Configuring the Advanced Find Panel
Are You Searching for People or Couples?
Searching on the Number of Characters in a Field
Examples of Advanced Find Searches
Saving and Editing Find Presets
Saving, Recalling, Naming, and Editing Results Lists
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Note: | If you've come here because you want to find people by name, use the People Sidebar instead. Or if you want to search for a word (or words) and you want to see every place the word appears (or you're not sure where to look), use the regular Find feature. Otherwise, be aware that the Advanced Find feature is called "advanced" for a reason. It can be very sophisticated, depending on how you use it (particularly, with multiple criteria searching). |
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The Advanced Find feature is designed to search for virtually any piece of information, statistic, or attribute in any field. In fact, you can perform multi-condition searches. To use the Find feature, click the
button in the navbar and select . This opens the Advanced Find panel.Tips...
Advanced Find can also be accessed via either of these two shortcuts...
The easiest way to get rolling with the Advanced Find feature is to try some of the "presets." After opening the Advanced Find panel, you'll see a Presets list in the panel. The Presets provide an easy way to configure the Advanced Find panel for common searches. For example, searching for people...
As you click on a preset in the list, you'll see the "condition(s)" instantly change. If a preset provides exactly your desired search, then click the blue
button on the right side of the Advanced Find panel to initiate the search.You can also save new presets based on the conditions you choose. Learn more.
But, first, let's learn how to use the Advanced Find panel to configure searches.
Configuring the Advanced Find Panel
To see the Find panel, click
in the navbar and then select .Reunion's Advanced Find feature is designed to accommodate simple searches, complex searches, and everything in between. Using up to four "conditions" simultaneously, you can search for text, dates, attributes, statistics, etc. You can search for a list of matching people or couples. The custom search conditions you specify can be saved as a preset for instant recall later. Likewise, the results of searches can be saved for immediate recall.
The material below explains every nook and cranny of the Advanced Find feature. And there are many.
Note: as we stated above, if you simply want to find a person by searching for their name, you don't need to use the Advanced Find feature. Use the regular Find feature or the People sidebar search box instead.
After opening the Advanced Find panel, the first decision to make is whether you're looking for people who meet certain conditions, or couples that meet certain conditions. Make this selection by clicking the appropriate button near the top of the Advanced Find panel.
Examples of data associated with people includes birth date, death place, age, etc. Examples of data associated with a couple (or family) include marital status, number of adopted children, family notes, etc.
The Advanced Find feature searches for people or couples that match up to four different conditions. A condition is defined by two menu buttons and a data field specifying where to look, how to look, and what to look for.
Each condition in the Advanced Find panel is independent. If you use more than one condition, you may choose to apply logical "and" or "or" searches, using the
button. The operator you choose applies to all conditions.And |
a match happens only if all conditions are met
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Or |
a match happens if any condition is met
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The first menu focuses a search to a particular field or statistic. For example, last name, birth place, death memo, occupation, age, number of children, etc.
The second menu lets you specify exactly how to look for matches. There are several types of searches; the five basic categories are described below.
"Is" and "Is Not" compare your search text with entire field entries (including spaces). It only matches when an entire field entry matches your search text (is) or when an entire field entry does not match your search text (is not).
Example condition:
Match |
No Match |
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John Fitzgerald |
John Lee |
John F. | |
Douglas John |
"Before" and "After" perform alphabetical or chronological comparisons — depending on the specified field. The search text (or value) you enter is compared alphabetically or chronologically with the contents of the specified field for all persons.
Example condition:
Match |
No Match |
---|---|
Adams |
Johnson |
Cartwright |
Smith |
Example condition:
Match |
No Match |
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3 Jul 1875 |
1 Jan 1950 |
31 Dec 1949 |
6 Sep 1990 |
"Contains" and "Does Not Contain" let you search for a string of characters (including spaces) anywhere within fields. It ignores word boundaries.
Example condition:
Match |
No Match |
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Arthurstein |
Steibert |
Steinbrenner |
Thursteil |
"Word Starts With" looks at the beginning of words for matches. The order of words in the search text is immaterial. Most of the time, this is the preferred search method. It is also similar to the method used by the search box in sidebars and lists.
Example two-condition search:
Match |
No Match |
---|---|
Douglas M. Arthur |
Art Donald |
Doug Charles Arthur |
Donald Arthur |
Douglas Arthur |
Arthur Donfeller |
Douglas T. Arthurstein |
Doug Jones |
Robert Douglas Artman |
Notice the shortcut: you don't have to type in entire names when performing "Word Starts With" searches.
The "Word Starts With" search is looking at words — any word in a field. It is not limited to the first word in a field. Thus if you search for Birth Places that start with "har" then a birth place of "South Harrisburg" would be a match, even though the field did not start with "har."
On the other hand, if you do want to limit the search to just the beginnings of values in fields, then choose "Field Starts With" from the second menu. The example below would find matches where the birth place was "Springfield, MA" and "Springfield, MO."
But this example would only match birth places of "Springfield, MA."
Other powerful variations of the "Starts With" search methodology include...
