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What the decoder does...? (by Bernard Huntingdon)

The 1901 Census Decoder is a stand alone program that, once installed, will connect (using your own internet connection) to the UK's Public Record Office 1901 census website and allow you to conduct the free searches normally used to find family members.

Once you have search results displayed pressing a single button on the decoder will transfer a copy of the search results to a database (you need to this repeat for each page of results). It will include all the data visible on screen and extract the PersonID (a unique individual code allocated when the individuals details were entered into the Census Database) and PageID (another code indicating the Census Image Page the individual appears on). Note the PageID is different for every session so cannot be relied upon to provide useful information when viewed during more than one session.

More searches can be conducted and similarly extracted, until you have all the data you need. This could be all instances of a surname nationally or within a county or multiple surnames in a town, district or county etc. The program (even when disconnected from the internet) allows you to view. sort and group the data collating the data into probable family groups.

Why would you want to do this? Well once you have the data sorted in this way you will be able to identify your families, and looking at the PageID know if the family Census Image is on one or two pages (i.e. a download cost of 75p or £1.50 against a £1 transcription of the household) and whether or not you need to examine the transcript for an individual or the household (50p each). Once the PersonID's are together they should be consecutive for any household, so gaps (i.e. missing individuals) become obvious. They may have a different surname due to marriage or a transcription error, or because they are a servant or lodger.

The data can also be saved in MSExcel, CSV, Gedcom and HTML file formats to be used in other programs; CSV file formats can be reloaded. Many users have found a lot of the information, once sorted, was all they needed rather than having to pay for downloading images. A recent one-name search produced data that would otherwise have needed image downloads costing an estimated £835.

The Decoder program is an essential tool for planning your downloading of images so you can be sure you will spend the full £5 voucher/minimum fee on the families you really want and not chasing "possibilities". It also provides a permanent record of all those you find, some of whom will become targets later on in your research!

The program has a user manual, internally accessed help file, and forum - but perhaps you should read the user manual to see the full range of possibilities.

NOTE: This software was developed to run under Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP & Vista using Internet Explorer 4.01SP1 or higher.

The author understands it will run on an Apple Mac using a windows emulator (see link above) but cannot guarantee operation nor when another browser other than Internet Explorer is used.