(Note: I got my dates wrong, it’s Tuesday, November 10th…so just a little more waiting.)
This change will happen on Monday, November 9th, sometime during the day.

The information you enter into your original search will appear at the top left of the search results page. Clicking “Edit search” will bring up your search query allowing you to edit your search criteria. (Note: You won’t be able to edit in the left hand panel any more; all editing will be done from a form.)

Also, the Narrow by Category panel is now higher on the page, providing easier access for narrowing your search results by types of records (e.g., census records, immigration records, military records, etc.).

These changes are designed to make searching for your family on Ancestry.com faster and more efficient, resulting in even more successful discoveries about your ancestors.

Here’s how it will work:

1. Do a search. Let’s say I’m searching for my ancestor, Zebedee Hash. You will see:
   
2. To help refine the search, I now click on “Edit Search”:
   
3. You’ll see a form pre-populated with the original query:
   
4. Add in the information:
   
5. Click on the search button either at the top or bottom of the form. (We put in two search buttons to make it handy to find wherever you are in the form. They do the exact same thing.)
   
   OR
   
6. You’ll now see the summary of your search query in the panel:
   
7. Now let’s say I want to make my Birth Year exact within a range. I click on “Edit search” again, and enter my new information:
   
8. Click on the search button, and see the new result set. You’ll notice in the query summary, that the birth year range is in double quotes, telling you that you’ve marked that field exact:
   

So look for change on Tuesday, try it out, and let us know what you think.

Happy Searching!

I want to thank everyone for your participation in the search strategies webinar. We had a wonderful turnout with thousands of comments and questions.  We answered as many questions as time allowed.  We have a list of the questions asked during the webinar and we’ll be posting answers to the most popular questions and topic areas.

There were many questions about the card catalog and about topics that can be researched using the card catalog. Most of them fell into a few themes which are summarized below.

Question: How do you find the card catalog?

Answer: The link for the card catalog is on the left side of the search homepage.  The search homepage can be found by clicking on the search button in the navigation bar at the top of Ancestry.com web pages.  You can also hold your mouse over the search link at the top of the page without clicking and you will see the card catalog at the bottom of the drop down.  Here is a direct link to the card catalog and a screenshot of where you can find the links.

(Where to find links to the card catalog)

Question: How can you specify a place and a year to narrow down the list of census data collections? How can you search for a state or county census record? How do you look up individual census documents?

Answer: You can narrow census records by date and location. First, go to the card catalog and select “Census & Voter Lists” from the left side of the page under “Filter by Collection.”  Then, under “Filter by Location,” choose a  country or region.  Finally, select the year you are interested from the left side of the page.  At the top of the page, you can change the sorting order of the census records. See the drop down menu that says “Sort by.” I like to sort by “Database Title.” 

(Changing sort order in the card catalog)

To see the records for a particular state or county, repeat the first two steps above, but don’t choose a time period yet. Continue to narrow your location down to a state or county using the links on the left side of the page. The  screenshot below shows the first few counties in California. 

(Narrowing census data collections to California counties)

Finally, choose a census collection title from the list of data collections located on the right side of the page to go directly to the page with the search form and browse links for a specific census.

Question:  Where can you find cemetery records?

Answer:  You can use the search function in the card catalog to search for data collections about cemeteries or many other similar topics such as “graveyard” or “burial.” Just type “cemetery” into the title field and click “search.” Then you can narrow the results by collection type, location, and year.  The screenshot below shows where the title field and where the “filter by collection” links are located.

(Searching for cemetery in the card catalog)

Questions: How do you find collections by country? How do you research records from Germany?  How do you find records for France or Paris?

Answer:  You can use the card catalog to see a list of data collections for Germany and France.  Use the “Filter by Location” links on the left side of the page. Choose “Europe”, and then “Germany.”  As you can see in the screenshot below, there are 1,338 data collections available today for Germany.   

(German records in the card catalog)

You can also narrow the choices further by selecting a collection type such as “military.”  

Another way to search for place is to search by keyword. For example, to search for data collections about Paris, go to the card catalog and use the keyword field to input “Paris” and then click search.  For more information, you can view our webinar that focuses on European research.

Questions: How do you find military records from France during WWII? How can you find Navy records or records from other service branches from WWII?

Answer:  Many countries do not release military records. Some military records will not be made public until the country in question decides that enough time has passed such that record privacy is no longer a concern.   You can learn all about our military collections by listening to the military records webinar. In addition, Ancestry magazine published an article about World War II in May.

To find our military data collections about France, you can either search or browse the card catalog.  You could start by filtering the card catalog by “Military”, then filtering by location to “France.”  

You can also search the card catalog by keyword.  Try searching for “World War II” and for “WWII.” You may also want to search for keywords associated with the World War II such as “holocaust”.   Finally, I recommend trying a title search for “World War II” in addition to the keyword search.  Shown below is a screenshot for a search with “WWII” in the keyword field.

(Card catalog search results for WWII)

Question: Where can you find the ships records on Ancestry.com?

Answer:  Go to the card catalog and look on the left side of the page.  Click “Immigration & Emigration.”   Then scan through the collection choices. We have hundreds of data collections from passenger lists and crew lists to passports and ship pictures.

(Records about immigration and emigration including ships records)

Specific questions about errors or technical problems will be answered more quickly if you email support@ancestry.com or call the customer support center.  Our phone number is available on the bottom of the homepage and on our Contact Ancestry.com Support page.

Thanks to those who joined us for the Search webinar on Wednesday. We had more than 10,700 members registered for the event, which is a record ever for Ancestry.com.

We also appreciate all of the great questions. In total, we had over 1,500, so unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to address these all individually.

In this post, and over the next few days, we’ll be covering some of the common themes:

1. Can I watch the presentation again?

• Yes, you can watch our recording of the webinar by clicking here

2. Can I just see the slides? I don’t want to have to watch the whole webinar

• We will be making these slides available shortly. I’ll provide an update on this blog as soon as we’ve posted them.

3. Where can I find a list of hot keys?

• We always show a list of hot keys on every results page, on the left hand side, below the “collections”.

•  In addition, you can find an overview of hot keys in our blog post  here

4. How do I make a correction if I have information about one of my ancestors that doesn’t match what is transcribed on the record?

• Nobody knows your ancestors as well as you do.  If you know an alternate name, date or place, you can add that to the record. Once you’ve made the correction, anyone searching in the future will be able to find that record based on either your alternate, or the original transcription

You can access this from the record pages:

or on the new image view page, on those collections where it is available:

• For a more in depth overview of this, see Anne’s post about how corrections work here

5. Where is the best place to start when researching African American family history?

• We have a special feature on African American ancestry that provides information and tips here

6. Where can I find the substitute collections for 1890 (which was lost) or 1940 (which isn’t released until 2012) censuses?

• Because these collections are not available, we have compiled a number of sources, including city directories and state censuses that cover the years that would have been in these censuses. Using these, you may be able to fill in gaps and track down who was living where at those times.  Our 1940 substitute in particular contains a huge collection of city directories from about 1935 to 1945 and has over 100 million names.
• For more information on 1940 see our blog post here
• These are available via the census and voter list page or you can find them directly by clicking here for 1890 or here for 1940

7. How do you reduce hits outside of the specified date?

• If you provide us with a birth, death or other date in the record, we will calculate when that person could have been alive, and only return records that could fall into that date range. You can find a detailed explanation of how this works in our post here.
• There are some examples where some dates may appear outside of this range, for example some family histories. However, if you find a specific example we’d be grateful if you could let us know so we can look into it.

