This page answers common questions on using this plugin under various circumstances.
- Why don’t the online searches use my logged in account?
- What factors determine that a BMD Record is missing?
- How is the actual or estimated Event Year determined?
- Can an Event recorded in a foreign country be excluded?
- How is the Surname of each woman determined?
- Can the Lookup Web Page be used at a library?
- How are BMD searches refined to adjust the number of matches?
- How do I access the new ‘FindMyPast’ search modes?
- What causes “The Internet appears to be inaccessible” message?
Why don’t the online searches use my logged in account?
Before initiating online searches, sign in to Ancestry or FindMyPast or MyHeritage subscription accounts using your PC default browser.
The default browser (Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, etc.) is the one used by the plugin to present the Lookup Web Page, and from that page you can sign in via another tab of the same browser.
If you sign in via a different browser, then your enabled account will not be recognised.
What factors determine that a BMD Record is missing?
If Ignore Sources that do NOT match filter? is ticked then all such Citations are deemed not to exist before applying the following rules.
A BMD Record is deemed as missing if one of these cases is detected:
- A relevant Event has an inexact Date or no Citation.
- No Event exists but an estimated Date is available.
A BMD Record is deemed NOT missing if one of these cases is detected:
- A relevant Event has an exact Date and a Citation.
- No relevant Date is available, so no relevant search is possible.
- For a Birth/Baptism search, the Birth has the same 1st Citation as a Baptism or Christening, which has an exact Date.
- For a Marriage search, the Marriage Status is Never Married or Unmarried Couple.
- For a Death/Burial search, the Death has the same 1st Citation as a Burial or Cremation, which has an exact Date.
- For a Death/Burial search, the Individual Living Flag is set.
- The Event Date or 1st Citation Entry Date is a Quarter Date or post-1984 Month Date, and 1st Citation matches the Source Type filter.
This is intended to cater for post-1837 UK GRO Index records.
The Tools > Preferences > General tab Use Quarter Date Display Format must be ticked for this feature to work.
Leave the Enter a Source Type filter blank to treat such BMD Records as missing.
The relevant Events for Birth/Baptism reviews are Birth, Baptism & Christening, for Marriage reviews are Marriage & 1st Child Birth, and for Death/Burial reviews are Death, Burial & Cremation.
An exact Date has a single Day & Month & Year without qualifiers (Approx(circa), Estimated, Calculated) and must not be a Range or Period.
A relevant Date includes Birth, Baptism, Christening, Death, Burial, or Cremation event Dates for the Individual, the Marriage, or 1st Child Birth event Dates for Marriages, or estimated Birth Dates or Death Dates derived from other facts.
How is the actual or estimated Event Year determined?
Usually the Event Year is obtained from the Date in the Birth, Marriage, or Death event.
Otherwise, an estimated Event Year is obtained from other facts including Birth, Baptism, Christening, Death, Burial, Cremation, Marriage and Birth of 1st Child, not only of the Individual, but also their relations. The Tools > Preferences > Estimates settings also play a part.
The ± offset is determined from earliest and latest estimated Event Year values, and Period and Range dates.
For some web searches the offset is further adjusted to satisfy web site requirements and defaults.
Can an Event recorded in a foreign country be excluded?
If Exclude each person whose missing details are more probably in another country’s records is ticked, and the BMD Event has a Place that matches another searchable country, then that person is excluded from the search.
In the case of a missing Marriage Event, the Event Place will be taken from the 1st Child Birth Event that also determines the approximate Marriage Date.
The list of foreign countries is derived from the countries in the Choose the BMD Records to review list, so is far from comprehensive. The objective is to exclude the events that are more likely to be discovered online in one of those other databases. It is also the case that some foreign countries such as India have records in say the UK database. So a great many foreign countries are not excluded by this option.
How is the Surname of each woman determined?
Until a woman is involved in a Family partnership her Primary Surname is used, which is conventionally her maiden Birth Surname.
She is given the Primary Surname of her Husband from the latest Family partnership that satisfies all the conditions below:
- Has a Marriage Date or 1st child Birth Date that falls before the current Event Date
- Does NOT have a Divorce/Divorce Filed/Annulment Date before the current Event Date
- Does NOT have a Status of Never Married or Unmarried Couple
- Records her Husband with a non-blank Primary Surname
Can the Lookup Web Page be used at a library?
To use the Lookup Web Page on another PC, such as at a library, requires it to be copied to a USB pen drive memory stick.
The command to perform this copy is similar for most web browsers.
(If hidden, the menubar File command is often revealed by pressing the Alt key.)
- Microsoft Edge uses menu … > More tools > Save page as
- Mozilla Firefox uses File > Save Page As…
- Apple Safari uses File > Save As…
- Google Chrome uses Page > Save page as…
Also, they all recognise the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+S
In each case the USB pen drive memory stick should be selected, where an HTML file and a folder with the same name are created.
Alternatively, three files can be copied from the Family Historian Program Data Folder \Plugin Data\ sub-folder.
- lookupmissingbmdrecords.css Cascading Style Sheet
- lookupmissingbmdrecords.js JScript Script File
- lookupmissingbmdrecords-…html HTML Document
How are BMD searches refined to adjust the number of matches?
In the Lookup Web Page click a hyperlink in any website column to start an online BMD search.
The default search filter values are designed to avoid mistakes such as using the wrong surname for married women or miscalculating the year of an event, but do not guarantee a perfect search. So the filters may need refining to find the desired record, especially if too many or too few records are found by the default search.
Note that people & place Name filters omit text that was enclosed in [[privacy brackets]] or “double quotes“ or ‘single quotes‘ along with the symbols ? * ^ ” ~ % that have a special effect in various websites.
Tips for refining search filters such as Names and Dates are provided separately for each website:
How do I access all the ‘FindMyPast’ search modes?
FindMyPast offers three World Search modes as described below.
1) Search All Records Mode
Search records > Search all records offers Who & When & Where options, with a Where drop-down list of countries and some guidance notes.
There is an extensive set of search filters on the left to narrow the search, and these change according to the Category and Collection chosen, but sometimes key filters such as Gender are missing.
2) Search Record Categories
The Search drop-down has Categories such as Census, land and surveys and Birth, marriage, death and parish that offer similar Who & When & Where record filter options as above.
3) All Record Sets Mode
Via the modes above there is an All record sets central button.
This offers a method of selecting specific record sets, and presents a search form with quite extensive search filters, that can differ significantly from those above.
What causes “The Internet appears to be inaccessible” message?
This plugin checks the Plugin Store for a later version via the Internet. If there is no connection, this message is produced.
While there is no connection, the message is inhibited by all plugins with this feature, until none of them has been run for 10 hours, or one of them detects the connection is restored.
Also, the online Help & Advice pages will be inaccessible.
Return to the Lookup Missing BMD Records main help page.
Help content on this page is owned and provided by Mike Tate, the plugin's author, Calico Pie takes no responsibility for its content.