Thursday, June 14, 2012

Searching Ancestry.com on my iPhone


During Daniel Horowitz's presentation on "Mobile Devices and applications for Genealogists" at the SCGS Genealogy Jamboree last weekend, I made a statement that "The Ancestry.com app on my iPhone does not search the Ancestry record collections."  Another attendee corrected me, and I then figured it out myself right there in the presentation, and told Daniel about it afterwards..

I thought that my Genea-Musings readers would like to know the process for searching the Ancestry.com record collections using the iPhone.  Here is the process that I've found:

1)  From the Ancestry.com application on my iPhone:


2)  I tapped Thomas Richmond (1848-1917) on my tree (above), and the information for him opened:


There are four buttons at the bottom for Info, Family, Photo and Evidence.

3)  I tapped the "Evidence" button and a list of my source citations appeared:


4)  Scrolling down to the bottom of the list, there is a line for "Search Ancestry.com to find historical documents about Thomas Richmond."


5)  When I tapped on the "Search Ancestry.com..." link above, the browser opened and the familiar search results on Ancestry.com opened:


6)  Turning the iPhone to landscape mode, and zooming in to the image:



What I noticed was that the first search was a global search, and I received thousands of matches that did not reflect the birth, death, spouse or parents information for Thomas Richmond.

From here, I could choose one of the record collections to see the list of matches, or I could tap the "Edit Search" screen to refine my search.


7)  When I clicked on "Edit Search" to refine my search, the search form had all of the information in the search fields - birth, death, marriage, spouse's name, parents names, siblings, etc.  Since I usually search for Exact matches, those boxes were also checked.

When I clicked "Search," I received no results!  That was frustrating!  I didn't see an easy way to delete selected search fields on the "Edit Search" screen except to tap each field and do it manually.

I haven't done much searching on Ancestry.com using the iPhone, but I would like to have some capability to not use the pre-filled in information in the search fields, or be able to easily tap it to use it or not use it.

Of course, I had already reviewed, and accepted or rejected, all of the Hints that Ancestry.com offered for Thomas Richmond.  Because I have this Ancestry Member Tree synced to my Family Tree Maker 2012 program, I also get the documents attached to the tree downloaded to my computer when I sync my FTM database with the Ancestry Member Tree.  However, Ancestry.com's sources are still not up to Evidence! Explained quality...

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/06/searching-ancestrycom-on-my-iphone.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver