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Tuesday's Tip - Internet Search Strings (Advanced)

Internet Search Strings

Tuesday's Tips provide brief how-to's to help you learn to use the Legacy Family Tree software with new tricks and techniques.

Internet Search Strings (Advanced)

Judy, one of our more experienced Legacy users, wrote this:

"For those of us who tinker with the search strings for various websites, could there be a place on the Legacy website that would have the "original" strings as supplied with the program for us to download or copy to repair the mess "we" have made and are unable to correct?"

We don't have this as a download but the information is readily available.

1) With Legacy closed, go to the \Documents\Legacy Family Tree\_AppData\ folder and open it. Rename your iSearch folder to iSearchX

2) Open Legacy and go to Search > Search Internet. Don't do anything. Just close the dialog box again. 

3) Now go back to the \Documents\Legacy Family Tree\_AppData folder and open it. You will notice that you now have an iSearch and an iSearchX folder.  Rename the iSearch folder to iSearch ORIGINAL and then rename iSearchX to iSearch.

What you have done is created a clean copy of the folder with the original strings (now iSearch ORIGINAL) which will leave any changes that you have already made still in place (now iSearch).

Open the iSearch ORIGINAL folder. You can open any of these files with Windows Notepad. You will see the original search strings (both lines). If you ever get into a bind you can open this file and copy and paste what you need.

 
If this is something you are interested in trying out yourself, go to Search > Search Internet > Customize Searches. Highlight the search you want to work with and click Edit. Now click the Help button on this screen for detailed instructions.

Find tech tips every day in the Facebook Legacy User Group. The group is free and is available to anyone with a Facebook account.

For video tech tips check out the Legacy Quick Tips page.  These short videos will make it easy for you to learn all sort of fun and interesting ways to look at your genealogy research.

Michele Simmons Lewis, CG® is part of the Legacy Family Tree team at MyHeritage. She handles the enhancement suggestions that come in from our users as well as writing for Legacy News. You can usually find her hanging out on the Legacy User Group Facebook page answering questions and posting tips.

Comments

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This is a helpful tip, and I appreciate it.

FamilySearch uses various name formats, place of birth and place of death in their searches to narrow the search a bit. Does Legacy plan on adding those to the search string options?

It would be very helpful.


Jim

Jim,
There is a request for additional search fields in our suggestion tracker for the programmers to consider adding :)

Wish there was a way those of us who do not care to have a Facebook account could at least view those discussions.

Beth,
I do try to cross post to the Legacy User Group mailing list but there are some things I can't cross post because they are loaded with screenshots. The Legacy User Group mailing list does not allow embedded images nor attachments and that is one of the biggest advantages to the Legacy User Group Facebook page.

Don't forget to search for I864 (with an 'eye') and L864 (with an 'el.')

Googled: Josserand 1864
Results: About 63,400 results

Googled: Josserand I864
Results: About 300 results

Googled: Josserand L864
Results: About 116 results

Not sure you could build that into an internet search string but it is great general advice :)

Re:
Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Try clicking on the "comment". Not what I expected. Do not see anywhere to sign up to get followups on this conversation.

I am not 100% sure with how it works (I've not tested it) but I am pretty sure that once you comment you will get a notification if anyone else comments. You have commented so we can't test that now :)

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