Searching the Genealogical Database

This page is used to search the GDB. There are three kinds of search, Standard, Advanced, and Link. All work the same way: you enter the search criteria and click [Search], and a list of records are returned.

Standard searches are used to find and open records. For example, here we are searching for Hannah OLD. 7 records have been found. Click on the required record, and it will be opened.

Click the button [Advanced Search] and more search options are available, including the ability to save and reuse searches.

Link searches occur when the search function is invoked from another function, such as linking a document to a GDB record. Link searches follow exactly the same search rules as the standard search, but when you click the record it is not opened: instead a link will be created, and you may remain in the search page to create further links. Link Searches are described below. With a Link search the [Advanced Search] button is not displayed.

The Search Grid

Each grid line shows one record.

Individual and Parents

The leftmost column, with heading “Individual” provides a link to the record. Click this and the record is opened (or linked if this is a link search).

The next two columns identify the individual’s father and mother.

These three columns show the person’s name in a standard form, called a “NameDate”. The person’s family name appears first, in capitals, then given names, then brackets containing the person’s birth year and death year. If the year is absent, “?” appears. For example, my record would be shown as “BARNES, Robert Arthur(1946-?)”. If a name is missing then there is nothing in the corresponding position. For example, if somebody has a record of me with no given name, this record’s namedate would be “BARNES, (1946-?)

Owner and Database

In the GDB each record has an owner who has special privileges such as being able to see private records, update the record, and control who else can see the record. Every record is therefore identified by Owner and Source. The Source is the name by which the database was submitted, or else “Online” for records created directly into the GDB.

Line Colour and Record Quality

Data in any database is a mixture of highly reliable and detailed data, and “facts” of dubious veracity. Line colour is set to give a crude idea of the record’s quality.

Top quality: green. These are records with at least one scrapbook item attached. This might be a photo, a document, a copy of a certificate, etc. Records with scrapbook items are better than records without: there mere presence shows that somebody has taken the trouble to add them, as scrapbook items are not automatically uploaded with a GED file. Scrapbook items are more likely to be available when the record is a member of the record owner’s family, so one expects higher quality information than in records without scrapbook items.

Medium quality: White. There are no scrapbook items, but this database is associated with a real owner who may respond to queries if you click “contact record owner”. These records are better than: -

Low quality: Grey. These records have owner “Datamanager”, meaning that we have been unable to make contact with the record owner, and so there is nobody able to respond to queries about the data.

Searching, Privacy, and Subscriptions

The search will not show private records unless you are the record owner, or the record owner has added your name to the list of people with permission to see his/her private records. Private records are those of people that are presumed to be alive. See privacy for the rules by which the system determines this.

It is possible that a dead (and therefore public) child has living parents. If a child record is public but one or both of its parents records are private, then the private parents will be shown as simply “Male” and “Female” in the search list, and if you open the record you will not see any details of the parent.

The search may show records but refuse to open them, instead simply giving a message “You need to have a current subscription to see this record”. To get full access, allowing you to open records other than your own, you either pay the annual subscription, or you load some more records of your own into the GDB. Loading records gives you a subscription credit, calculated at a year for every 2000 records that you load.

Standard Search Rules

Required Fields

You must supply the individual’s family name, his/her partner’s name, or an owner. Other fields are optional. The more information you give, the more specific the search will be. For example: -

This will return records (if any) for individuals named “Robert BARNES” with fathers named “Arthur”.

Case-sensitivity

Capital and lower case letters are identical as far as searching is concerned. Thus the search above will find “barnes”, “Barnes”, “BARNES”, and any other combination of lower and upper case letters. Ditto ‘robert’, ‘ROBERT”, etc.

In these Help notes I have often written names as “Robert BARNES”, following the usual genealogy convention to distinguish the family name (Barnes) from the given name (Robert). However this does not mean that you have to give the family name in upper case, and the given names in mixed case.

“Wildcard” Characters

In many places you can use the percent sign, %, as a “wildcard” character, i.e. meaning “any character(s)”. Thus if you search for “Clark%” any records for “Clark”, “Clarke”, “Clarkson” and so on will be returned.

