Hi Colin: The TNA advice you quote is a little strange, since their wills search facility, at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/wills.htm does not - as far as I can tell - *itself* provide any means of searching using either the new or the old reference number. Take for example the will of Mariote Grouers (1402) - the first, and oldest, PROB 11 Devon will listed in the Devon Wills Project (DWP). You can locate this will easily on the TNA website using first name and surname, and so find -should you need it - that its (new) reference number is PROB 11/2A/33. However searching on "PROB 11/2A/33", "11/2A/33", "PROB 11/2A", or "11/2A", in the keyword search field (the only - remotely -relevant field) all fail to find it. BUT, if you have found a will, by e.g. using the testator's name, you get the opportunity to "Browse by reference" and so find wills with adjacent reference numbers. From their Help pages: > Should I search or browse? > When you are looking for records, it can be difficult to know whether to 'search' or 'browse'. It is always useful to start with a keyword search and see what results you get, as the record you are looking for may be described in detail in the catalogue. Start with a simple search on the main Discovery page, and use Advanced search if you are looking for a specific record. > If your search does not return the results you want or expect, browse through the list of our records by government department. Browsing is a useful tool because many of the records in our collection can't be found using a keyword search due to the limited amount of detail in the description field. As only a small proportion of our records can be searched for by name, place or subject, you will probably need to use the browse function as well as the search tool to get the best out of your research. So this would make it seem that reference numbers are for browsing, names are for searching. However the main TNA Search page (which you'll miss if you are focussed on wills) http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/ does allow searching by reference number *or* keyword, and here it is handy to have the new full reference. Unfortunately the list of PROB 11 wills that TNA provided to us for the DWP a few years ago just has the shorter form of reference. Cheers Brian On 9 Jan 2014, at 00:08, Colin Rosewell <rosewells@ozemail.com.au> wrote: > Please be aware that the long-form references for PCC wills at The > National Archives has changed. > > For example, the will of 'Will of Thomas Rowswell of Clayhidon, > Devon' previously having a Catalogue Reference: PROB11/106 and Image > Reference: 633 (i.e. PROB11/106/633) is now referenced as > PROB/11/106/324! So please check your reference. > > Advice from TNA is: > "When Discovery was launched in 2012 it combined both DocumentsOnline > and the Catalogue under one portal. The wills that were available > from DocumentsOnline were given new reference to make them searchable > under the new system and also not to conflict with any data that was > available in the catalogue." > > Cheers > Colin > > ------------------------------------------ > The DEVON-L mailing list is co-sponsored by GENUKI/Devon > ( http://genuki.cs.ncl.ac.uk/DEV/ ) > and > the Devon FHS (http://www.devonfhs.org.uk/ ) > List archive for Devon can be found at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/index/DEVON/ > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to DEVON-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 222 7923 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell