Purpose
Why Do AQ Will Do?
Often, while teaching Ancestral Quest (AQ) at the Ogden FamilySearch Library, I thought of something I wished I could share with all my former students. I thought of writing a newsletter, but decided it would be more efficient to put those thoughts into a blog. The purpose of this blog is to show what… AQ Will Do.
I am in no way affiliated with Incline Software, other than as a fan and user of Ancestral Quest.
Ancestral Quest is a trademark of Incline Software.
Incline Software is in no way responsible for items posted on this blog.
This blog is the product of Dale McIntyre.
Yes, Mr. Obama, I built it!
Suggestions/Questions about AQ Will Do or Subjects discussed here? Leave a Comment.
Modified 2023-11-15
AQ Will Do 
Is there a search function in this blog? I was looking for something about color coding.
Joe, I’m sorry, but I don’t have a search function. I’ll email you.
Joe, I was wrong. There is a simple type of search available. Press the combined key sequence Control F and this presents a search box where you can type in text, and let the system search for that text.
I just noticed that part of what I typed was removed by the WordPress software, it originally had a less than sign, the letters CTRL and the greater than sign before the letter F, meaning Control F. I hope this is clear now.
I would like to get a count of how many people in my database died between ages 1 & 10, between 10 & 20, etc. Using the Advanced Filter function, I could do this if Age was a possible field, but it isn’t. Or if I could use a function such as Death Date minus Birth date is less than 10, and so on. But that’s not available either, as far as I can tell. Any thoughts on how to accomplish this? Thanks.
Karl
I have suggested that AQ could add functions in the Advanced Filter/Focus to compare dates within a record and places within a record and to create a TODAY value which could be used + or – days or years, but that is a labor-intensive proposition, and I’m not holding my breath. Perhaps if there were enough users who requested it, that would give such a project a higher priority. I don’t know. For now, extracting records into a comma separated value file, and importing that into a spreadsheet may be your best bet. I’m not a big user of spreadsheets, and I haven’t been successful in converting AQ dates into spreadsheet dates, so for me it is a visual task with little help from the computer. The best I have been able to do is to eliminate obviously inappropriate records and plow through what remains.
Thanks Dale. Can you tell me how to extract the records to a CSV? I’m not seeing that function in AQ.
Karl, that’s a good question. You should start by creating a Custom Report which defines the fields you want to extract and the sort order you want for those fields. Use the Advanced Filter/Focus to select which records you want. When you print the report, go to the bottom right-hand corner of the Reports and Charts screen, and select the Text File (.txt) radio button. This creates a .csv file. Note that it will create headers for each column, so if you don’t want them, be sure to blank out the field titles for each item selected for the report, or just remove that row from the report.
Thanks again Dale! You’re right about the dates, there’s no good way to sort them in Excel. But one of the fields for the custom report is “Age at death,” so it’s a good start for what I want to accomplish.
Karl, what I would really like to see is the ability to format the date as YYYYMMDD. That way it would be sortable in Excel.
I am having trouble trying to copy and paste text from a website like FindAGrave.com and other websites where I can locate a full obituary. I thought I used to be able to do this in AQ, but I always used the Windows version until they came out with a MAC version, for which I could give them a big hug:) I feel as though I’m getting dumber when it comes to doing things I used to do on my computers; if there are workarounds, I am not sure where to go to find them. Any help would be appreciated. I couldn’t even paste into my Notes app on my MAC.
Thank you
SM
Sherry, there are no problems using cut and paste in the Windows version. I don’t use the MAC version, so I can’t answer. I will contact you offline for some ideas.
I would like to enter a residence location and date that will be the same for many individuals. To avoid tedious re-entry I tried to use the ditto function, but it seems to be designed only for the more common, major fields. Is there another way I could more easily enter the same residence location on many records (over 100)?
John, that’s a good question. I am not aware of a function in AQ that will insert information directly into contact information for a block of records. What you could do is use the Advanced Filter/Focus to select and show only the records which will all have the same address. Start at the top of this list and enter the Street Address into the first record. Use the Windows Copy function to copy the address into the clip board, then save that AQ record. Continue down the list doing a Paste into the Street Address field of each record. Windows will copy the clipboard information into each Street Address field as you do the Paste. Unfortunately, if you have more than one field to be placed into each of these records, you will have to go through the list of records one field at a time. By that I mean that you might start by going through the entire list with the Street Address field, then go through the list again for the City field, then again for the State field, and finally go through the list again for the Zipcode field. I know that’s a lot of work, but at least it is easier than typing the information over and over, entering all fields into each record. Let me know how that works out for you.