5. Equal, Not Equal, Less Than, More Than
"Equal," "Not Equal," "Less Than," and "More Than" perform numerical comparisons. The search text (or value) you enter is compared numerically with the content of the specified field for all persons.
For example, this two-condition search would find all people born on the first day of any month, who died before reaching the age of one.
None of the Find commands attends to case when looking for matches: "Adams" and "adams" are seen as the same.
Also, diacritical marks (such as é) and punctuation marks (such as the apostrophe) are ignored when searching.
For example, if you have a person named "d'Orleans" just type "dorleans" in the search box. No apostrophe is needed. If you have a person named "Saké" just type "sake" into the search box.
In Advanced Find, single, double, "smart," and "dumb" quotation marks are treated as one and the same.
For example, a search for "Leroy" (quotes included) will find...
The "what to look for" text field in each condition is used to enter text, numbers, places, or dates. When searches are performed, Reunion uses the contents of this box to find matches.
The Advanced Find feature can be configured in nearly endless ways. Here are some examples of practical searches to give you ideas...
When searching for a person's marriage length, keep in mind that all families for that person are searched; not just the family of the person and his or her preferred spouse.
A Marriage Length field can be displayed in the List window, whether the list is showing people or families. However, when showing people in the List window and including a column for marriage length, only the length of the marriage to the preferred spouse appears.
Searching for Text in Any Memo, Note, Event or Fact Field
Keep in mind that the first pop-up menu shows "where to look," and in this case, Reunion is looking in any memo field for the string of text "hamburger."
Similarly, to look for a string of text in any note field, set up a condition like this...
In the above example, "hamburger" would be found whether it was in somebody's Miscellaneous note, Medical note, or any other kind of note field.
Searching for Same Sex Marriages
Keep in mind that the what-to-look-for box can be empty. I.e., searches for empty or null fields is supported. For example, if you wanted to get a list of people with no burial place, you could set up the condition below. Notice that the what-to-look-for box is empty.
If you want to get a list of people who have a burial place entry, you could set up the condition below. Notice that the what-to-look-for box is empty.
Text fields can be searched on the number of characters in the field using the field length search command.
To search text fields on the number of characters, select the text field to be searched in the first menu, choose 'Contains' in the second menu and enter a field length search command in the what to look for field.
The field length search command is enclosed in square brackets and has 3 parts separated by spaces...
Note: The field length search command must be enclosed in square brackets [ ] and the three parts of the command must be separated by spaces.
Some examples of searching fields on character count are given below...
Search for people with a last name containing less than 4 characters using the length search command [length < 4]...
Search for notes fields containing more than 1200 characters using the length search command [length > 1200]...
Search for education fact fields containing exactly 100 characters using the length search command [length = 100]...
To search for citations in fields, the number of citations per field/person, or text in the citation detail field, open the Advanced Find panel and, at the bottom of the first menu in Conditions ("Where to look") you'll see three types of searches for citations/detail appearing together. Note the illustration below...
Examples of all three citation searching features are described below...
# of Citations - this is the number of citations in any specific field, or the total number of citations in any person record.
For example, to search for people who have no information cited by any source, set up this condition...
To search for people who have any information cited by at least one source, set up this condition...
To search for people whose death dates are not cited by any source, set up this condition...
To search for people whose birth events are cited (by at least one source), set up this condition...
Cited Source # - select this item when looking for information cited by a particular source record or by sources within a range of source numbers.
For example, to search for people whose birth events are cited by source number 16, set up this condition...
To search for people who have any information cited by source number 22, set up this condition...
Searches made with the selections "This button identifies and gives you direct access to the field where matches occur. Learn more.
Citation Detail - select this item when you need to search for any text in the Citation Detail field.
For example, to search for all death events containing citation detail with the word "cholera," set up this condition...
Or, to search for the word "brook" in any citation detail field for any field in a person record, set up this condition...
Searches made with the selection "This button identifies, and gives you direct access to, the field where matches occur. Learn more.
Searching for People Who Are Living or Not Living
To set up one of the conditions in the Find panel to consider whether or not a person is living, click the
button and selectFor example, the following two-condition search would find all living people born in Springfield, MA...
Whether or not a person is living is determined as follows...
The Advanced Find feature can also search for people based on their Flourish Span, as described here.
To create a list of people without parents, children, or spouses, open the Advanced Find panel and, in the Presets list, select
Then click the button.Reunion will create a Results list of unlinked or unrelated people. You can open a family record for anyone in the list by double-clicking a name in the Results sidebar. (Double-clicking a name will return to the family view and then open the person's record. Once you're back to the family view, a single-click of any name in the Results sidebar is all that's needed to navigate to other people in the list.)
You can also mark people in the Results list and then navigate among the marked people.
Searching for Day, Month, or Year
To search for events that happened in a particular year, month, or day, use the pop-up menu in the Advanced Find panel as shown here...
Alternatively, the example above would work if searching for the Birth Month using an alphabetic expression, such as "mar" or "March."
Column selections in the List window and field selections in the Export Text File window will also reflect these special fields.
Males Born in New York Before 1900
Females Married in Spain Named "Louise"
Families With 12 Children
Males Who Died of Heart Disease Before 1970
Assume that a Fact field is used to record cause of death and the cause of death includes the word "heart."
