Author Topic: Export Search Results to Excel format  (Read 724 times)

Offline Cornelius88

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Export Search Results to Excel format
« on: Friday 27 September 24 11:43 BST (UK) »
Does anyone know a way of exporting search results from Ancestry/FindMyPast etc to a format capable of being imported into a spreadsheet?  There is no way of saving the search results in such a format that I can find.

The only way I can see would be to save the web page in PDF format and then use a program (£) to convert that to Excel format (.xlsx or comma/tab-delimited), assuming that is possible.  Messy, but possibly the only way.

MacOS 13.7 (Ventura)

Offline Kingsclere

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Re: Export Search Results to Excel format
« Reply #1 on: Friday 27 September 24 13:43 BST (UK) »
You first need to export/download your tree as a gedcom file (*.ged). Then use another utility program to convert it to *.csv in order to import to Excel (or whatever). An example such program is GedTool.
 
https://www.gedtool.de/index.php/en/

EDIT: Sorry, I misread your question and didn't note that you're asking about search results, not your tree.

Online AlanBoyd

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Re: Export Search Results to Excel format
« Reply #2 on: Friday 27 September 24 13:59 BST (UK) »
You can get a text version of the results on screen by taking a screenshot then, in Photos, crop the image to the important parts and use the text recognition option to select the text. Then you can copy and paste into whatever text editor you use.

I just had a quick attempt and I can see that there are some annoying line breaks etc, but it is a start. Since the output is fairly predictable it would be fairly easy to write a script (e.g. in Python) to clean it all up and prep for opening in Excel.

This would mean a lot of screen shots for a typical search.

Looking at it from their point of view, you can see why they wouldn’t want to make this too easy.
Boyd, Dove, Blakey, Burdon

Offline Cornelius88

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Re: Export Search Results to Excel format
« Reply #3 on: Saturday 28 September 24 09:30 BST (UK) »
You first need to export/download your tree as a gedcom file (*.ged). Then use another utility program to convert it to *.csv in order to import to Excel (or whatever). An example such program is GedTool.
 
https://www.gedtool.de/index.php/en/

EDIT: Sorry, I misread your question and didn't note that you're asking about search results, not your tree.
I did think that if I used your suggestion and imported the search results into a tree file, then I could use the gedtool to convert it to Excel.  Probably a complete mess but might be sufficient for my requirements.  Sadly Gedtool is Windows only and I'm on a Mac.  I've scouted round and can't find a Mac equivalent.


Offline Cornelius88

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Re: Export Search Results to Excel format
« Reply #4 on: Saturday 28 September 24 09:44 BST (UK) »
You can get a text version of the results on screen by taking a screenshot then, in Photos, crop the image to the important parts and use the text recognition option to select the text. Then you can copy and paste into whatever text editor you use.
[ SNIP ].

I was looking at saving the results as a PDF and then converting to Excel etc.  There are plenty of programs that will do Excel to Pdf but not the reverse which would be rather more difficult.

Your suggestion is a start but as you say it only works page by page which is very time consuming.

Looking at it from their point of view, you can see why they wouldn’t want to make this too easy.
Yes.  I can imagine they think someone will download all of their data, but for me it's a usefull way of making inroads into branches of a family which persists in retaining the same baptismal name for their sons across multiple generations. 

Thus, you have multiple generations of sons all with the same name but from different branches of the family, all of which live within a short distance of each other.  Several of them have wives with the same given name.  Attributing issue gets difficult and it's easy to get it very wrong.

Being able to do a quick sort by date and location would have been easy with a spreadsheet.  It's possible to do it by using varying search parameters but a spreadsheet would be simpler and much quicker.


Offline manukarik

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Re: Export Search Results to Excel format
« Reply #5 on: Saturday 28 September 24 09:49 BST (UK) »
Found this but don't know how time consuming the methods would be…
https://www.rootschat.com/links/01tfm/
Clarkson, Tolladay, Prevost, Killick, Hicks

Offline Cornelius88

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Re: Export Search Results to Excel format
« Reply #6 on: Saturday 28 September 24 10:02 BST (UK) »
Found this but don't know how time consuming the methods would be…
https://www.rootschat.com/links/01tfm/
Now that is a brilliant find and certainly worth a go.  I'm on an Intel Mac but that shouldn't be a problem and I'll give it a try. 

Many thanks to all.