Which probably had rather less processing power, and certainly less memory, than a modern smartphone.....
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It's easier than ever before to check your entries from the 1881 Census - more details here
Copying your ancestors to a spreadsheet
- Thread starter peter
- Start date
That could depend on your version of Excel, I recently upgraded from Excel 2007 and that did not have this option. Copy, right click in the cell and it's the little clipboard with horizontal lines.
I use this feature of the Lost Cousins site - find it incredibly useful to be able to sort the data however I want, or filter, you can even run a Pivot table to see how many entries you have in each census. Hours of fun in fact!
Ah Lotus 123 that takes me back to the days before the Windows operating system, and having to close Word Perfect to use Lotus 123.
I use Microsoft 365.
If a total per census is all that's required, the statistics are on the My Summary page.
A
At home in NZ
Guest
Ah, we have solved the mystery because I am using Excel 2010. We know it is no longer supported but it still works perfectly and meets our needs.
canadianbeth
LostCousins Star
How would you suggest it be sorted? Alphabetically by surname, or another way? It is already sorted by census date but I would prefer to have it easier to find particular names or families. I made a new column listing the connection to my three maternal and one paternal branches but I do not know how to do the actual sorting. So far I have only got as far as 1911.
A
At home in NZ
Guest
Not so sure about that, I wouldn't want to run an insurance company on a smartphone.
It's only sorted by census and census references because you chose the Household sort on your My Ancestors page. The only sorts I would suggest are the four that are already provided, one of which is a sort by Name - but I know from experience that some people want to sort their entries in other ways, and transferring the data to a spreadsheet gives them that flexibility.
Bob Spiers
LostCousins Superstar
Yes it was, and as someone originally schooled in Lotus software it predated Excel by quite a few years. However when the Company considered changing to Microsoft's Excel (being newly promoted as the 'in-thing') I went on a week's couse to learn how to use same. Its format was remarkably similar to 123, and my first impressions were that it was a little inferior. Nevertheless Excel gradually grew on me and to be truthful Lotus 123 gradually faded from memory, and (I think) the market place,
Maybe you wouldn't, but when I worked for Commercial Union - one of the largest British general insurance companies - in 1979 I developed a system for the Accounts Department that ran on a Tandy TRS-80 with an 8-bit processor, 48k of RAM, and a 200k floppy disk system. It replaced a bureau-based system (ie a mainframe that was hired out) which had required information to be uploaded from a cassette tape using an acoustic coupler, and then processed overnight (at phenomenal expense).
Previously I had been involved in the design and implementation of a system for a retail company with over 100 shops - this system had 18 VDUs which were connected to a minicomputer (DEC PDP11 clone) with 128k of RAM and hard disks that looked like spin-dryers. It ran very slowly indeed when more than half the VDUs were being used.
Before that I developed a more basic system for the same retailer which ran on a programmable calculator with around 1k of memory.
My smartphone has 48000 times the RAM of the minicomputer. Mainframes had varying amounts of RAM, but the maximum for an IBM 360 seems to have been 8MB - my smartphone has hundreds of times more RAM.
So yes, with a modern smartphone you might well have had the world's most powerful computer 40 years ago.
Bob Spiers
LostCousins Superstar
That's a trip down memory lane Peter, and slightly more advanced than my own Sinclair Spectrum 48K memories, but great learning curves all the same. This makes your comparison with the power of modern smartphones all the more significant.
My first computer (RRP £699 in 1978) had 8k of memory; the 4k version wasn't available in the UK otherwise I would have been tempted - it was some time before I was able to fill the whole 8k.
(Apologies for the off-topic diversion down memory lane, but we oldies have to write these things down before we forget them.)
Bob Spiers
LostCousins Superstar
Too true, whoever you are.
canadianbeth
LostCousins Star
I had forgotten about that "household" at the top of the page (did check it out at one point). So, if I change it to "name" I can then copy/paste it to yet another spreadsheet, and do the same with "type"?
ETA: I checked and it worked. So I now have three spreadsheets to work with.
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Bryman
LostCousins Megastar
I am still dubious as to why anyone might want the data from their My Ancestors page in its current form to be held in a spreadsheet. Even more, why have 3 or more copies of the same data differing only in the order in which rows of data are presented? It is easy to sort the rows into a different order **, so why keep multiple copies? Even if this gets jumbled, it would be easy to recreate. Perhaps I am missing something and other members could enlighten me. I hate to miss out on good ideas.
** Just remember to select the whole worksheet before sorting any columns or the data will get jumbled.
For me, there would only be benefit if the ticks and exclamation marks could be included in the form of searchable characters, such as R for red tick, G for Grey tick, B for blue tick and E for exclamation mark. That way members with large numbers of entries could sort and find such rows much quicker, rather than perform a slow sequential search with the possibility of missing some.
canadianbeth
LostCousins Star
Unfortunately, I do not know how to sort the rows into a different order; I only know how to make a basic spreadsheet. I can total figures using autosum but that is about all. Everything else I have to edit manually. That is why I made three, although I may not ever use the second two. I have made a new column labelled connection and put the names of my four known branches beside each main entry, and the maiden names of the females, but that is all I have done so far.
A
At home in NZ
Guest
I gave my reasons in thread #11.
Hope this helps:
There are some instructions in this link for version 2010.
There are some instructions in this link for version 365.
canadianbeth
LostCousins Star
Thanks. I save the link for future reference. Some days I have difficulty concentrating and just reading that page made my eyes glaze over. 
I generally have to read things l ike this many times before I "get it". I have Office 365
I generally have to read things l ike this many times before I "get it". I have Office 365
There's only a manual way that I can see.
Copy out to excel, looks like you get 8 lines if everything is complete, otherwise some of the lines could be missing, but the 1st 4 lines seem to be consistent.
Label the lines, and you can filter on all the 1's. If you want all their data in the following columns, then make a copy of the data and paste on sheet 2, Then filter on all the 2's on sheet 1, copy, goto sheet 2, filter on all the 1's and then paste in the col to right, next filter on 3 on sheet 1, paste next col on sheet 2. Not nice and not pretty but it does work.
Should end up with something like this:
Copy out to excel, looks like you get 8 lines if everything is complete, otherwise some of the lines could be missing, but the 1st 4 lines seem to be consistent.
Label the lines, and you can filter on all the 1's. If you want all their data in the following columns, then make a copy of the data and paste on sheet 2, Then filter on all the 2's on sheet 1, copy, goto sheet 2, filter on all the 1's and then paste in the col to right, next filter on 3 on sheet 1, paste next col on sheet 2. Not nice and not pretty but it does work.
Should end up with something like this: