The new Findmypast (Part 1)

[locksmith]

Has anyone tried the individual census search pages?
On first view it looks good. There are search boxes for everything (addresses have been dicsussed previously here).

Unfortunately you are limited to the dreaded filters in many cases. There are search boxes for Birth Town (on some years it is Birth city), and Birth Place. These have preset filters that you are forced to use. The filters include every single entry made in the Where Born section of the census as entered by the enumerator and of course includes transcription error.  I haven't worked out why there are 2 boxes, although the Birth place seems to include non UK places, but how they have been split remains a mystery.

I tried an example on the 1901 census for people I knew who were born in Warwick. You type Warwick in the search box and it brings up the first 8 places that have the word warwick in them. Not what I want so you then have to select Browse Birth Town. Opens up filter box, type in Warwick. This gives you 15 names with Warwick in which you have to scroll down, then select more for the next 15 and so on. Warwick was 60th in the list. This is supposed to be a simple way of entering a birth place. However Warwick may have been entered as Warwick town, Warwick City, At warwick, Borough of Warwick, Twarwick etc, so just setting the filter to warwick doesn't find anyone born in these as well and you have to somehow now this and select them in the filters. All I really want to have is a search box that I can type letters and wild cards, but you can't do this.
The only alternative is to use the optional keywords field, although I see this is not available on the 1901 census form (I despair )

Incidently in the 1901 census the only person born in the little known town of 'Not Known (try Warwick)' was Henry Packer, if the filter was set to just Warwick, it doesn't find him.

Aren't a considerable number of searches based around birth place? If so it's not easy.

Simon

[Treetotal]

My problem is with getting a legible cutting from newspapers...I use the snipping tool... but if the article is in a long column and I snip it from the downloaded page then I can't read it when I zoom in....it's okay if the article is a short one and I snip it from the small screen view....answers on a postcard please 
Carl

[Hampshire Lass]

Hi Carl    Carole

Have you tried screen save and then saving it to your photo gallery and then cropping the image?

The rest of the postcard reads " having a lovely time, wish you were here" 

[Treetotal]

Hi HL....I haven't tried that...I have been playing about trying to get the best resolution...the images are PNG but changing to Jpeg makes it smaller...I am "Saving as" to my pictures...cut and paste into word doesn't seem any better...it all seems a bit hit and miss at the moment 
Thanks for the postcard 
Carol aka Carl

[locksmith]

Zoom in and snip in bits. Here’s a way that only requires windows snipping tool and the free image editor Irfanview (a small and easy download). I’ve just tried it on an article in a newspaper column and it is effective and gives a clear image. It can be a bit of work with a long article.

Step1 : Open up the  newspaper you want and zoom in at the start of the article. On my screen it was about 4 columns wide but you could zoom in closer.

Step 2 : With Windows snipping tool select as much of the article as you can with the rectangular snip, the width of the column and end it between 2 lines of text (I got about 35 lines). In snipping tool select edit then copy.

Step 3 : Open Irfanview, and select edit Paste. The snipped bit will appear.

Step 4 : Go back to newspaper, and keeping the same zoom level get the next part of the article on screen. Select the next 35 lines and snip. In the snipping tool select Edit Copy

Step 5 :  Go back to Irfanview and select Edit/Paste special/To Bottom. The second snipped bit will be attached to the first and looks like a seamless article

Step : 4  Keep doing this until you have the full article, then save as JPG.

Alternatively as you have Word, you could do the snipping in bits as above but instead of pasting it to Irfanview paste it into word, and then move the bits underneath each other.

Of course the best way would be if FindMyPast put the save button back.

Simon

[Treetotal]

Bless you Simon for taking the trouble to guide me through it....I'll need to lie down in a darkened room now  ...or...as the sun is over the yard arm...I'll give in and just have a glass of the red stuff 
Thanks for your help.
Carol

[dawnsh]

If FindMyPast knows that there is a 'newspaper download' issue, I'm sure they will correct it in the fullness of time.

Yes, I know it's pain in the meantime, but I'm sure they will resoleve the issues as and when they can.

It is not in their best interests to have this many disgruntled users whose subs will be due for renewal at some point in time.

I'm still on the old system so can't recreate the new problem at the moment.

Dawn

[LizzieW]

Dawn - the problem is that FindMyPast should not have moved everyone on to the new FindMyPast site before it was working properly.  It's very shortsighted to just release it and then when everyone complains say that they will resolve the problem or put it right, or bring back such and such.  What they need to do is put everyone back on the old system until they get the new one right.  Do you know anyone who has tested it?  Has anyone on here tested the new system.  FindMyPast have said that they had 1000 regular users testing the new system before release, but I've yet to hear of anyone who was one of the 1000.

[Kay99]

I used to frequently use the advanced search facility in a particular census year to restrict the search to a specific Registration District, which was extremely useful.  Does anyone know if this facility still exists?

Kay