The ability to search branches goes beyond the typical multi-condition search mechanism because the search can be targeted or limited to a particular branch — meaning a select group of people — as opposed to searching through all people or all marked people.
For example, you can search only the descendants of a person for people whose birth place contains Springfield and whose middle name is Harry. Or search only the descendants of two different people for people who were born in York PA.
To use this feature, click the
button in the navbar and select .Then select
from the menu... 
When a branch is selected in the Advanced Find
menu, a box appears for selecting a person. The box can be populated by dragging and dropping a person from any sidebar or list.In the example below, we are searching only the descendants of Abraham LEVY.
If we add another condition to the list (like "Birth Place is Harrisburg, PA") then we'll only search the descendants of Abraham LEVY for people born in Harrisburg, PA, as shown below...
The choices for branches are as follows:
Note: None of these choices will include the source person in the search, except for Male Descendant line (Surname). This condition searches the source person to be consistent with the Surname Variations feature in the Surname Tracer.
Examples of Branch Searches
Here are some examples of how a branch search might be used...
Show a quick list of descendants of a person...
Show a list of descendants of a person with a specific surname...
Show a list of female descendants of a person...
Show a list of people who are the descendant of two different people and were buried in a specific place...
Show a list of common ancestors of two different people...
Show the treetops that three people have in common...

Advanced Find results with certain conditions may surprise you. The way the various operators work in the Advanced Find panel, and thus the reconciliation of find results, is sometimes a tricky subject to understand because the results are influenced by...
The following examples (searching for text in an Education fact field) should help to clarify...
Note: Multiple instances of the same field for a person (for example, multiple education facts for a person) may not be obvious because the multiple education facts appear in the Edit Person panel, but not necessarily in the family view (unless "smart lists" are utilized).
To create a new Find preset...
It's not necessary to perform the search to save the preset.
To rename a preset, type directly into the list.
Note: the saved preset retains the conditions that are selected before you click the
button ( ). The preset does not change if you change the conditions after clicking the button. Put another way, you can't update or change the conditions of a saved preset. Once you click the button, the preset has been saved and it can't be changed. If a preset doesn't have the correct conditions or needs to be updated, simply set up the appropriate conditions and click the Add button. Then delete the old one.To delete a preset, select a preset in the list and click the button ( ).
To restore the default presets, delete all of them and then close and reopen the family file.
The Results sidebar is multifaceted, providing quick access to several useful lists.
Its primary use is to show what is found using Reunion's Find or Advanced Find features.
Results of the Find feature are described here.
Results of the Advanced Find feature are described below.
The Results sidebar appears (on the right) with a list of items matching the search criteria.
Depending on what you were trying to find (using Reunion's Advanced Find feature), the Results list will include a little button at the right edge of each line. This button is called the menu button, and clicking it shows a menu. Its purpose is to reveal exactly where something was found.
In the example below, we've used the Find feature to look for the word "orchard" in any person field. The
menu reveals that the word "orchard" was found in the "Misc. Notes" field for Sarah LIDDICK.The
menu not only shows where the information was found, but it also lets you select items in its menu. In the example above, if you select "Misc. Notes" from the Match menu, Reunion will take you directly to the Edit Person panel for Sarah LIDDICK with the cursor blinking in the Misc. Notes field.In the next example, we searched for something in the Occupation field and a match was found for Harry Daniel BAIR. We can select his name in the Match menu to navigate to his record in the family view. Or we can select "Occupation" and go directly to the Edit Person window for Harry, with the Occupation fact selected.
If something was found in multiple fields for the same person, then multiple items will appear in the
menu.Most searches in the Find panel will add the
menu button to each line in the Results list. For example, searching for text in these fields: Event, Facts, Notes, Marriage, Contact Info, Cited Source #, Citation Detail, Any Person Field, or Any Family Field.However, some searches do not support a
menu button, simply because Reunion can't show "where" the match occurred. For example, if the search is for a statistic, or done on a calculated value — or there is just no specific matching field, other than the person’s record. Other instances include searching for: # of Children, # of Parents, # of Spouses, Person Marked, Ancestor number, or Person ID number.When sharing a Results list that includes menu buttons, an option to include the "match locations" (i.e., the names of fields where data was found) will appear. Learn more.
Saving, Recalling, Naming, and Editing Advanced Find Results
When an Advanced Find results list is created (via the Advanced Find feature) and viewed in the sidebar, the list can be saved and recalled later. It can be named, and the name may be edited at any time.
If the Advanced Find results list is not saved, the next time the Advanced Find feature is invoked, the results in the sidebar will be replaced by the results of the most recent search.
To filter the Advanced Find results list even further, use the search box at the top of the list. This works just like the search boxes in other lists/sidebars, explained here.
Like most sidebars, the Advanced Find Results sidebar contains minimal detail on each line. It's designed to be a handy navigation/search tool. For more power and flexibility (for example, to see more fields on each line and sort in various ways), click the button (at the bottom of the sidebar) to open the Advanced Find results in the List window. Learn more.