Filters – Why should I care?

 

If you are like most Family Historians and Genealogists, when you start, it is all about the “Search” and the excitement of the “Finds”.  New Users of FTM typically concentrate on entering data, following Hints and merging data from the web.  But eventually, you are going to start asking questions of your data. Who served in a war? Who may be buried in a certain location?  Who are my 2^nd cousins? and the like.  

So, when that happens – Filters to the rescue!  

Filters and Publish go hand in hand to help answer those questions.  Filters help select people from your data who meet selected criteria.  The resultant list can be used to limit display to just those people in the Index, or as input to select Reports.  A Filter does not change your Data, it only limits the focus to those in the list.  Filters once created can be saved and reused.

At first glance, Filters may seem “geeky” or “complex” and that may be one reason many FTM users also put off learning about them.  While it is true that Filters are very powerful by creating and combining complex Logic Queries, they do not have to be so. 

The easiest place to learn to use Filters is on the Index using the Filter Button at the bottom of the index.  Clicking on Filter opens the “Filter Individuals” dialog.  In its simplest application, one only needs to select a focus person from the left panel, then click on one of the predefined criteria buttons, like “Ancestors” or “Descendants” of the focus person.  The Right-hand panel will show the list of selected individuals.  Then click “Apply” and the Index will now only show those individuals.  Back at the bottom of the Index we can remove the filter just by unchecking the Apply check box.  Again your data was not changed.

While you have a filter created, you can also choose to Name it, add a Color Code and/or save it for later use.  FTM 2019 Filters are “Smart” in that each time they are applied they rescan the data and include any new or changed individuals.  (a feature missing in FTM 2017 and earlier versions).

Included with FTM 2019 is a powerful Query Editor at the bottom half of that screen, here you can create and “stack” multiple queries to be use by the filter.

The main concept is to filter in the largest group, then filter out smaller groups until all that remain are the individuals you are looking for.  You do that with the “Filter-In” and “Filter-Out” buttons. Those also give you access to advanced Logic Queries. The use of Logic Queries requires a bit of study and experiment in understanding the options that are available to use.  (Things like Exists/Does Not Exist; Includes/Does Not Include; Is Blank/Is Not Blank, etc.). There are tons of help when it comes time to learn to use this more advanced part of Filters.

The purpose of this post is not to teach how to build complex query logic, but rather to introduce you to Filters themselves.  Learning on the Index gives direct positive feedback as to how your filter is working, and Remember No Data Is Harmed.  Once you have a filter you like, you can always use it to “Select Individuals” as input to Publish Reports

Play around and explore.  You’ll be glad you did.