8. When I go to Ancestry.com, my pages don’t look the same as the ones you showed in the webinar, why not?

• Last year, we launched a new search interface, which had a new layout and some additional features, some of which we discussed in the webinar. If you have started using Ancestry.com since last July, it’s likely you are using the new search interface.
• However, following feedback from experienced users (including much debate on this board) we have continued to make the “Old” search available for those users who joined before this time. If you did not recognise the pages we showed, you might be using “Old Search”
• The webinar was aimed at beginner to intermediate users, so it focused on the tools available in New search.

If you are using Old search, your screen will look like this, with a link to new search at the top right hand side of the page.

• At any time, you can return to old search by clicking on the same link in the same position.

9.  Is Tony from Yorkshire, Indiana, or New Zealand…?

• Some good guesses… but not right, I’m from Hereford, England and moved with my family to California in 2007

10. This webinar was too basic for me – will you be doing an “advanced” webinar?

• We’ve been really pleased that the majority of people found this webinar useful, and we are now considering options for extending this.
• In discussing within the team, it seems to make sense that a more advanced webinar should focus on particular topics, ie Searching for records in the South or Searching using specific collections. We’d love to get your ideas on what might be most useful to the greatest number of people.

Tony

I’d like to remind everybody that we will be running a free webinar on the best Strategies for Searching Ancestry.com this evening at 8:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time.

This webinar is designed for beginning to intermediate members of Ancestry.com. To attend the webinar, please register here.

We’re delighted that we already have more than 10,000 registrants – and look forward to have you all join us this evening.

Tony

The search team is excited about our free online webinar about searching Ancestry.com on October 14th at 8:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time. In this webinar, we will show you the best strategies for searching Ancestry.com’s thousands of databases. Improving your search strategies will help you to find more information about your ancestors.
It can take time to learn all the details of a search engine and keep up with new features. We’ll explain how to find more records and adapt your search strategies as you look beyond census records. We will start with a helpful overview and then provide step-by-step instructions for using several of the search engine’s features. This webinar is designed for beginning to intermediate members of Ancestry.com. To attend the webinar, please register here.

Looking forward to seeing you all soon!

Laura

We launched more data collections in the new enhanced image viewer yesterday. Here is the list of data collections that are currently available in the new format:

• 1871 Census of Canada
• 1870 United States Federal Census
• 1871 Wales Census
• 1871 England Census
• 1871 Isle of Man Census
• 1871 Channel Islands Census
• 1860 United States Federal Census
• 1861 Channel Islands Census
• 1861 Isle of Man Census
• 1861 England Census
• 1861 Wales Census
• 1861 Census of Canada
• 1891 England Census
• U.K. Census Free Sample
• 1891 Channel Islands Census
• 1891 Wales Census
• 1891 Isle of Man Census
• 1881 England Census
• 1901 England Census
• 1901 Wales Census
• 1901 Channel Islands Census
• 1901 Isle of Man Census
• 1881 Wales Census
• 1881 Isle of Man Census
• 1881 Channel Islands Census
• 1851 England Census
• 1851 Wales Census
• 1851 Channel Islands Census
• 1851 Isle of Man Census
• 1841 England Census
• 1841 Wales Census
• 1841 Channel Islands Census
• 1841 Isle of Man Census
• 1790 United States Federal Census
• 1800 United States Federal Census
• 1810 United States Federal Census
• 1820 United States Federal Census
• 1830 United States Federal Census
• 1840 United States Federal Census
• 1850 U.S. Federal Census – Slave Schedules
• 1850 United States Federal Census
• 1851 Census of Canada East, Canada West, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia
• 1860 U.S. Federal Census – Slave Schedules
• 1880 United States Federal Census
• 1890 United States Federal Census Fragment
• 1890 Veterans Schedules
• 1891 Census of Canada
• 1901 Census of Canada
• 1906 Canada Census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta
• 1911 Census of Canada
• 1916 Canada Census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta
• Australian Electoral Rolls, 1901-1936
• Slave Registers of former British Colonial Dependencies, 1812-1834
• Florida State Census, 1867-1945
• 1828 New South Wales, Australia Census (TNA Copy)
• U.S. Indian Census Schedules, 1885-1940
• U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862-1918
• Kansas State Census Collection, 1855-1925
• Minnesota Territorial and State Censuses, 1849-1905
• New Jersey State Census, 1895
• U.S. Federal Census Mortality Schedules, 1850-1880
• Wisconsin State Censuses, 1895 and 1905

We will launch the 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930 US Federal Census in the enhanced image page sometime on Friday.

