Yay! A new version of the keying tool has launched…


Today we launched a new version of the keying tool, 1.1.0.50.  

You will likely notice that the Keying Tool home page has changed.  We’ve added Help links in the main portion of the page as well as on the right hand side of the page.  **Although there is a link to the Tutorial it is currently under construction – at this time it is out of date and contains inaccurate information. **

When you are keying a project we also hope you notice the addition of a link under the Field Help that will bring you to an index of the online help articles.

In addition to these more noticeable changes we have also made changes to…

  • The size of the Enter Data area on the screen.
  • Arbitrating “Blank” and “Illegible” entries
  • and a variety of other smaller changes.

We appreciate your feedback as we make adjustments to the keying tool and hope you will let us know what you think of this latest version of the keying tool.  You can provide feedback through the “Provide Feedback” links in the tool or by emailing our support team, worldarchivesproject@ancestry.com.

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Reader Comments

Wow! Thanks for adding the feature that allows us to select the proper form type by keying the form number and hitting enter instead of having to double-click with the mouse. Not having to use the mouse speeds things up a great deal.

You should put the “number and Enter” information on the selection screen instead of just the “double click” instructions.

Downloaded perfectly. No problems this time.

Although I don’t index a lot of different types, I do like having the “Duplicate Image” on the toolbar now — saves some mouse-clicking time. Keep up the shortcuts — what you’ve done to date has enabled me to increase my productivity.

Members of my Society are telling me that they are getting dates already entered in the Date of Record fields. They have to delete these to enter the correct date. What gives??

As long as you want suggestions for future improvements,(1) I’d like a SAVE feature so I could continue keying, but have a portion saved. I had about 450 items keyed early this morning with about ten items to go before I submitted a completed image set, and we lost power. I have to start again at item 85. If I could have saved it easily I could have saved myself the extra work.
(2) Maybe the submit image set placement could be placed away from the down arrow, maybe more toward the center of the space; my old fingers are sometimes nearly hitting the submit button when I just want to move the image. Just a thought.

I am wondering why you have to enter twice on a field before it will enter? Also you cannot just enter to get to the next field. All has to be double clicked which wastes time

Oh dear, oh dear! Still no highlighter for new sections on Andrews.
Just spotted whilst keying Andrews that when you tab across to month & year it will auto fill a month or year that’s been keyed before. You can over-ride it but keyers beware!

I contacted Dane immediately about several problems that arose after I downloaded the new keying tool. I followed his suggestion to rid myself of 20 image sets that I did not want but could not cancel. They did not work and I have been unable to make any contact over the weekend. Also I note that someone else is having a problem with moving from one entry space to the next and also having to activate that space before an entry can be made. That slows keying down to a snail’s pace. I am dead in the water until I hear from someone about solutions to my problems.

I have noticed the same issue as Dean is experiencing while working on the CA U.S. Naturalization Records where the record dates are auto filling.

Thank you to all for your feedback.

We are working on the Date fields auto-filling and hope to have that issue resolved soon.

Have been unable to install new Keying Tool. Get as far as the Install screen, it starts installing and when about 7/8ths complete, I get message that the Wizard was interrupted before Keying Tool completely installed. What’s the problem?

The new improvements have boosted my productivity a good amount. For future improvements though, forms with multiple non-required data fields should have those fields automatically skipped when enter is pressed. For example, I’m doing military returns and all that is required is given name and surname, but I have to either press enter about 12-14 times to skip empty, non-required spaces to get to the next given name space, or else use the mouse to click on it. Clicking through all the spaces or moving my hand off the keyboard to use the mouse are both actions that slow down the process a lot. Now I chose to enter rank since there was a space for it and it was on the images. The cursor should only stop on fields that have had data entered before on that form. Thanks.

Anna,

Has there been a resolution to the problem described in Comment Number 8 from Dean Dannewitz i.e.

“the problem with moving from one entry space to the next and also having to activate that space before an entry can be made”.

I’m having the same problem which is preventing me from keying efficiently. I’ve reported this to the support team but as yet none of the suggested solutions have worked.

Thank you

The fields that are auto-populating are ones that we have specifically set up to do that with. If the dates, or other information, isn’t correct replace the information that is auto-populated with the correct information.

If you tab from field to field you will notice that the field is highlighted once you tab to it – at this stage you can simply start typing to enter the correct information. This will save you from having to delete the entry before typing the correct information.

I’m having the same issue as Irene(#6). Double-clicking on every field to enter data is a real pain.

I’ve just tried once more to use the tool, but it’s so inefficient with the tabbing/entry problem that I really have to give up for now. It’s so frustrating and it means that World Projects are down hundreds of records, over the period since the new version of the tool was introduced.
Hope this is resolved soon.

I like the new features. I recently started changing the image size from 100% to 66% so that I could see the whole image. However, it only stays after I start selecting the form type and keying. It would be nice if the sizing stayed when first selected.