Tuesday, March 20, 2018

TUESDAY’S TIPS ~ How many people in my database have marriage dates? Let’s use Legacy 9 to find out

Search Find Create

It occurred to me today, that I’d never tried to run any kind of report to find out how many people in my database I have marriage dates for.  I love discovering new lists I can create with Legacy 9. 

I immediately went to the Search tab>Find>Detailed Search and began to figure out what criteria I should enter. 

I entered the following:

marriage date - 1 annot

When I clicked on “create list” I was shown my list of 2102 names.  The list is opened in the List View which allows you to go through the various pages associated with each ancestor such as Detail, Edit, Events, Notes, Family & Sources. 

marriage date - 2

From there I wondered if I could find out how many of those marriages had sources attached.  Dare I check my work? 

I went back to my original search criteria and changed it to Individual>Source-Citation>Contains>Married  This resulted in 896 matches.  Ok, not too bad.  If there are 2102 names in the marriage list and you divide that by two you get 1051 marriages.  If I have sources for 896 of those marriages, then I’m very happy with those results.

marriage date - 3

I played around with this idea for a while creating lists of those who were divorced, husband deceased, wife deceased etc.  It was quite fun to see what popped up.  Of course to create such lists you have to have entered something in the Marriage Status field.  Here’s a sample from my great grandparents. 

Notice the Status field is filled in. Also note that the icons for Notes, Images and Sources are colored rather than black & white, meaning they contain information that I’ve added.

marriage date-status

One more list before I go.  I’d like to find out how many of my ancestors were married in my home town of Detroit, Wayne, Michigan.  I created my search and the list contained 133 individuals.

marriage datet-place-1

WHY CREATE LISTS?

  • To help determine what you have or don’t have on any given individual
  • To assist you in obtaining documents such as marriage certificates or records. Or any other type of records, based on the list you create.
  • To assist you in completing information for each of your ancestors by determining what’s missing.
  • To find out where you’ve made mistakes.
  • Because sometimes it’s just fun to take a break from our research and play around a bit.
  • I’m sure there are other reasons to create lists.  Please share your ideas with me.

TO FIND OTHER POSTS RELATED TO USING LEGACY PLEASE CLICK ON THE LEGACY TIP TAB FROM ANY SCREEN ON MY BLOG.

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Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2018   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

2 comments:

  1. You have so many good ideas Diane. I've never done this type of search either, but I can sure see it's value. I also think it would help me to see things in a different light. Thank you for your great tips.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Michelle. I also learned from Cathy Pinner on the Legacy User group, ways to enhance this search. I just haven’t had time to update my post.

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I look forward to reading your comments. If you have any connection to the people mentioned in this blog, please let me know. I write about mine and my husband's ancestors and would welcome new information or meeting a new cousin or two. Thanks for visiting and come back soon.