Is there a way to design a custom search to find people that have an unknown spouse? My database has been downloaded from Ancestry tree. The goal is to identify these people in RM and correct them in Ancestry.
Problem: I have numerous people in my RM database that have an “unknown” spouse entry. For example in RM the husband will show as having two spouses one correct and the other unknown. The wife will correctly show having only one spouse.
In Ancestry, the “Marriage” entry for the husband is not connected to a spouse. The wife’s name is there, but the Select spouse circle is unchecked. When you look at the corresponding “spouse” she is properly connected to him.
Perfect! I was trying to make it too difficult. Thanks
Perhaps too literal rather than too difficult. I don’t think that there actually is a way to do this using the main Search tab nor by making a Group.
But the Couple List and the ability to sort the Couple List by either spouse tends to make it easy. Notice also that the Couple List has a Search box. So for example if you wanted to find everybody named Smith who had an unknown spouse, you could type Smith into the Search box and sort by the Father or Mother columns to find Smiths with unknown spouses.
I was trying to do the same thing. I have lots of families which legitimately have an unknown spouse. I found that it helped if I created a group using the criterion number of spouses greater than or equal to two.
Ideally, you would like to combine this with a sort/filter for an unknown spouse, but I didn’t manage to find a way to do this.
Alan
Another reference to check for blank spouses (and is a good thing to do occasionally anyway) is Publish a Marriage List with only the option Print couples w/ NO marr event
I don’t think there is any place in RM where that sort of filter is directly available. It’s implicit in Couple List view when you sort by Father or by Mother but it is not a direct filter criterion. The Spouse’s name is available as a column in a Custom report and a Custom report can be sorted by more than one column. That gives you an implicit filter by eyeballing a Custom report, but again there isn’t a a direct filter.
What is missing is that the Advanced Search screen doesn’t offer things like spouse’s name, child’s name, or parent’s name as a search criterion. For example, you can’t search for people who have a spouse and whose spouse’s name is blank or whose spouse’s name is Sarah or anything like that.
For every person who is unknown, I use xxaa,xxab,xxac, etc for both the christian and surname.
these will show up at the bottom of the peoples list. I can even add FSID.
Glenn