Sorting by manager on surname list: I know it's not possible, but... how else to do what I need?

Question

I saw the question asked in June 2014 about sorting a surname list by profile manager.

I don't know about the original poster, but I wanted the capability while searching for my relatives by surname. I've discovered that a couple of branches were all populated by one or two people; it would be much easier for me to find them if I could sort a surname list by manager. As it is, I have to scroll thru the entire list of profiles for a surname looking for the ones I want. I was trying to find a way to decrease how long it's taking me to determine if a person in my files already has a profile. Since I have 2500+ people in my files, you can see that anything that saves time is appreciated. Some of my surnames have a lot of people -- one is 500+, and another is 350+... And when I uploaded my GEDcom, it only found < 300 matches out of the 2500+...

Does anyone have any suggestions on methods to decrease my time usage on this search? I don't want to actually import a branch & then discover that I've created a mess of duplicates...

Answer 1

Kitty,

Here is one method - list by surname, sort by date.  Then at the top add  &limit=5000 to the end of the url - press enter.  This should give you the first 5000 by that surname. Now using your browser function select Find enter the name of a manager that you are interested in.  They will be highlighted - the down key to the right of the Find will step you through the profiles for the selected manager.

At least this works in google chrome - I have not tested it in other browsers.

Comments

I use Ctl-F in Firefox to search by profile manager.

Answer 2

Here is where I search for profiles  http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Special:SearchPerson - starting with the least information, usually just last name and a date range - adding more if needed to limit the results.

Comments

That's the way I started, but it's very tedious for that many people...

Answer 3

On the top right there is a drop down menu when you click on "Find", you can then select 'Matches for Family".  You will probably get long lists, sorted by Surname and Given name.  For example a list of "John Jones" and a list of "Bob Jones" who could be matches for your John or Bob.

Still a lot of searching, but it can be done.  Good luck.

Comments

Unfortunately, this won't work yet, since I don't want to create the profiles until after I've searched for them...