"Lives of the First World War" - Helpful Hints

I keep finding clever ways out of problems on Lives of the First World War, and the forum isn't very well organised for sharing them.  So here they are, and I'll keep adding them when I find more. Click on the screen shots to see them in a larger size.

For my most recent post on how to start adding information to Lives of the First World War (January 2015) please click here.

Searching for men

• The information we can currently search is from the Medal Cards, only men who served overseas had these, so your man might be missing if he served only at home, often the case for an older man.
• You can now use wildcards in searches: Searching for “Re?d” would give results for “Reed”, “Read”, “Reid". Searching for “T*y” would give results for “Tommy”, “Tammy”, “Timmy”, “Toby”.
• If your man has two first names try putting in just one with his surname, as often the middle one is just an initial.  eg Alonzo Wilson Swallow would be shown as Alonzo W Swallow (or was until I updated it!)
• If you have his service number try that ... you can then filter the results down by surname (or look for obvious transcription errors - eg Lewis for Lewin)

Adding a Profile picture

•  The silhouette at the top of the Life Story page doesn't have to be a picture of your soldier, it can be any image.  I've used gravestones, regimental cap badges, newspaper cuttings, memorial cards - anything you've got, where you've got copyright to the image, can be used for the profile picture.
• Click on the option for "Upload an Image" in the Add to Life Story box.
• Click in the blue box and navigate to your image of choice, upload it.
• Be very, very careful when you complete the "Image Caption" and "Describe this photo" boxes - currently there is NO WAY to edit this text after you have uploaded the image.  If you find you've made a spelling mistake the only way to fix it is to delete the image and start again.
• Click "Connect to *name of your soldier*", it will say "Uploading" and then you'll get the standard Thank You message.
• Now scroll down to the bottom of the page - there's the image.  
• Click on it and then click on "Set as Profile Picture" - the box vanishes and nothing else seems to happen.  Look up to to the top right, click on the X.  This doesn't work on my Samsung tablet (Tab2, 7.0) I have to click my return hard key at the bottom of my tablet to get out of the screen - but I guess that's a bug and they will fix it eventually.
• Now if you scroll back up to the top, you'll see the image has replaced the silhouette.  Hooray! 
• If you don't like the image as the profile picture, upload another image.  Follow the same procedure, and when you scroll down and click on the new picture it will ask you if you would like to set the new image as the profile picture - click as before and it will change the image at the top of the screen.  
• You can delete images by clicking "Remove Evidence" next to the image caption in the Add to Life Story box.

Screen Freeze

• If the screen freezes up when you are in the middle of adding facts from evidence, you can't scroll down to the "Save these Facts" button.
• Simply change the magnification of your screen to 75 or 50%, you will be able to see the button and can click it to escape from the fact addition screen.

I want to add some information about my soldier without paying

• When you go to the fact on the grid section of the soldier's Life Story and click on the pencil icon and choose "Improve from Evidence" it seems to do nothing useful, a pop up box appears that tells you to Connect Evidence and Use Evidence.  When you click on Got It, you are back on the same screen.  Hmmm!
• Instead think about how you know his name - have you got a certificate with his full name on, or a photo with his name written on the back?
• Have a look at this blog post where I explain how to add information from a marriage absolutely for free.

I've added some evidence and now I want to change something that's already there

• I added an image of a memorial card for George Morley and used that to change his name which was listed by IWM as George A Morley instead of the full correct George Alfred Morley.
• I clicked on blue link which named the memorial card "evidence" and then clicked "Add Facts from this Evidence"
• I clicked on the option for All Names on the left.
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• Click on the pencil and "Improve", make your changes and then scroll down to the Continue button and then click "Save these Facts".

I want to delete a fact

• But you don't want to delete the evidence and all the hard work you've put in adding facts.
• Go to the fact on the grid section of the soldier's Life Story, click on the pencil icon and choose "View Change History", be patient, it takes ages to load.
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•  I changed George Morley's name from George A to George Alfred.  If I click on that X at the end of the row showing my information it asks if I want to remove my amendment.
• Click "Remove my Amendment" and then the Close button. 
• If I had added all the amendments for the fact I would be able to click all the Xs and thus remove the entire fact.  It still lurks there somewhere, but you can't see it anymore!  
• I managed to remove a surplus wife, accidentally added to one of my great-uncles this way.

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