Legacy Search

Searching Legacy Files

Legacy has a powerful search facility which operates using boolean logic. Often the way to obtain the desired result can be obscure as I realised when I wished to search for married women who had not been given an alternative name.

It is my practice to use AKA's for including the married surname of spouses and I wished to know how many I had forgotten to record in my files. This presents certain problems as it is not possible to search for blank AKA's as they don't exist until created by recording the name. Searching for those that have one and tagging these will still leave me with a massive number of names to search.

It is possible to find all married people and then all that remains is to minimise the list. One can also find those married to "unknowns", those who already have an AKA and, of course, those who are women. This should reduce the number to a manageable level - presuming, of course that one has been reasonably dedicated in entering them in the first place!

Now for the detail:

How to find women with no married surname

Go to: Search Tab>Find>Miscellaneous Searches and set the People who are married radio button, then click "Create List".
On the list page click "Options","Advance Tagging" and Tag the search list with, say, Tag 1.
Repeat but this time set the "People married to Unknown" radio button and (having ensured the previous list is cleared) apply Tag 2.
We now need to identify those women who already have an AKA. This is a little different. Go to Search>Find as before but then Detailed Search and enter the following details:

Look for Whom: Female
Where to Look: Alt Surname
What to look for: Not equal to
Leave this blank
Create the list and apply Tag 3

Now for the final stage!
Return to the Detail Search and proceed as follows:

Look for Whom: Female
Where to Look: Tag 1
What to look for: Equal to
What to look for: Tagged

Check the "Second Condition" and set the radio button "and" then:
Look for Whom: Female
Where to Look: Tag 2
What to look for: Equal to
What to look for: Untagged

Check the "Third Condition" and set the radio button "and" then:
Look for Whom: Female
Where to Look: Tag 3
What to look for: Equal to
What to look for: Untagged

Create the list and behold one has a list of the women who do not have their married surname included in the AKA's.

This search may omit a few people eg. those who already had an AKA before they married and those who have multiple husbands where only one has been recorded but these are likely to be few in number.

Whilst this is a specific example the techniques employed can be used in a variety of circumstances and hopefully will give others ideas of ways of proceeding.

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