SEARCH TOOLS: DESKTOP AND ONLINE
©2012 by Donald R. Snow
- Welcome and Introduction
- Types of Searches
- Searching for Files on Your Computer
- Searching Within Files on Your Computer
- Searching for Genealogy Data Online
- Searching for Information About Living People
- Searching for Programs To Do Certain Tasks
- Conclusions
This page was last updated 2012-02-21 for class on 2012-02-22.
Return to the Utah Valley
Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page or Don's
Class Listings Page .
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
- Instructors are Donald R. and Diane M. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu
, dmsnow34@gmail.com
) .
- This is the Snows Family History Update Series - usually on
1st and 3rd Wednesdays 1-2:30 PM, Morningside Stake Center, RS
Room; next class will be on 7 Mar - on HeritageQuest
Online: Free Family History Data At Home With
Your Library Card
- These notes are posted on http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
with all the links, so you don't have to type them in
yourself. Hold down the Ctrl key when you click on a
link and the link opens in another tab so you keep these notes
open where you were.
- Announcements
- FH Expo Fri and Sat 24-25 Feb 2012, Dixie Center --
Information and registration at http://www.familyhistoryexpos.com
-- Lots of classes at all levels and vendors information
about FH products
- RootsTech report -- See Don's list of some things he
learned at RootsTech 2012 in Salt Palace 2-4 Feb 2012
--
http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html --
Can still download the entire RootsTech Syllabus and Guide
and listen to many of the talks online at http://www.rootstech.org
- New Family Tree interface for nFS -- https://familysearch.org/invite/familytree_tab
-- Use your LDS Account to register here, then when you
sign in on https://www.familysearch.org
(upper right hand corner) with your LDS account you see a
new tab called "Family Tree" which gives you the new
interface to nFS -- allows you to edit some other things
that you can't edit on nFS and by the end of this year
they claim this will be the new interface for everyone
- Beta test of entering sources in Family Tree going on
now in the new interface - Snows have included Internet
links to show images and data for some of their ancestors
- Helpful 9-Generation Pedigree Fan Chart of your nFS data
-- http://www.createfan.com/
-- use your LDS Account to log in -- Can generate a
9-generation chart for anyone in nFS by going to http://www.treeseek.com
, log in with your LDS account, and enter their PID (their
nFS Personal Identifier number) in the box
- Searching is an important task for any computer project, but
especially for genealogy work. This class will discuss
types of searches, both
within our own computers and online,
and will show some freeware tools for doing them.
TYPES OF SEARCHES
- What you are searching for determines the kind of tool to
use.
- Types of searches
- Searching for files on your computer
- Searching for text inside a file when you know the file
name -- including in .txt, .rtf, .doc, .docx, .odt, .xls,
.ods, .ppt, etc.
- Searching for files that contain certain text when you
don't know the file names
- Searching for image files when you know the name or
metadata of the file-- including .jpg, .tif, .png,
.bmp, .pdf, etc.
- Searching for image files
containing certain kinds of images
- Searching for duplicate files on your computer to
delete the duplicates
- Searching for genealogy data online -- including
How-To's, FH data, vital records, GEDCOM files, etc.
- Searching for directory-type
information, e.g. telephone numbers, addresses,
email addresses, birth dates, etc.
- Searching for programs to do various tasks -- including
freeware, shareware, open source, commercial
SEARCHING FOR FILES ON YOUR COMPUTER
- Everything -- free program,
extremely fast, has both installed and portable versions --
download from http://www.voidtools.com/
-- You need to know something about
the title; program also allows
renaming and launching programs and other file maintenance
tasks; can be used in tandem with a Windows Explorer-type
program to organize files
- Nemo-Docs -- free program, shows document names on a
calendar by date they were produced or modified so you can
find it by context of what you were working on -- download
from http://www.nemo-docs.com/
- Win7 Search -- built into Windows 7, click on the
Start/Stop button and type search terms in the box -- finds
files by name and by content and sorts them into type, e.g.
documents, programs, music, etc.; searches inside text
files, including emails, but searches entire computer and
you can't limit it to just certain folders
- Naming techniques -- suggestions for naming your files so
you can find them later
- Name files something like
"SnowErastusBeman-Journal-2012-02-19.odt" where the date
is when you worked on it -- This is the international
date format and keeps files in consecutive order with
the newest version last; by changing the date in the
name as you save it, it prevents overwriting earlier
versions, so you have several generations of backups --
can erase earlier backups when you are sure you don't
need them
- For images name them something like
"SnowEldonStafford(1891-1954)-Birth-Certificate.jpg" or
"DowdleSarahAnn-News-ArticlefromIdahoFallsTimes-1918-09-23.jpg"
- Helps to store files in a consistent manner, e.g. a
folder for genealogy images, a folder for genealogy
data, etc.
