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The Advanced Search can search for people with an event in a given time span, eg. Born 1845 +/- 5 years.
How easy (or useful) would it be to find people (eg) born BEFORE a given year, or died (eg) AFTER a given year?
My specific example is looking for people who might be living at the time of the 1939 Register.
Would anyone else find something like this useful?

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I have long wanted this ability. Useful for before/after birth, death, census, and your register, etc etc etc.

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Personally I probably wouldn’t find it useful. But I’d say that about the whole advanced search. I’ve never found a need for it.

But for those who do, I’m happy to investigate this. It doesn’t sound too problematic at first thought. But a couple questions:

1. Would it also need +/- 5, 10 yrs etc as well?
2. Would you want to do BEFORE and AFTER together, or just one at a time?

Regarding your primary requirement, doesn’t Resources > UK 1939 Register do that for you? It looks at anyone alive at the time.

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info

Personally, I’d like BEFORE/AFTER to be two separate options. Actually, a Boolean search would be the best. Find AFTER this and/or BEFORE that.

As to the +/-, I have never liked using those on any site.

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I’ve had a look at this and can report the following:

Adding BEFORE and AFTER options to a single date is easy. I’ve done that now, so it will be in the next release. Looks like this:

But this needs to be used with caution. Searching “BEFORE” and “1957” might get everyone in your tree back as far as Adam and Eve!!

Adding both BEFORE and AFTER for the same event ( thats what I understand “I’d like BEFORE/AFTER to be two separate options” means) is not easy with the current code. Adding complicated code on top of complicated code is (IMHO) asking for trouble. It’s what ends up breaking things. It would require either adding a second date field for each event, or as you suggest making the search field accept boolean attributes. That’s not a bad idea – but impossible with the current code which is totally GEDCOM focused. A complete re-write of the advanced search will be required. I will put that on the “wish list” as it’s a good plan, but I have no idea when it might be possible. Certainly not in the near future.

In the process of looking at this I discovered (remember – I never use advanced search) that you cannot search using two (or more) of the date fields. For example, I searched for people with a birth in exactly 1922 and a death in exactly 1941. I know I have at least 1, but I got no result. I will investigate if that is possible as it would slightly help this topic, as you could search perhaps for births BEFORE 1939 and deaths after 1991 to answer Paul’s original issue. (Those dates are some of the parameters for inclusion in the UK 1939 register).

I was also reminded by looking at the code, and hope this might help someone, that it also already allows for “Exact” dates that are in the GEDCOM format BET xxxx AND yyyy, or FROM xxxx TO yyyy

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info

kiwi wrote:

In the process of looking at this I discovered (remember – I never use advanced search) that you cannot search using two (or more) of the date fields. For example, I searched for people with a birth in exactly 1922 and a death in exactly 1941. I know I have at least 1, but I got no result. I will investigate if that is possible as it would slightly help this topic, as you could search perhaps for births BEFORE 1939 and deaths after 1991 to answer Paul’s original issue.

I have been able to fix this. In the next release you will be able to search for multiple tags/places/dates. Attached is an example. I searched for individuals with my surname, born after 1900 in Surrey and died before 1991 in Kent.

Hopefully at least a partial solution to the questions raised in this thread.

(I hope to get the next release out in a week, or two at most).

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info