Irritating Problem with Surname Searches

[cjm]

I'm having an issue with Friend Finder searches on FamilyTree. My issue: when you type in a name in the surname search, it will come up with matches. That's fine...now...if you're typing in a short surname, it will provide a set of matches where the surname you were looking for will substitute for the ACTUAL surname in the person's tree when you check under the "ancestral surnames" category.

For example, I want to find the last name "Jon." I type it in the search and it provides me a set of matches. When I check the "Ancestral Surnames" category, some of those people will have "Jon" under their list of names. But when I look under their family tree, there is no Jon, but there is "Jones." And when I go back and search for the match independently of searching for "Jon", the place where it was Jon is now Jones.

It's really a problem. I just want to type in a surname and get that EXACT surname in my results, nothing more, nothing less, nothing altered.

[MoberlyDrake]

I've run into that aggravating problem too!

[Tenn4ever]

I've disliked this for some time. Recently, I've thought about making a suggestion to Family Tree to program the software where a filter could be placed in the search section to only search for the exact name.

For instance I search for the name Good often and I'll get over hundreds of matches with everything from the actual surname Good to names like Goodlow, Goodnight, Goody, Goodrich....you get the picture. It's annoying.

As far as the name being listed in the person's surname list but not on the tree, that's common. A person may list a surname in their list even though it's not a part of the tree because they want to have hits with that surname in order to research the family. For instance I have a name listed, Lee, on my list because we think that is a gggg grandfather's name (due to an NPE) so I want matches to come up which have that name. However, my tree does not have that name.

Also, a person can make a list of surnames but not have a family tree.

[gwbarr]

Yes, I completely agree that this is a serious problem with the search. I have the surname Camp I need to search for but also have a lot of Campbell's in my matches. This makes it impossible to find the Camps. A simple checkbox that says "Exact match" or give us the option to put double quotes around the name to force the search to do an exact match.

[Bre]

I agree, a checkbox for "Exact Match" in the surname search would be very helpful.

[Jim Barrett]

Try searching for the surname West and see what you get. I have never understood why the surname search and location search uses the same field.

I agree they need to add an 'Exact' box, but they also need to have name and location in different fields.

[Jim Barrett]

I assume everyone knows this isn't the place to send change request to FTDNA. Use the 'Customer Support' link at the top of this page.