Microsoft Excel® as a Genealogy Research Tool

SESSION: S428, TIME & DATE: Saturday, 11:00 a.m.

SPONSOR: BYU Center for Family History and Genealogy

Jill Crandell, MA, AG®

Too often family historians settle for using their computers merely to locate and store data. More power lies at your fingertips. This class will demonstrate the invaluable use of Microsoft Excel® in assisting genealogical researchers. Learn to analyze and manipulate data like never before.

Genealogists frequently use timelines to analyze a person’s life or a family’s migration pattern. In addition to timelines, it is possible to use Excel to sort records for multiple identities for people of the same name. It is also possible to set up more complicated timelines to compare lives of multiple people and where they intersect in time and place.

Large, online databases are amazing tools that help us locate records for our ancestors. However, it can be difficult to narrow tens of thousands of “hits” to find exactly the person you want. Search engines are wonderful, but they do not always have every variable we would like to search on.

Are you aware of the historical date problem in Excel? Do you have a workaround to solve it?

Class attendees will learn how to use Excel to assist with these problems and more. Any researcher with a basic knowledge of Excel can use this popular program to help solve (or make good progress on) their tough research problems.

The sponsor of this lecture, the BYU Center for Family History and Genealogy, will have booth #516 in the Exhibit Hall where attendees will be able to learn about the Center’s research projects and meet some of the family history majors at the university. See you at booth #516!

BIO: Jill N. Crandell, MA, AG® is accredited in Midwest U.S. research and holds an MA in history and a BA in family history. She is an assistant teaching professor at Brigham Young University and the director of the BYU Center for Family History and Genealogy. She is also the developer of ResearchTies.