Genealogy Chat

Message sent to Genes:
'I have four ancestors with the surname O'Shea in my tree. Yet when I type the name O'Shea in the search box at the top of my personal tree, it says 'No matches found'. I rely on this search facility when people ask me if I share ancestors with them (which, having a tree of nearly 5,000, they do every day). If it's incorrect in its searching, which obviously it is, I will be telling people 'No match' when indeed there is a match.'
Has anyone else had this problem?

Perhaps you are the only one on GR with O'Shea in your tree, in which case it wouldnt find a match. I would imagine the matching doesnt include the names in your tree, unless you have 2 trees. Or have I misunderstood your question?
Huia.

It wasnt on the 'Search trees' facility. Only on my own tree. When you get your tree up it says 'Search names' at the top. So its saying I have no O'Shea's.

I have just been on my own tree and typed in a name on the Search names at the top and it came up with a lot of matches from other trees, but did not include the one on my tree.

Thats odd, when you get your own tree up the search box at the top of your own personal tree is only supposed to give names within your own tree.

Just a thought;

It might be because of the apostrophe in the name, certain software will read it as an illegal character.

When my tree was there, my name and y.o.b. were in the search boxes. I had not noticed the first time a little box above with 'my tree' and a drop-down arrow to enable me to search other trees to which I have access. I had deleted my name and replaced it with an ancestors name and I was given a page full of the same name in various peoples trees, people with whom I have no contact (as yet). I will have another look at my tree.

Omitted the apostrophe, but still 'no matches'. Just worries me that when people say 'Do you have a match with Fred Bloggs etc', I'll be saying 'No Bloggs in my tree', wheras there could be a family of them. Oh well, will have to wait for Genes reply. Thanks.

Yes, it is definitely just other trees to which I already have access, so unless you are in contact with people who have the name O'Shea in their tree, and they have given you access to their tree, it wont come up with anything. It would be pointless for it to bring up your O'Sheas, I would think. Or would it? Not thinking too straight at present.

I have just tried to search for O'Shea using the search box at the top of my tree, selecting the whole site option, as I haven't any in my tree.

The search fails, as you say, and it appears to be intepreting the apostrophe as a double quote. In fact it returned just a single name

So it looks like you have found a bug. The Search Trees tab appears to work ok, though but obviously cant be used for searching in your own tree.

Ah yes. If I remove my name and type in another surname and click on search - my tree, it comes up with a list of all the people I have in my tree with that surname. I suppose it could be useful for something. Not sure what.

The search boxes at the top of my personal tree work perfectly well. Have you tried searching for a different name in your own tree?
It would show if it was the apostrophe causing the problem.

Andy

Have you looked at the bottom of this page at 'My tree matches'? It gives a summary of surnames in your tree and the number of how many you have of each surname and how many others there are in other trees. If you click on your number (I think) it will then list them. Are your O'Sheas in the surname summary?

Have you looked through your tree to see how the name appears on it?

Glen's right , the problem must be the apostrophe.

When you search for a name, you're given the option to search in your own tree, or the whole site. When I choose to search in my own tree, it always works perfectly.

However, I just tried changing the surname of one of my ancestors to O'Shea, and the name wasn't found, so there's obviously a problem with the apostrophe that Genes need to sort out.

Hi Andy, other names seem to show up ok, thank goodness. Peter, thats interesting! They need to get it sorted, hopefully they will now. Its an Irish name, so I imagine plenty of O'Shea's about!

Just out of interest have the names been added directly via GR or by importing a GEDCOM?

It shouldn't really influence the outcome but the system GR use for GEDCOM creating and reading isn't the most modern available.

I know of two sites that just cannot process a GR GEDCOM correctly unless they are tweaked to v5.5 and have the character set changed.

Just tried another experiment: if you enter the name O'Shea in your tree with a curly apostrophe rather than a straight one, the search works.

Where do you find a curly apostrophe, Mary? Not that I have any apostrophes in my family tree. Just curious.

Aha

There is the answer, the search criteria must be an exact match to the entry, any characters entered incorrectly will mean the search is for a "different" name to the one intended.

A bit like searching for "Harrison" instead of "Harrisson", the slightly different spellings require different searches.

I copied it from Word, Huia - I have my Word program set to replace "straight quotes" with "smart quotes", so when I type O'Shea, the straight apostrophe automatically turns curly. Then I just copy-pasted it into my tree (it doesn't seem to work here on the boards).