Anyone good with search criteria?
I’m wanting a list of anyone who is the spouse of a person with a particular surname. Essentially, it will be any male who is the spouse of a female called, say, “Smith”.
I can select all females called “Smith” who have a spouse, but I can’t work out how to select just their partners.
People View; Couples Tab; Type Smith in the Search Area.
This gives you every couple with a surname of Smith and then click on the Father header to put all the female Smiths together.
Thanks Bob. Yes, that’s one of the work-arounds I use, but I was hoping to use the advanced search criteria so I can create a group and just refresh it from time to time. I like things automated where possible.
Couples View is the only way that’s supported.
It cannot be done with Advanced Search or by making a group. And indeed, if the desire is actually to make a group, that cannot be done. Couples View will not help with making a group.
Nothing in RM’s search tools supports any data about close relatives - like searching for children of a man named John Doe or of a man named John or of a man named Doe, nor of a man married to a woman named Jane Doe or to a woman named Jane or to a woman named Doe
I use that couples view or other methods at the moment and add those male spouses to a group, and then just merge the groups. I’m just lazy though!
The ultimate objective was to have a group of anyone called “Smith” AND any spouse of someone called “Smith”.
I have a tendency to think only of Rules groups and to forget about Simple groups. That’s because I like to be able to make groups automatically and to be able to refresh groups with one click so as add new people to them as I add new people to the database. But obviously if you make Simple groups and add people to them by hand, there is tremendous flexibility and you can do just about anything - including lots of things that RM can’t do on its own.
You can get there in a two-step process using Groups and a Custom report. For example, I have set up a by Rules, Surname Group selecting Rule Type “Name.“ Surname contains “X.” I have included the option to include married surname as I want all people using the “X” surname. You can of course, add additional criteria, for example adding Individual Attributes, Sex > Female etc. Then create a custom report. Mine includes Surname, Given Name, Spouse, but I suppose you can use the single column of “Spouse.” Run your custom report being careful to use the “Include?” field, choosing your surname group. You then have a list of Spouses of people using that surname.
A “list” can be had by publishing a Marriage List (eg. to .XLSX), sorting the data by female spouse surname, and then copying out the listing of their counterpart male spouses (or deleting unwanted row/column data).
I’m a dork thank you, yes, I didn’t ask the question properly. I wanted to use the search criteria available in the advanced search or the groups creation functionality (I think they work the same way). I’m satisfied that it can’t be done that way now. Thank you everyone for your help.
They definitely need to add a Spouse Surname filter to the Name rule criteria as an option. That is the antithesis of Married Surname.
That would work, yes.
I currently find all the female “Smiths” who have a spouse by using the search rules:
MARK by name (Surname equals smith) - not including married name
AND by individual attributes (Sex is female)
AND by name (Married surname not equal to smith)
It just needs your suggestion to get over the final hurdle.
(the above falls over if she marries someone also called smith, but hey)
