Methods of Checking All My Ancestors have been added to Lost Cousins

No, no pop-up boxes.

It is using the correct "starter" (at least as far as the data is concerned......I keep meaning to change it, but that's another unrelated issue!)

I do know of a couple of cousins marrying cousins, I wonder if that is the problem?

 

I don't think that is the problem as the starter (although wrong for my family) is closely related . Enjoy the steam train!

 

Ah-ha - that's the key thing I was missing. Thanks Tim.

I'll have a play with the data - and with Alexander's programme.

Incidentally, whilst I was checking the numbers, I thought to check for new contacts. Yes, found one! Thanks, Peter!

Talking of Peter, he's right to say he said he thought my Excel/IE macros would be of interest only to ONS - but so far I was right to paraphrase him about the lack of any interest!

I was thinking (not easy ATM with the toothache) that the thing that puts most people off entering ancestors is the need to re-transcribe the census entry from Ancestry (or the LDS or wherever) into LC. I presume that getting (licencing?) the 1881 census data into LC would cost an arm and a leg, and would not be recouped by restricting access to subscribers. I wonder if there are other ways? I think I once wrote a programme which scraped data off Ancestry's "view record" into a CSV file - but that would be a bit messy for the average punter.

 

For some reason the CTRL V does not work for me in Excel after a successful CTRL A 'blueing out' in LC. It also does not permit Paste Special by the CTRL A route. However by doing a manual copy after scrolling down to select all (more fiddly I agree) the Paste Special then works. The same end, just a tad longer.

I transfer by Alphabet sort from LC and then use Excel to create other worksheets for other sort sequences, like Census year, etc.

 

Yes, of course: thanks. In excuse I have not used CTRL A before, and indeed invariably take the mouse route for copy & pasting, although I recall the keyboard route for those two actions. I suppose I thought CTRL A was a master Select All & Copy. Silly me.

 

Here's a vote for Alexander's program Family Tree Analyzer that I've been using for the last few days.

I have had no matches on LC having only added 80 or so entries. On reading about the program earlier in the discussion I decided to give it a try. I downloaded the latest version 4 days ago.

The program works by importing or opening a gedcom (GEnealogical Data COMmunication) file that most Genealogy programs can generate. Each time you use the program you have to "Open" a gedcom file as it doesn't retain the data between sessions. This is no problem as it takes, on my PC, about 2 seconds to import 1793 individuals. It also means that you are sure of using the latest data as long as you are vigilant about re-generating GED files periodically. The first time I tried the program it wouldn't load my GED file just hanging and/or giving an error message. I contacted Alexander and explained the problem and, within a few hours, a new version of the program was available for download. In fact, over the last few days, there have been 4 new versions made available, each one making some small, but significant, improvement. The program notifies you, at start-up, if a new version is available.

The problem that stopped the first version working was the encounter of some invalid date formats in the GED file. The program now logs the problem but continues, allowing you to investigate and correct the problem before generating a new GED file.

What does the program do?

• It produces a complete list of individuals with their vital data including Ahnentafel No.
• It lists all the families in the data
• It lists all the Locations in the data with Country, Region, Parish and Address
• It produces a list of "Loose Deaths" (see first post from Alexander in this discussion)
• It produces complete lists of people entered on any selectable Census

The program also has some extra functionality in the ability to search the IGI databases and listing those men alive during either of the two "world wars". It also lists those individuals at the top of each branch of the ancestral tree.

The reason I decided to try the program was it's ability to list those individuals who have had census data entered for the 1841, 1881 & 1911 England and Wales censuses. (It also works for the other LC supported census). It lists the individuals by family and highlights those individuals who are "Direct Ancestors". One thing that caught me out was that Ancestry treats a census entry as proof of residence rather than a Census fact. There is a "checkbox" that should be selected if your census entries are listed as "residence" facts.

This leads me to the final reason for my use of the program. Alexander uses Ancestry.co.uk and also Family Tree Maker 2012, as do I. This combination has the ability to keep in synchronisation with entries made on you PC in FTM2012 being uploaded to Ancestry and vice-versa. Alexander has catered for the ability to filter out of the LC lists those entries that you have already made in Lost Cousins. It does this by making use of the fact that FTM2012 has the ability to create "custom" facts i.e. user defined facts. If you make a custom fact called "Lost Cousins" and use that fact to enter the year of the census that has been entered for the individual then the program will not report the person as requiring entry to LC. You may add the fact more than once for an individual so that you can record entries for multiple censuses.

To add the custom fact in FTM2012 go to Edit->Manage Facts then select "New" and add the entries as below.



Sorry for the long post!

 

9 families and 21 records from 1841 census
53 families and 167 records from 1881 census
26 families and 68 records from 1911 census

Not sure whether they'll all get entered though. This process has highlighted a few other problems that need sorting too.

 

Sorry to go off-track, so to speak, but might I ask which and where?

 

Like Norman, I've been having a go at Alexander's program and agree with everything he said about it. I scribbled down some queries but then an updated version answered them. However, I have found that in the list created for potential candidates for Lost Cousins entry from the 1881 census (the only one I've tried so far) several names were repeated. This was because they had been married more than once. In one case the name came up four times! It's not a problem but the records number is therefore inflated slightly.

As Norman suggested I have created a custom fact label so now must put it to use. A long job - over 1000 to enter ....

Just a couple of questions for now: What does 'loose deaths' mean when I have a year entered? And, how do I print the list created in the War Dead tab? It's not practical to click back and forth.

The 'best location' in the Individuals tab caused a chuckle. When scrolling down I came across 'village churchyard'.

Thank you Alexander.