Help

Tips and Tricks

Links

All links on the site open in the same browser tab that you are currently using. This improves the accessibility of the site. If you want to follow a link to an external site (e.g. the GRO site or UKBMD), you might want to open it in a new tab or window. This will avoid the need to use the 'back' button to get back to where you were in the FreeBMD web site (see last tip).

Browsers offer different ways of achieving this, but for example in Windows you can right-click on the link and use the 'Open Link in New Tab' or 'Open Link in New Window' command.

Judicious use of the browser's Find command

Some of our web site pages contain a lot of information. For example, the lists of forenames and surnames of people who were born, married or died in a specified District can fill the entire screen. The Find command (shortcut Ctrl-F on most Windows browsers) gives you a quick way to establish how many occurrences there are of a particular name, and lets you move efficiently from each occurrence to the next one.

This technique can also be used on the main Search page, to find and select a particular Registration District. This removes the need for you to know which county the District is within (and is much quicker than scrolling through the whole list!).

Avoid the 'back' button

We always provide links that enable you to go back to the page you were on previously. For example, after you have run a search, you may want to revise your search or start a new one. There are 'Revise Search' and 'New Search' links which allow you to do this. It is a good idea always to use the links provided, rather than using the browser's 'back' button. Pressing 'back' can leave you in a situation where the site thinks it is still running your previous search. This would prevent you from doing anything else.