Family Names

There are four Family Name fields, for the individual, their spouse, their father, and their mother. In these family name fields the search will look for an exact match unless you use the wildcard character, “%”. Thus: -

will return anybody with a surname of “Clark”, but not “Clarke”.

You cannot use the % character in the Spouse’s family name, but in the other three family name fields you can use the “wild character” like this: -

This will return Clark, Clarke, Clarkson, and so on. This is because you are searching for “Clark” with any characters following.

DO NOT USE % AT THE BEGINNING OF THE NAME. If you attempt to search for “%Clark” you the system will have to go through the ENTIRE database to work out which records you want to see. It will run out of time (“timeout”) and give up before it has completed this scan.

Spouse’s Names

You can search for a person using their partner’s name. Thus if you know somebody as “Mrs Hannah Barnes”, then you can search like this: -

Typically you’d use this to find a woman by her married name, but the search works just as well the other way around. For example: -

This finds my wife, Mary PYM: -

Spouse’s name is also useful to make your search more specific. If you know both the Family Name and Spouse’s Family Name, then supplying both values may eliminate a number of unwanted records.

Note that other criteria, like the given names, dates, and so on, refer to the person that you are seeking, NOT THEIR SPOUSE. Thus we are NOT looking for people married to Mary BARNES! We are looking for people named Mary married to somebody BARNES.

Given Names and Initials

Whereas a family name must be exactly matched, in the three given name fields the rules are more flexible. The field may be interpreted as one or two initials. If it is not, then instead of an exact match, the test is “Contains”. For example: -

This returns BARNES, Robert Arthur, BARNES, William Robert, BARNES, Roberta Jane, and so on. Here the system is adding the wild card characters for you, so in effect you are searching for BARNES, %Robert%.

Exact Matches, and explicit use of %

If you want an exact match, i.e. you want BARNES, Robert, but you don’t want BARNES, Robert Arthur, then enclose the Given Name value in quotes, i.e. ‘Robert’ or “Robert”. It doesn’t matter whether you use single or double quotes, as long as you use the same type of quote at the beginning and end.

If you write a wild card character yourself, then the system doesn’t insert them for you. Thus if you search for BARNES, Robert% then you will find BARNES, Robert Arthur, but you will not find BARNES, William Robert

Initials

If you enter a single character, followed by a blank or a period, then the system will treat this as an initial. You can enter one or two initials. Thus: -

Given Name value Initial_1 Initial_2

X X …

X. X …

X Y X Y

X.Y. X Y

Whereas a general given name value can be anywhere – “Robert” will find both Robert Arthur BARNES and William Robert BARNES – initials are strictly positional. For example: -

This will find Robert Arthur BARNES, Ruth BARNES, Richard Barnes and so on, but it won’t find William Robert BARNES. Entering “R.A.” will find Robert Arthur BARNES, but not Ruth BARNES.

Initials are extracted from GED data as the GED is processed. Note that this process is mechanical and simplistic, and is not always correct. Here are some of the mistakes that it can make: -

Given Name	Initial 1	Initial 2	Comment
Sir William	S	W	“Sir” is treated as a first name
Elizabeth (Liz) Mary	E	(	The first non-blank character after the first blank is considered to be the second initial
Anne-Marie	A		Because there is no blank, “Marie” is not recognized as the second name
Anne-Marie Jane	A	J	See above
Edward (Ted)	E	(	See above
Admiral Sir William	A	S	Admiral is considered the first name, Sir the second.
Edward ?Eddie	E		The second initial is not recognized

Sex

You can enter “M” or “F” to select only Males or Females. This is most likely to be used when the given name is an initial, so that you can return Robert BARNES and Roger BARNES, but not Ruth BARNES.

Date Searches

Your search can ask for an exact year, a date range, or dates before or after a particular year. Date searching is illustrated with the Birth year, but exactly the same rules apply to death year, and to the Father’s and Mother’s birth year.

Exact search: -

returns all “Barnes” records for people born in 1840. You can put 1840 in the “To” textbox as well if you like – it makes no difference

Date Ranges

Returns records for people born from 1840 to 1850 (including those born in 1840 and 1850)

Before.

