To dhyouse@comcast.net BK allows you to search with ? for any letter or * for any number of letters after that. But if the last name you are having trouble with is spelled so many different ways that none of that helps, here is another idea. Go to the Names tab and click Add Name at the bottom and pick Also Known as. Then in the name column type the first name of the person and for the last name type XXXX Then in the Print Where column pick Never Print (That way it will never print the XXXX name on any reports) Then anytime you are searching for one of those people type the first name and type XXXX for the last name. Be sure the option is checked to also search Alternate names. It will show everyone with that first name and XXXX as the last name (as the alternate name) The area at the bottom will show the actual last name. If you search for ? XXXX It will show everyone that you have set up that way. John Steed ----- Original Message ----- From: <dhyouse@comcast.net> To: <bk@rootsweb.com> Sent: Sunday, October 16, 2011 5:03 PM Subject: [BK] Name searching >I have a problem with names which might be a shortcoming of the Names Tab >entries or, more certainly, the search function. > > There are two families in my database which never decided on how to spell > their names. These families have used spelling variations in different > branches, among siblings and even within the same household. > > The first family uses various combinations of ele/elle/ela/ella/ellen + > ba/be + rger. > > The second family uses combinations of sad/sadd/sar/sat/sart + or + > ous/ious/us/is. > > I’d like a way to be able to search for all of the combinations of each > family by entering any one of the varieties. The closest I can come is > using Soundex but even that misses some of the combinations. > > Or am I missing something that is already available? > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > BK-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in > the subject and the body of the message