Printing in IE and Vista

The enhanced image viewer, which is the activex controller that displays your image in both the original image page and the enhanced version, is not allowed to print on Vista unless you do some configuration stuff. This problem has existed for awhile and we are testing some ways to set this up so you can print current view with as easily as possibly. Until then, and it should be soon, you can use Firefox if you want to print selected portions.

Happy Searching!

I know this isn’t really about the enhanced image page, but some of you have ended up in in the New Search interface and would like to go back to old. If at the top of the Ancestry.com search homepage you see this:

click on “Old Search” and you’ll see the previous search experience. Clicking on “New Search” gets you to the current one. The enhanced image page is available on the 11 data collections we told you about on launch in both searches.

The most full screen you can get

If you really want to maximize your image, and you are on IE6, IE7 or I think most versions of Firefox. First click Maximize Image. Then press your F11 key. This will be the same as Toggle Full Screen on the original image page.

It makes a big difference if you are on 800×600. And it works on any page, not just image pages. (I’ll figure out where to put the link on the new page. But it might help some of you get where you want to be quicker.)

And print current view was tested with the F11 toggle and it works in IE and Firefox.

Printing

We should have the issues worked out with the print current view, and some of the other IE and Vista problems on the enhanced image page. (This is of 11am PT, 2pm ET, and 7pm GMT). If you were previously having trouble printing, please try it again. If you are still having trouble with printing, either post a comment or send me an email, my email address is in my bio below, with this information: Your OS (such as Vista, XP, MacOs), your browser verision (such as IE8, Firefox 3.0.5) and the url of the page you are trying to print.

This should also solve the saving issues some of you were having as well. Again, if you are still having issues, please include the above information as well what you are trying to save it to: shoebox, tree or hard disk.

On the record page, you should be able to see what alternates have been posted by others now:

Viewing Alternate Information on the record page

Some of you have asked about the comments that were entered when corrections were made in the previous system. We reviewed quite few of them, and I’d say about 70 to 80% are not that useful, things like “Last name was wrong”. However, I know some of you feel quite strongly that they should be restored because there some with some really useful information in some of them. So restore them we will. I’ll let you know when I have an exact date for that but, I’m guessing a week or so.

And one more note: occasionally javascript doesn’t refresh itself like it should. Try pressing “ctrl” + “alt” and then the refresh button on your browser if you are seeing some issues. If that doesn’t help, let me know.

Happy Searching!

Viewing just the image

If you want to view just the image, click on the link. Until you click the minimize image link or remove your ancestry.com cookies, this will be how you see all images on the enhanced image page. You can click on the image below to see where this is on the page.

Viewing the index and member connect/source panels

By clicking the link, you will return to the view with all the panels showing.

Viewing just the index panel or the member connect/source panel

It is also possible to view the image with just the member connect/source panel open, or just the index panel open. Click on the grey arrows as shown in the image below to open or close each individual panel. Until you open or close these panels or remove your ancestry.com cookies, this will be how you see all images on the enhanced image page.

Paging through images in an enumeration district or data collection

There are two ways to do this. You can either change the page number by typing in a new number in the text box, and click go, or you can click on the left and right arrows.

Printing the image

We have three options for printing an image on the enhanced image page.

1. Print only the image will send the image to be printed on your local printer
2. Print image with source and record information will print the image as well as the information we have for the record and the source of the image. You can choose to print the image on one page and the record/source information on another by choosing the Print source & image on separate pagesoption. This particular option, printing source and image separately has been the most frequent printing setup I’ve received over the last year.
3. Enhanced custom print sends the image and source information to our MyCanvas tool which allows you to customize the image and relevant information to suit your needs.