Leave the “From” value blank, and enter a “To” value only

(Note, this means people born “Before the end of 1850”, and will include people born in 1850.

After.

Put the current year in the “To ” field of the date range.

Searching for records from a particular owner.

You normally search the whole database, but you can limit your search to records of a particular owner.

Click the “Owner” button and the search will only return records of owner robertb. The drop-down list is normally initialised as yourself, so normally this option is used as “All records” and “your own records”. However you can click on the drop-down and select any user. For this purpose, records that have been created by others are not your records even if you have been given editing rights to them.

The user list can be quite long. Hint: type the first letter of the userid that you want: this will position the user list at that letter, making it easier to search for the name that you want.

If an owner is given then you do not have to give a family name. This is to allow users who are just starting to build their tree on line to see it all. However there is still a limit of 1000 records.

Open in Tree View.

If this is checked then when you select a record the tree view will be opened instead of the normal page view.

Paging: displaying more records

If a search finds too many records, then it will display a message like this, and the [Next] button appears: -

(NB: in the test system the limit is only 100 records. The live site, www.nzgdb.co.nz, will return up to 1000 records at a time)

Click {next and the search panel disappears to be replaced by a paging panel, and the next set of records is displayed: -

You can move through the complete record set with the [Next>] and [<Prev] buttons, and you can start at any particular record by changing the number and clicking [Show from]. When you have finished with this set of records click [Restore Search] to reset back to the normal search page, or [Return] to go back to the previous page.

Advanced Searches

Click the [Advanced Search] button and

1. The button changes to “Standard Search”

2. A few extra search options become available

3. A panel allowing you to save and rerun searches appears.

Extra Search options

Alternate Family Names

You now have three family name options. This is useful when there may be alternate spellings, such as “MacDuff” or “McDuff”. Of course there is nothing to prevent you using completely different names, like “Smith” and “Jones”.

Replaced Records.

If two users have combined their trees then one or other of them may have marked some of their records as “replaced”. This “logically deletes” them from the database: they remain in the database, but for most purposes they are ignored, and you normally don’t want to see them in search results.

However it is possible to see these records by choosing from the option list .

Click Replaced to see only replaced records; click All to see both replaced and non-replaced records.

Saved Searches

You can save a search, then return to it later. When you return you can redo the search, see records that have changed, see records that are new, or see your previous records.

To use this facility obviously the first thing that you must do is save the search that you want to return to. Here I have set up a search on a couple of spellings of the name “Macan”: -

To check that the search is the one you want you can click [Search]. (Actually [Search] and [Redo Search] on the line above have identical function).

To save the search, enter a name for the search and click [Save Search]. This saves both the search parameters, and the list of records returned. In this example I have named the search “Macan”.

Updating a saved search

If you save a search with the name of an existing saved search, then this replaces the previous saved search. For example, if there was previously a search saved with the name “Macan”, then the search above will replace it.

Retrieving a saved search

Click the drop-down-list, and select the name of your saved search: -

All the search criteria will be set as they were when you saved the search. You can now do any of the following: -

Rerun the search.

Click [Redo Search] (or [Search]), and the search will be rerun. If the database has changed since your saved your search, then the search will reflect all the changes. For example, you might have previously found 400 records, but there are now 450 MACAN or MACANN records, so the search will now return 450 records. Of course you might have changed your search criteria, which may result in more or fewer records being returned.

Find Changes

Click the [Find Changes] button and the search will return only records (within the search criteria) that have been changed since the search was saved. This search DOES NOT include any new records.

What does “within the search criteria” mean? I’ll explain. Normally you’ll simply retrieve the saved search and click [Find Changes] without changing any of the search criteria. In this case what you will see is a list of all the records that were retrieved originally, but have since changed. However, suppose you change the search criteria: for example, adding a given name “Robert” to the search, and then clicking [Find Changes]. Now you will only see records where: the family name is MACAN or MACANN, the given name contains “Robert”, and the record has changed since the save. If there is a record of John MACAN that has changed since the first search, then his record will not be included because it would not have been returned by the current search criteria.

