USING EXCEL SPREADSHEETS TO SEARCH THE DATABASES

For those of you who have not had much experience working with spreadsheets, following are a few hints. The following is based on Excel, but most spreadsheet programs have the same features. You first may need to learn how to copy search results from your browser window to an Excel spreadsheet. If so, go to Instructions.

First, on a floppy disk make a backup copy of the initial compressed ("zipped") file that you received from LitvakSIG. Do the same for all subsequent installments that will follow. Immediately after you open and expand the compressed spreadsheet file, save the original expanded file in another location on your hard drive (use the "Save As…" command in the Edit menu) to keep as an archive file. Then use "Save As…" again to save a copy to use as your working file. Give the working file a name different from your archived file to avoid confusion. If you accidentally corrupt the working copy of the spreadsheet, you can always make another copy from the archived original. As you get additions to the data, you should first save your archive copies, then copy the new data to paste into your existing working copy.

Approaching your working spreadsheet file, don’t be intimidated by the thousands of entries. You need to break the file down into more manageable and meaningful worksheets. First, reduce the size of your worksheet to a more manageable, yet still legible, 75%. Click on the arrow of the "Zoom" box at the far right of your top taskbar and select 75%. This will allow you to see more of the information at one time.

Probably the next most useful initial procedure is to sort by town name. Click on Data (on the menu bar at the top of your Excel screen), then on Sort. In the Sort window that pops up, first click on the circle next to "Header row" in the lower left portion of the Sort window. Then go to the top selection box under "Sort by" and click on the small arrow to bring up the list of header titles. Click on "Town," and then click on the circle next to "Ascending" to sort from A to Z. Then click the "OK" button at the bottom.

At this point it may be helpful to make separate worksheets for each town of interest. To insert a worksheet, click on "Insert" (at the top of your screen), then click on "Worksheet." Repeat this procedure to add as many worksheets as you need. There is a method to add multiple sheets at one time but, if you are a novice with spreadsheets, just do the simple, one-at-a-time method. To label a worksheet, double-click on its label tab at the bottom (there will be default labels…Sheet1, etc.), then type in your own label (e.g., the shtetl name). If you want to re-order your worksheets, simply click on the label tab and drag it along the row of labels to the position you want. Now you should put a header row on each of your new worksheets. Go to the main worksheet (labeled "1858Revi") and click on row label "1" at the top left. This should highlight the entire row. Copy the row by either (a) clicking on the copy icon on the task bar or, (b) click on "Copy" in the Edit menu. This will result in a moving, dotted line appearing around the highlighted row. Now go to each of your new worksheets, click on the row label "1" in each, and then click on either (a) the paste icon on the task bar or, (b) click on "Paste" in the Edit menu. You do not need to return to the 1858Revi sheet between pasting the header rows onto each new worksheet.

Now transfer the appropriate data to each shtetl worksheet. Return to the main worksheet and scroll horizontally until you can see the "Town" column. Scroll vertically until you find the first entry for a given town of your interest, then click on the row number at the left and hold the right mouse button down. Drag down the row numbers until you get to the last entry for that town. This should highlight all the entries for that town. Next click on "Copy" (from the task bar or Edit menu). Go to the worksheet labeled for that town, and click on the first open cell under the "Page#" heading. Then click on "Paste" (from the task bar or Edit menu). The width of the columns on the new worksheet will differ from the original. To resize the columns, move your mouse pointer to the row of lettered column labels at the top of the worksheet. As you slide the pointer along the letters, you will notice, as the pointer crosses the boundary between columns, it changes shape to become a cross with arrows at either end of the horizontal member. Click the right button and hold it down as you move the column boundary to the size you want. You now have a worksheet for all the entries for that town. As new installments of the data become available, you can easily add entries to a town worksheet by following a similar procedure.

Please, remember to SAVE YOUR FILE FREQUENTLY, especially after any sorting or data entering operations! You can never save your file too often…that way you’ll never be frustrated by computer lock-ups, power shortages, etc.

You are now ready to begin your search in earnest. Having done your original sort by town name, you may recall there were three successive sort boxes available. A good initial step is to sort by "Surname," then by "Given" name, then by "Father." Then you can look for specific individuals more easily. If you don’t find someone under a given surname, remember that names often changed and spellings could vary. If you know the father’s name for the individual you are trying to find, do another sort. For example, sort first by Father, then by Surname, then by Given name. If you aren’t finding an individual in the shtetl you thought he came from, go back to the 1858Revi worksheet and do your sorting on that sheet.

You may want to add a worksheet for each family grouping so you can add individuals as you find them. I found it helpful to have a "miscellaneous" worksheet where I could store listings of individuals who were possible relatives. I entered my own comments for each such individual beginning after the last column of the original data list.

Printing parts or all of a worksheet may help you, as you can see more of the information at one time and make notations on the paper. If you want to print only part of a worksheet, highlight that portion and select Print from the File menu. Then click on the circle next to "Selection" at the bottom left of the Print window. Next, click on "Preview" in the bottom left corner. You will probably find the landscape view more useful, so click on "Setup" at the top of the preview window and choose "Landscape." If you find that your selection is too wide to fit across a single sheet of paper, you have several options. One option is to use legal paper. In that case, don’t forget to select the "legal" paper size on the "Setup" screen. A second option is to resize the printed selection. Again on the "Setup" screen of your print preview, if your selection is no more than about 30 lines you can click on "Fit to:" and select one page wide by one page tall. For every increment of 30 lines or so, increase the "Fit to:" by an additional page tall. If fitting the selection into one page wide makes the font size too small, you may want to remove from the printout those columns that you may not need. For example, you may not need initially to look at "Page #" or "Guberniya" or "Record Publication." An easy way to do this is to "hide" columns on a worksheet. Go back to your worksheet view and click on the lettered column label for a column you do not wish to appear on the printout. This will highlight the entire column. If you want to hide more than one column, hold the "Ctrl" key down and click on the other columns. Then click on the "Format" menu, then on "Column" and then on "Hide." The selected columns will disappear from your worksheet view. (Don’t worry, they still exist, but they are just "hiding.") Now go back to the Print operations as before. When you want to see the hidden columns again, just go back to "Format" and "Column" and select "Unhide."

On a large piece of paper, pencil in a rough chart, or "tree," of each family grouping, including individuals whom you have identified as possibly related. Write the approximate birth year next to each individual, as grouping people by similar ages and generation levels can often give you helpful clues. A useful method of identifying married sisters is to sort by "Father" and then by "Age1850" or "Age1858." This will show you individuals of similar ages who may be siblings. Of course, if your families were similar to mine, siblings could be 27 years apart!

I hope my methods help some of you get started. I’m sure many of you will develop your own methods for analyzing the data, probably superior to mine. I hope everyone finds big bunches of relatives so we can pool our findings and look for common relatives.

Happy hunting!