as another possible option would be to colour grey people who are recorded as resident out of the country on the census date.

 

Instead of a custom tag with all its extra work for the user. I've added an option to the colour census report so if it would otherwise be red - it will now check the likely country the person is in at that date and if that country is not a UK country it will show as dark grey and have an appropriate tooltip. So all you would need to make use of this is some fact in your tree to indicate they had moved to India at some date. If there is no fact to indicate they are out of the country it will still show red.

Now released as v3.6.1.4 with this dark grey out of country feature.

 

Good solution.

 

For the case where they are known to be out of the country that is now taken care of in v3.6.1.4 as long as you have a suitable fact to say they are elsewhere. I've got people who are born in Scotland and marry in Canada 20 or so years later it now shows them as dark grey to highlight I probably won't find them on a UK census.

As for Bryman's suggestion I'd rather have it that FTAnalyzer is checking data users have entered in their tree than they are storing data within FTA. It gets really complicated to deal with data persisting over sessions. Things like location data from Google is relatively simple as the location of a place doesn't change regardless of which file it is so Manchester tends to stay in the north of England regardless of who's file it is (although I've seen a tree where Manchester managed to move to Wales!!).

Having flags like "I give up I can't find them on this census" then gets more tricky, as its difficult to track if someone is the same person between loading of GEDCOM files. This is why data of this sort is easier if it is tagged in the users file and then interpreted. eg: Lost Cousins custom tag.

I'm happy to add a "I give up I can't find them on this census" and colour it say a darker green or bluey green. The idea would be we agree a custom tag users should use and then FTAnalyzer would understand that tag. It could even have a filter that listed everyone for whom you'd entered a "give up" tag. Perhaps the custom tag should be "MISSING"?

 

Having a fact to represent these cases is probably a good idea. You can then use the Facts report to list them in one place and continue to research them from time to time. I'm assuming you can only have solid colours, but what about a reddy green or a greeny red?