SEARCHING WITHIN FILES ON YOUR COMPUTER
- Searching for text strings within multiple files
- InfoRapid -- free for private use, find and
replace text across multiple files, easy to use, select
folders to search, shows file name in blue
with search terms in red in the line where
they occur, Boolean
operators: & (AND), | (OR), ! (NOT);
clicking on the highlighted search term takes you
to the document where you can edit it; right
clicking takes you back to the results screen or
to start another search, or can click on the Show
Search Dialog bar at bottom; past search results
are in tabs at top so you can go back to any one
-- download from
http://www.inforapid.de/html/searchreplace.htm
- FileLocatorLite (same program as Agent Ransack) --
free, installs so right clicking on a folder gives menu
option to search all files in folder and subfolders for
words or phrases, allows Boolean searches using AND, OR,
NOT, shows search results in two panels with search
terms highlighted; does not have a replace feature --
download from
http://mythicsoft.com/page.aspx?type=filelocatorlite&page=home
- Text Crawler -- find and replace across multiple
files, easy to use -- download from
http://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/content/textcrawler
- Search My Files -- freeware, various searches
available, but doesn't show text snippets surrounding
search results, just the info about the files they are
in; also has duplicates searches and other criteria --
download from http://funk.eu/smf/#Version_Archive_Anchor2
- Win 7 Search box -- see earlier paragraph
- Searching pdf's for given text -- scanned pdf's need a
text layer where the picture of the text has been OCR'd
(Optical Character Recognition) before they can be searched
for text -- free OCR converters are http://jocr.en.softonic.com/
(free program that you download and use on your own
computer, but requires that a version of Word 2003 or later
be installed on your computer) and free online
converters http://www.onlineocr.net/
and http://finereader.abbyyonline.com
-- most good OCR programs are commercial
- Searching within genealogy databases -- GenViewer -- will
search within all genealogy files in the folder for
conditions you specify, e.g. "Given Name Contains John" and
"Spouse Name Contains Snow"; freeware version will only
search in one file, commercial version ($20) will search
through multiple genealogy files in a folder -- download
either version from http://www.mudcreeksoftware.com/
- Finding duplicate files on your computer -- Duplicate
Cleaner, easy to use, has selection criteria, can check one
folder at a time, has a way to see if you have inadvertently
checked all files in a group before you delete them --
download from
http://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/content/home
- Finding duplicate and similar images
- SimilarImages program -- free program to search in
folders you specify to find exact or similar images,
shows them side-by-side so you can decide if you want to
delete one or not -- download from http://similarimages.en.softonic.com/
- Duplicate Images Finder -- Open source freeware to
find duplicate or near-duplicate images -- download from
http://duplifinder.codeplex.com/
- Finding pictures of certain people -- Picasa, free program
from Google -- has a facial recognition feature that puts
thumbnails around all faces in your pictures and tries to
organize them into groups with the same person -- see
details in Don's Picasa notes at
http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-picasa.html
SEARCHING FOR GENEALOGY DATA ONLINE
- http://www.mocavo.com/
-- Mocavo is the largest free genealogy search engine;
searches FamilySearch and many other free genealogy websites
all at once, including http://www.findagrave.com
and http://www.billiongraves.com
- https://familysearch.org
-- Historical Records, Learn (Wiki), Family
Trees, FamilySearch Catalog, new FamilySearch
- A few Google tips -- http://www.google.com
- Google Help -- do a Google search for "google
help" (no quote marks" or go to http://support.google.com/websearch/?hl=en
- For name searches use quotation marks around the
name to get only results for that person
- To find GEDCOM's with the person add +ged or
+index (since many GEDCOM's are posted on genealogy
sites that use the word "index")
- Use "[term] around(5) [term]" to
find websites where the terms occur with 5
words of each other, e.g. "Erastus Snow"
around(5) St. George -- narrows down the
search results greatly -- This is an undocumented,
but very useful, command for Google
- Searching for images -- Do Google image searches for
the name; put the name in quotation marks
- Other genealogy search engines
- Steve Morse's One-Step search engines -- http://stevemorse.org/
- Ancestor Hunt -- http://www.ancestorhunt.com/
-- links to many free genealogy search engines
and sites
- Free Genealogy Search Engines -- http://surnamesupersearch.com/
- Ancestor Search -- http://www.searchforancestors.com/
- Genealogy Today -- http://www.genealogytoday.com/
-- links to many search locations
- Genealogy books -- Google Books, HeritageQuest
Online, Internet Archive
- Internet Archive -- http://www.archive.org/
-- free, includes books, audio, video, movies, The
Wayback Machine (snapshots of the Internet in the
past to find old web pages no longer on the
Internet)
SEARCHING FOR INFORMATION ABOUT LIVING PEOPLE
- Finding names, addresses, telephones, email addresses,
personal data, relationships
- Helpful websites for finding living people are:
- http://www.stevemorse.org/
-- has "One-Step" entry forms finding people
- http://www.whitepages.com/
- http://www.anywho.com/whitepages
- http://www.veromi.com/
- Can usually get enough info for free on these
sites without having to pay for full results
- Finding email addresses
- Usually difficult to find without paying for them
- If person is a contributor to nFS, can send an email
through nF; same for Ancestry and other family tree
websites
- Try Google searches for their name to see if it
finds an email they wrote to a forum or list
- Can sometimes find living descendants by noting who
is interested in genealogical records on those lines,
e.g. in online family trees, Ancestral File, Pedigree
Research File, etc. -- info may be helpful even if
submitter information is outdated
- For more information on finding living people see
Don's notes on Using
City and Other Directories and Tracing
Your U.S. Immigrant Relative
SEARCHING FOR PROGRAMS TO DO CERTAIN TASKS
- Freeware websites -- see my notes at
http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-fhfreeware.html
- Freeware programs that do tasks similar to commercial
programs
- Alternatives To -- http://alternativeto.net/
- OpenSource Alternatives -- http://www.osalt.com/
CONCLUSIONS
- Searching is one of the major tasks of family history
and there are more and more helpful computerized tools
and indexes available all the time.
Return to the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy
Group Home Page or Don's
Class Listings Page .