Find New Records

This gives records that the search now returns that were not returned previously. If you have left the search criteria unchanged then these are records that have been added to the database since you saved the search. As in “Find Changes”, if you change the search criteria to make it return more records (for example, by adding another spelling of the family name), then these “new” records will be included.

Previous Records

This returns exactly the same records as before, ignoring any search criteria.

Saved Searches and Paging

An advanced search behaves exactly like the normal search, returning a maximum of 1000 records at a time. If this number is exceeded, the [Next] button appears and you can retrieve the rest of the records as described above.

When you save a search, the whole search is saved: this may be more than 1000 records. Thus if you save a search for “Smith” there are many thousands of records. However using a saved search still only shows them to you 1000 at a time, and you use [Next] and [Prev] to move up and down the list. In fact, default paging uses a saved search with a special save-name of $$Paging.

Link Searches

In several situations the search page is invoked from pages other than the home page, and clicking on the record does not open the record, but performs some other action such as linking the record with another. The search functions exactly as usual, except that a few of the options may be removed.

Linking GDB Records

As well as the normal family relationships, you can create a link between any two GDB records. This can record adoptive parents/children, business associates, or any other relationship. One of the most common links is “Duplicate”, which is used to record the fact that two records describe the same person

To create a GDB link: -

1. From one of your records click update [Links]. This opens a page showing the links (called “softlinks”) from this record to documents, other GDB records, and web pages.

2. Click the button [Add GDB Link (another person)]. This opens the search page, with slight differences: -

Differences are:-

1. The heading changes, and now identifies the record that we have come from (and will be creating links to)

2. The search criteria will initially be primed with details of the link-to record: it is assumed that you are likely to be searching for duplicates. This may be too precise: for example, in testing there was only one record matching the criteria above, but another 6 duplicates that were found when the search was asked to match on Hannah OLD, but without the dates. Of course if you are looking for something other than duplicates, then even the names will be wrong.

3. When you click [Search] the list of people returned does not include: -
3a. Records that already have a link from the link-to record (Hannah OLD in this example). The system only allows two links, one in each direction, between any two records
3b. The Link-to record itself.

As you click on the names in the list, a link is created (type “Duplicate” in the example above), and the search list is shortened removing the linked record. You can continue linking other people from the list, and/or change the search criteria to get a new list. When you have finished creating links, click [Return] to exit.

Linking General Documents

From the home page the link “Search documents by title/index” searches the database of general documents.

Clicking the “Link” command opens the search page, allowing you to search for records to link to the document: -

When you click [Search] the list of people returned: -
1. Only includes your own records. The Owner search criteria are therefore hidden.
2. Excludes people who are already linked to this document

As records are selected, a link is created between them and the document. The list is redisplayed with their name removed. You can continue linking other people from the list, and/or change the search criteria to get a new list. When you have finished creating links, click [Return] to exit.

Linking your Profile to your GDB record

If you have create a profile (see “edit your profile” from the home page) and you have also loaded data into the GDB including a record about yourself, you can link your GDB record to your profile by clicking the link [Link your own GDB Record]. Note that this will make your record public, however it will not make records of your parents, spouse, or children public.

The search will show only your own records.

Granting Permissions

You can grant read and update permissions to specific records or families: -

1. Home page: click “Manage your GDB data”. This takes you to the “Manage your GDB Data” page

2. Click [Manage Permissions]

3. Click [Add permission by selection]. This takes you to the search page.

4. The search page heading is: -

Select the user to whom you wish to grant permissions. (Hint: type the first letter of their userid to position the drop-down list approximately)

5. Enter the search criteria and click [Search]. The search will only display your own records (so there is no option to select another user).

Note that in the list of returned records there are some extra commands compared to normal searches. These are used as follows” =

Click on the individual and a single read-permission will be created for the other-user (“tonyc” in this case) and the record. Of course there is little point in this if the record is already public.

Click “fmly” and read permissions will be granted for the current record, his/her spouse, and their descendents. This is a way of giving the other-user access to the private records of a family.

Click “Updte” and the other-user is given update permission to the current record. Click “Updte Fmly” and they are given update permissions to the whole family. An example of this: I gave my daughters update permission to the records of their own families.