Ancestory.com

[derryphilip]

Help Please

I am about to take the leap and sign up to ancestry.com, can anyone advise how to get the best out of this site and also what information do i need to put in.

thank you

Vanessa

[janetm]

EXACT spelling. Ancestry will only search for what you have typed in ! unless you are sure of the spelling put the first 3 letters of first/surname in and follow with ****, this will throw up variations of the name ( essential with how some of the transcriptions are). Try putting as much info in to start with taking out bits if you get no hits.

[Hackstaple]

Ancestry now offers you several ways to search where one is a little uncertain of details:
1. Exact match. Means just that and if you have one thing wrong you get no good reply.
2. Soundex - perhaps useful for a surname which has many variants - for example Jonson, Johnson, Johnston, Johnstone. The method by which it works is a bit odd and you may get some absolutely ridiculous answers - I seldom use it today.
3. Closest match [a yellow panel]. This is very good indeed as it will find all of that name, of that year then the name and other years and then name variants and the correct year and so on. Don't worry too much if it throws up 10000 answers as the last 9500 will be very remote.
Have fun

[derryphilip]

thank you all for your replies, here goes nothing