* Lookup Missing Census Facts ~ New Plugin

[tatewise]

Lookup Missing Census Facts V2.6 is in the Plugin Store.

It is an evolution of the Ancestor's UK Census Checker by Jane Taubman, and the Ancestors Canada Census Checker by Keir Strugnell, plus work done by Bill Henshaw on USA Census Checkers.

This version supports the following:

• Census Records from U.K., U.S.A., Canada & Australia.
• Any of the 8 ancestry web sites and 4 findmypast web sites can be used for the searches depending on where you have accounts (although findmypast only supports U.K. and U.S.A. Census Records).
• Ancestors or Descendants or Ancestors & Descendants of a chosen person can be checked for missing Census Records.
• All members of the Relationship Pool of a chosen person can be checked (once a minor FH API bug is fixed).
• Any manually selected set of Individual Records may be checked.

See the Help & Advice for full details.

ID:6813

[DaveTomo]

Mike

Is it possible to make the place the HTML file gets saved to something that can be chosen?  

I would want the default to be the place you usually use but I sometimes copy the file to a memory stick to take to the library, or LDS centre, to search Ancestry.  It would be more convenient to be able to save it where I want it on those occasions.

DaveT
In Sunny South Yorkshire

[Jane]

You could always just use the Save As option in your Web browser to save it where you want.

[DaveTomo]

Why didn't I think of that? Sometimes 35 years of IT experience gets in the way.

[johnmorrisoniom]

Excellent Plugin (as always). However, if an individuals DOB has been entered as bef dd/mm/yyyy, then no year gets input into the search.
Obviously, I can manually enter the year when I refine the search, but can this easily be cured?

[tatewise]

The problem is related to the :YEAR qualifier that does not yield a year if the Date field uses Before, After, Between, From, or To, and either has only one Date or has two Dates but in different years.

The Plugin could be amended to detect these special cases, but may give potentially misleading results for the unwary.
This is because the default settings focus on the Date of Birth year plus/minus 5 years.
Therefore, if a Before year were specified, then results 5 years after the DoB would still be included, but results more than 5 years before the DoB may get excluded.

The initial search page does show the Life Dates as bef (or aft) so the Help & Advice could advise how to deal with this scenario.

Another side-effect is that the Date of Birth and Date of Death are used to filter out irrelevant Census Years.
e.g.
If DoB is Before 1855 and DoD is After 1899, and these explicit years were applied, then Census Years in UK for 1841, 1851, 1901, 1911 would be excluded, even though in this example they could be relevant.

An option could be added to allow such dates to be included/excluded, and perhaps how far the Before/After extends.

This will be considered for the next version.

[tatewise]

I have reviewed the problem of Range/Period Birth Dates being omitted from the Census Search and I withdraw some of my earlier conclusions.

On closer inspection, the Plugin already uses the EstimatedBirthDate(EARLIEST) and EstimatedDeathDate(LATEST) functions to determine the Census Years each Individual was alive, and therefore are search candidates.

I have extended this tactic to the Birth Year entered in the Census Search.
This tactic uses the EstimatedBirthDate(MID) function to obtain the Birth Year.
If a specific Birth Event Date exists for an Individual, then the Birth Year obtained by this method will be the same as in previous Plugin Versions.
But if any alternative Event Dates exist, then a Birth Year will still be estimated.
This may be derived from any Dates in many events such as Birth, Baptism, Christening, Death, Burial, Cremation, or even other relation's dates, and using the Tools > Preferences > Estimates.

In addition, a ± offset range is estimated by using the EstimatedBirthDate(EARLIEST) and EstimatedBirthDate(LATEST) functions.
This offset is increased by ± 5 years to be consistent with previous Plugin Versions, to allow for Approx/Calc/Est Dates, and to accommodate 1841 Census age rounding.

Some further adjustments of the Birth Year and offset are occasionally made to satisfy FMP UK Census Search requirements.

With this approach it is only very rarely that no Birth Year is applied to the searches.

Try the Plugin from my SkyDrive [Deleted] download, and now dated 08 June 2013.

This version includes item No. and Birth Year columns in the web page.
The item No. column allows entries to be sorted into their original order after sorting on other columns.
The Birth Year column shows the Year and ± offset used in the search.
It also copes better with unusual symbols in Names where they need XML/HTML/URI/UTF encoding.

You can always revert to the Plugin Store V2.6 if necessary.

[BillH]

Mike,

I tried the new version and it works great. I don't have many birth dates that have the bef, aft, etc. types of dates, but the ones I have seemed to work fine.

Thanks,

Bill

[tatewise]

This plugin has had another round of updates dated 13 June 2013 via above SkyDrive link.

It has needed revisions to match changes in the way FindMyPast expects the search URL to be formatted, and now works much better with FMP.

Please give it a try.

[johnmorrisoniom]

The startup screen is fine in Windows 7, but looks odd with XP.

[tatewise]

Sorry John, I must remember that XP does not display tab characters invisibly in the GUI interface.

Should now be fixed via same SkyDrive download link above.

I presume the new Date features, and improved FindMyPast searches all work OK.

[johnmorrisoniom]

Thanks Mike,
Latest version cures the XP issue, and all other features work well.

[Valkrider]

Mike

Is there any chance of having an option with this plugin to search on FMP.com instead of .co.uk. FMP insist that you log in to the appropriate domain so even though there are matches I can't access them from the link on the html page.

If not so be it.

[johnmorrisoniom]

It already does, just choose the appropriate FMP site from the 4 listed in the drop down list.

[Valkrider]

John thanks for that.

[oops]I was still using a very early version of the plugin that didn't have the option, I thought I had updated it from the Skydrive link but hadn't. Very [oops]

[tatewise]

The latest V2.7 is now available from the Plugin Store and the SkyDrive links are closed.

[johnmorrisoniom]

If a woman has a child with no known father (And no individual has been created) then there is a census year, the plugin (v2.7) assigns the woman a blank surname, instead of using her unmarried surname.

[tatewise]

Than you John, I will fix that in the next version.

In the meantime I think a workaround is to set the marriage Status to Never Married or Unmarried Couple.

[tatewise]

Lookup Missing Census Facts V2.8 is in the Plugin Store.

This does a better job of determining the Surname of each Woman at each Census, even where there are multiple Family partnerships.
See the Plugin Frequently Asked Questions Help & Advice page for full details.

This version now lists the correct Family Date associated with each Spouse Family at Census.
Previous versions listed the Family Date of the latest Spouse Family at Census against every Census.
Although this does not affect the Census Search, it may have confused users.

Both the above, and many other features, are improvements over the original Ancestors UK Census Checker, which continues to be the Most Downloaded Plugin by far!?

[tatewise]

Ancestry have recently published the Canada 1921 Census which is available on all their web sites.
So an update to this Plugin will be issued soon to include Canada 1921 Census searches.

[tatewise]

Lookup Missing Census Facts V2.9 is now in the Plugin Store.

This updated version :

• Supports the new Canada 1921 Census in Ancestry.
• Provides an All the Relations of a chosen person option.
• Adds a Version History to the Help & Advice pages.
• Has various minor improvements to the user interface.