Some of you have reported having problems with printing and we’d like to find solutions for you. If you want to report a printing problem in a blog comment, please include the URL of the image, the OS (such as XP, or Vista), and the browser/version that you use (such as IE8 or Firefox 3.0.5)

Saving the image

You can save the image in 3 different ways: to your online tree, to your shoebox, or to your hard drive. This option works just as it always has.

The enhanced image page is available on these data collections: 1860 US Census , 1870 US Census , 1871 Census of Canada, 1861 England Census, 1861 Wales Census, 1861 Channel Island Census, 1861 Isle of Man Census, 1871 England Census, 1871 Wales Census, 1871 Channel Island Census, and1871 Isle of Man Census. We will be rolling out the enhanced image page to other census data collections over the next few weeks.

If you have questions or comments, let me know.

Happy Searching!

Enhanced editing

One of the most frequent requests from our members is to have the ability to add alternates to more than just given names and surnames. The fields you can update will vary by data collection, but they will include names, places and dates and we will expand the list as time goes on. We’ve also updated the way you add alternates to make it a bit easier.

When you are on a record page, on the left hand side, you can click on “Add Correction”

You’ll see the “Add an update” dialog:

Add what you know, click on “Submit Alternate” and we will make it available for others to see. This information will also be added to our search index over time to help others find this record.

If you added in something incorrectly, you will see a trash can icon in the summary panel. Click on the trash can and your submission will be removed.

Enhanced image page

If you’ve ever tried to read an image you know how handy it would be to see the indexed information on the same screen. In our enhanced image viewer, the index panel below the image will show you the transcription for each record on the image.

Sometime on Wednesday, July 29th, images from the following data collections will be shown in the new enhanced image page. Go to one of the search pages listed below, search for one of your ancestors or anyone else you can think of that lived in the 1860’s or 1870’s, view the image and see what the enhanced image page has to offer.

• 1860 US Census ,
• 1870 US Census ,
• 1871 Census of Canada,
• 1861 England Census,
• 1861 Wales Census,
• 1861 Channel Island Census,
• 1861 Isle of Man Census,
• 1871 England Census,
• 1871 Wales Census,
• 1871 Channel Island Census,
• 1871 Isle of Man Census,

We will be making more census data collections available in the new enhanced image page over the next few weeks, and other data collections over the next few months.

You will be able to view and add alternate submissions from the index panel. Mouse over the field you would like to add information for, and when you see the pencil, click. Add the alternate information, and you will then see it in bold italics in the index panel. If you see information in italics but it is not bolded, then it means someone other than ancestry has added that information.

You can read more about the enhanced image page in a previous post Enhancements to the ancestry.com image page

Happy Searching!

Here’s a preview (click the image to see a larger version):

First, we’ve added some tools to help you find what you are looking for on an image:

• a collapsible index panel below the image will show you the transcription for each record on the image. This will help you locate your ancestor on the image as well as show you who else is on the page and what information was transcribed for each record.
• a collapsible source panel so that you can quickly view the source citation and learn more about the data collection
• a collapsible member connect panel so that you can see who has had something to add to this record, and who has been researching it.

While all of these panels will help you understand the image, you can also collapse them with one quick click of the mouse to see the full image.

Second, we’ve enhanced our member editing capabilities.

You’ll be able to update not only given names and surnames, but also birth year and various locations associated with a record. Nobody knows your ancestor as well as you do, and leaving these nuggets of information behind for us to incorporate into our indexes will help others who are looking for your ancestors as well.

You’ll also be able to update information from the image page as well as the record page.

Sometime in mid to late July we will be launching this new enhanced image page on about 70 of our census data collection including most of the US and UK censuses.

I’ll post more previews as we get closer to launch.

Happy Searching!