I have recently been looking at searches to see how they treat either UCF or accented letters. My conclusions are that in both cases these are ignored by a standard search. Is this correct? It is not mentioned in the Help page as such. I realise that by selecting 'Phonetic search surnames' it is possible to search for accented letters but some people may not realise this is necessary, particularly if the use of an accent has been discontinued in recent times. Am I correct in saying that accented characters are excluded to simplify search procedures; or is this a case of reverse TWYS? On a different subject related to the Help page; under Districts it states 'Select multiple entries by holding down the SHIFT key before clicking.' A more useful comment would be 'Select multiple entries by holding down the CTRL key and click on each District, or use the SHIFT key and click to select a range.' A similar comment is included for 'Counties'. ( I would think that normally the Ctrl key would be most useful) UCF characters When transcribing page numbers you often have to enter, for example, [38] . The search engine appears to ignore this. This would be particularly important when searching for a spouse if one partner is recorded with an unresolved page number. A potential partner would help track down a solution. Is it worthwhile including such entries in searches? Or do we have to wait until all uncertain entries have been resolved? Peter Beaven

----- Original Message ----- From: "P Beaven" <appleshaw@clara.net> To: <FREEBMD-DISCUSS-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 11:22 AM Subject: UCF & accents in searches > I have recently been looking at searches to see how they treat either > UCF or accented letters. My conclusions are that in both cases these are > ignored by a standard search. UCF are not currently handled by searches, but we will be working to resolve this in future. Accented characters *are* handled by the search engine You just search on the unaccented version of the character. Try a search for Francois CLAISE