1911 Census Hints & Tips.
When you do a search for a person, don't view the original image until you are quite sure that that is the person you are really looking for. No one likes to spend money on wrong information.
It is always advisable to do a further search with a variant of the surname. Transcribers can sometimes miss-spell a surname shown on the image. An 'N' can sometimes be transcribed as a 'W', 'H', 'M' and sometimes a 'Y'. When transcribing is done commercially, time is money, and the transcribers used for the work often rush through pages, even if it means not scrutinising the handwriting long enough. Unlike transcribers from family history society's who are used to the different types of handwriting, the commercial transcriber takes a stab in the dark.
While searching for my surname 'NOTHARD' on past census', I came across the following variants, all of which are persons on my family tree:- NOTHARD, NORTHARD, NATHARD, NETHARD, HOTHARD, HORRARD, LOTHARD, ROTHARD, NORTHEAD WOTHARD & YOTHERD. I have also come across one family who were using the wife's maiden name as the family's surname. I also have one family member who was born in 1860, he married in 1883 and then he dissapears until he died in 1943. He managed to keep his name out of all the census' after 1881. If someone did not want to be found, there was always a way of 'hiding' from the enumerator for the census day.
If you just want to see which people are living in the same house etc, find the head of the family first and then note which other persons are living in the same parish/town. I usually copy these names onto a spreadsheet, and then I can juggle them around using notes that I already have about the family. This gives you an approximate idea before spending you money first and finding that it isn't the family you wanted in the firsty place.
If you want to copy the lists given on the 1911 census site, open your spreadsheet program, say excel, highlight the census entries, and right click your mouse over the top of a highlighted entry and click 'copy'. Next move over to your spreadsheet and select a 'cell' and right click your right mouse button and select 'Paste Special....'. When the box opens select 'Unicode Text' and click OK. When you have copied all the entries you want across to your spreadsheet, highlight the cells that contain the data and then look on the top menu bar for 'Text to Columns'. This will now open up a box where you can select how you want to distibute the information across the columns. Choose 'Delimited, then click next. On the next screen tick the 'Space' box and it will show you in the box below what effect this will make. Click 'Next' and then click the 'Finish' button. All the entries should now have been moved into their own cells. You may have to manually move some of the cells around if some entries include a second christian name etc. When you have done this you can now juggle the rows around, such as sorting the 'Town' column alphabetically. This then shows which people are living in the same towns making it easier to group them into their respective families.