Issue 39.11
There was a lot of murmuring about the batch numbers not being searchable when FamilySearch went to the new format at www.familysearch.org for searching historical records. The latest version of FamilySearch allows you to search by batch numbers. However, the procedure is a bit different.
1. Go to https://www.familysearch.org/
2. Find the “Search” button on the home page template, but don’t click it. Next to it is a title: “Advanced Search”. Click “Advanced Search.”
3. In the advance search template, fill in some search criteria. Just adding the batch number will bring up everything in that batch and you can narrow it down from there.
4. In the “Event” field, select the event you are looking for from the drop-down menu, or leave it at any for everything, the batches are usually sorted into christenings or marriages anyway.
5. Fill in the “Place” field as completely as you can, i.e. Parish/Village, County, and Country
6. Fill in the year as you did in classic FamilySearch.
7. Click “Search.” If you don’t find what you need, try filling in less fields. (Less is more.)
8. In the resulting list, find the record you are searching for then click the down pointing triangle at the right.
9. In the list of data, find the familiar batch number. Notice that it is now called “indexing project (batch) number.”
10. Click the arrow near “New Search” at the top of the bluish column on the left, then you can add your data to narrow down the results. Now you can do a batch search.
Remember to paste or type the batch number in the “Batch Number” field. Modify, the other data to specify what you are looking for, leaving the place name the same. You can look for all people with a particular surname that are in that batch. If you want only the children who belonged to a particular family, click the Relationship and select parents and type in the parent’s names or just the surnames.
For more information, contact Shanna Jones shannasjones@msn.com (435) 628-4900.