Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

Hi all,

Many weeks ago, the recent search history facility disappeared from my Ancestry, followed by the recent search activity, that went about a month ago.
I've contacted them by email a few times and have had return mail telling me they are looking into it, up to now, no fix.

Before I start sending Growl mails, can I ask if anyone else is experiencing this problem, have you still got use of these?

Thank you.

Not something I can say that I've used, what do these searches come under - ie whereabouts were these links on the page?

Meantime I've sometimes found that a phone call makes more sense as they are willing to work through the problem on their own screen, not that they can always come up with an answer, but as it's a free call sometimes worth speaking to them
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Thank you Mary for the reply,

It happened once before,

https://www.liverpool-genealogy.org.uk/ ... 24&t=13445

It was always available on the old system as well as the new, it saves a lot of retyping, not something I'm fond of. If you haven't got search history or recent search activity, perhaps you are also missing out.

Thank you.

I noticed they had gone. It was useful for being able to return to a record you had previously looked at but not saved. I hope it returns.


Blue

Thanks, Blue.

Sorry you suffer the same, at least I'm not the only one.

Anymore?

I can ask if this facility has been removed or just a temporary blip.

Just checked and find the recent search facility is still working for me. Hope they manage to sort you out.

Cheers,
Heli

I never used that either; looks really useful. I was able to bring up a list of recent searches this morning, although I still don't know how to make the link appear or what situations generate it.

If it's not working it might be worth clearing your cookies to see if you can get a clean re-build.

Thank you, Heli, Luxor,

Apparently the Ancestry IT department are trying to resolve the issue.

Well I went looking for it and found I could add it as an item on my Home Page and thought this might be a solution ..... except it says "Your Recent Search Activity is unavailable. Please try again in a moment."

So no better than you have and would seem to be quite a long "moment".

I couldn't even find where it was to try and reinstall, if it ever comes back, no doubt we will all get it at the same time.

Annoying though, I always thought both were the most useful functions.

I've never even heard of this one!! Please let us know when it's back as I get quite frustrated with Ancestry when I can't find a record I know I have looked at previously. Yesterday I found a record of a soldier killed in WW1 so I set off searching on my tree and looking at numerous censuses, marriages, baptisms etc to see if it was "my" man. When I went back to the searches I couldn't for for love nor money find this particular record yet I knew I had seen it maybe 15 minutes earlier.

I ended up having to use the back arrow button on my browser and going back about 50 pages until I hit upon the record again.

In FMP it lets you see previous records you have looked at and saves them which I find very useful indeed is this the same kind of thing on Ancestry?

Also when you are looking through a list of 50 people on say a census it will highlight those you have looked at so you don't look at the same record twice after going backing to the list. I can't find this on Ancestry, maybe I need to switch something on??

They have problems... This is slightly different - seeing who is looking at your information - but may be connected.

http://ancestryforums.custhelp.com/post ... tId=105196

Their software is flaky. For instance, you find you can get a record with minimal data, but can't get it if you add, say, a date-of-birth. That shouldn't be. I've seen software fall over because it didn't like a blank for date-of-birth. So someone defaults the dob to, say, 1/1/1800. And it no longer collapses. But it quietly compares your entered dob to the dummy one and denies you a record that you should get! It is expensive to iron out all the wrinkles. Given a choice, I suppose we would prefer to have new records added.

It appears to be back, or a version of it.

I'm never sure if I see the same home page as others,

Click,

Search,
Search all Records,

Below the search fill in,

Recent Searches + See More, click See More Box
opens,
Recent Searches, Recently Viewed Records, Recently Viewed Data Collections

Lucky you! my "recents" only deal with Collections, not my searches.

Bertieone wrote:It appears to be back, or a version of it.

I'm never sure if I see the same home page as others,

Click,

Search,
Search all Records,

Below the search fill in,

Recent Searches + See More, click See More Box
opens,
Recent Searches, Recently Viewed Records, Recently Viewed Data Collections

Oh wow never seen this before how useful!! Thank you Bertie.

Another you may all be able to help with. On FMP say if you have a list of records as you look at each one then return to the list it puts a little tick besides each one as you go to show you've looked at it, so then you don't end up going back to look at the same record again but I can't find this on Anc?? Is there something I should be switching on?

I remember the Tick on FMP from when I had it for a month, I'm not aware of anything like that on Anc, other than the search history, which is now called "Recently Viewed Records"

Not sure yet how long the records stay for, when it was search history it held about 25/30 records and one older one would drop off the bottom of the list as a new one was added to the top.

Thanks Bertie. I've just checked and FMP has kept records of my searches going back to 313 pages of them!!