GRO Certificates and PDFs

[Canuk]

Hope I am on the right board for this. I am researching from Canada so must order certificates online. Please, can someone tell me click-by-click how to order a PDF certificate? I have the index reference, but I find it very frustrating that I cannot find how to get the PDF when I am on https://www.gov.uk/order-copy-birth-death-marriage-certificate. They offer only the printed copy. I paid £11 and it has been a month now and it is still not here. Thanks for your help.

[nanny jan]

Only births and deaths are available as PDF but not for all years. Think it is work in progress.

[KGarrad]

From the main page (https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/indexes_search.asp), select from the menu on the right "Place An Order".
Follow the instructions!

Please note:
PDF copies of the entry are only available for the digitised entries for the years 1837-1922 and where a GRO reference is supplied, which you can find using the GRO Online Historical Indexes.

[Canuk]

Aha! That explains it. I was ordering a Marriage certificate. I did not realise that not everything has been digitised yet. Thank you very much.

[Jon_ni]

Think it is work in progress

Unfortunately it is not, was aborted then shelved over a decade ago with just Birth records 1837 to 1934 & Death records 1837 to 1957 completed out of the originally planned marriage and death certificates from 1837 to c.2006.
See Digitisation and Indexing (D&I) Project on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Register_Office_for_England_and_Wales
In August 2012 costs to complete the digitisation project and indexes for the missing 133m civil registration records were estimated at over £25 million.

Discussion here about the failed project from 2007.
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=448004.0
https://news.siemens.co.uk/news/siemens-signs-contract-to-digitise-250-million-records-for-the-office-for-national-statistics

Developments since then are the completed digital images being used to generate the birth & death pdfs and the transcribed data for their enhanced indexes with mother's maiden surname & death ages from start of civil registration per
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=721399
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=815804
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=833268

[nanny jan]

Thanks Jon_ni; I’d forgotten. 

[Deirdre784]

If you want to order a births or deaths pdf (where available), it's easier to search for the record first. The options for buying then appear; click on the pdf button and it enters all the details for you.