90-60 Census Workbook User’s Manual

Introduction

The 90-60 Census Workbook (which I call the “90-60”) allows you to store, organize, and analyze U.S. federal decennial census data from 1790 to 1860. The censuses through 1840 only named the heads of white and independent free black households, with minor exceptions. The 1850 and 1860 censuses continued to omit the names of enslaved persons. Those of us who are serious about genealogy, history, and genohistory struggle to draw meaning from the nameless tallies. The 90-60 brings structure to the chaos these censuses otherwise present. It simplifies the process of identifying changes in households from decade to decade. It helps to eliminate households that don’t match the ancestral line you’re pursuing. It allows you to look at the data in multiple ways, seeking the tough answers. And it becomes your documentation for the hard-won victory of proving that a particular household belongs in your family tree, history, or genohistory.

I evaluated and began to learn Google Sheets and Javascript. I then spent much of 2022 perfecting the 90-60 Census Workbook—a substantial expansion of the EFCW. I love how it turned out. You can make as many copies of your legally purchased workbook as you like, for your own use. And you can let others collaborate with you on your workbooks.

Donna Cox Baker, Owner, Golden Channel Publishing

Getting Started

Before You Begin

What I Have Done for Your Security

I have chosen to use the Google Sheets platform for this product so that it is accessible to the widest possible audience at the lowest possible cost. Google is also a great collaborative environment for researchers who work in teams. You will need to have a Google account if you do not already. It is not necessary to have a Gmail address.

Google puts security measures in place and will ask you to authorize this workbook’s use in your environment. If you make a copy of it, you’ll need to authorize the copy, also.

I created this product to comply with Google’s most stringent controls on user risk. So when Google asks you to authorize your version of the workbook, it will only ask you for one level of permission, to “View and manage spreadsheets that this application has been installed in.” The 90-60 Google Apps Script (JavaScript) code does not attempt to access anything on your computer except the workbook that holds it. And I will have no access to your copy of this sheet unless you share it with me to solve a customer support problem. I have also left the code accessible for you to review if you are familiar with Javascript. If you alter the code, of course, you take responsibility for its operability. So proceed with caution if you look beneath the hood.

What You Should Do for Your Security

Ultimately, the security of your workbook depends most heavily on you. Make sure you are using a 90-60 you received from me or my store. Say “no” to pirated copies, for your own sake, as well as mine. Be careful who you share your 90-60s with and what permissions you give them to alter it. Unless you want another person to be able to change or even delete your work, only give them access to view the workbook—not to edit it.

One last thing: A workbook like this gives you a great deal of freedom to make of it what you desire. This gives you, by essential extension, the freedom to accidentally wipe out things that the programming code needs to function. The safest practice is to put data only where it is obvious you should. Do not eliminate, add, or use columns outside the clear boundaries. (Even the boundaries themselves sometimes hold essential formulas hidden in the gray or color fill.) You may add notes to any cell and can put substantial information in the Comments field. You also have two user-defined fields. Hopefully, these will serve most of your needs without desiring to add columns. If you see a useful need for other columns, please suggest them in the forum’s wish list.

Getting Help

The 90-60 Census Workbook has a customer support team of one: me. I’m not available 24/7, of course. I try to get back to customers as soon as I can, but it might not be immediate. There are multiple ways for you to help yourself, fortunately. I encourage you to seek help in any or all of the following ways, and in this order.

1. See if the quick-help notes embedded in the sheet header rows offer the answer you seek.
   
   The tiny black triangle in the top-right corner of a label indicates that quick help is available. Click or hold your cursor over that cell, and the help text will appear.
2. Seek answers on this web page.
3. Make sure you are on the latest version of the 90-60 Census Workbook and see if the problem persists.
4. If something that usually works has failed, clear your browser’s cache, close it, come back in, and try again. See When a Program Fails for more information.
5. Seek answers in the 90-60 Census Workbook discussion at Genohistory.com Forum, if your question might be shared by others. This resource will grow more robust as users add their expertise. I will check this forum regularly.
6. Submit a support request. You will be asked to provide information that corresponds to your customer information at purchase.

Release Notes

The current release is 22.2.01, as of June 13, 2023.

Known bugs and their workarounds will be posted on the Genohistory Forum. You may opt to get notifications when the bug topic is updated. Release notes will also appear there, along with instructions about how to obtain and implement a new release. I will email you a notice if significant releases or essential fixes are available, unless you have alerted my email system that you do not want communications.

Using Google Sheets

The Google Environment

In choosing to use a Google product for the 90-60, I was choosing an environment and long-term investment, not just spreadsheet software. Google’s suite of products includes assets like Google Docs, Gmail, Google Tasks, and many others. The products exist in the cloud—perpetually synced. If you choose, you can also sync them to your hard drive. The various tools can be integrated for great power and flexibility, for those who like to take software to its limits. On top of all those assets, most of us use Google’s products for free. Google gives you 15GB of data, and should you ever need more, it’s very reasonable.

Google Drive is the environment’s hub, holding all your Google-related assets. It is your file manager in the cloud. For anyone who is new to Google products, I encourage you to browse Google Drive for a few minutes and get comfortable with it. If you want to quickly get on top of it, you might benefit from a quick tutorial on YouTube, like this one: How to Use Google Drive —Tutorial for Beginners.

You can use many features of Google Sheets to enhance the usefulness of the 90-60. You may bold text, add highlights, and add notes to any cell, with explanations, source citations, or other information that expands on the census data. You can place links to other information you have on the web. The generic sorting and filtering available with Google Sheets will not work with the 90-60 data because of the 2-row record structure. Alternatives are available, fortunately, through the 90-60 menu. See Sorting Records and Filtering a Sheet’s Records for instructions.

Finding Your 90-60 Census Workbook

If you have spent most of your technological life on Microsoft Office products, you are used to selecting the place a new document is saved. Google, on the other hand, has already created an address for your workbook, the instant you open it. When you close out of it, it will not ask you to save it, because it’s been saving it every step of the way. When you sit back down at your computer, then, where do you look?

There are several ways to do this. You can choose to open the Google Sheets file environment at sheets.google.com. Your file will be at the top of the list of available files—likely the only file at present. You can bookmark the Sheets environment and come back every time. Or, you might want to bookmark the workbook, itself. It is a web page, after all. Or you can use Google Drive (drive.google.com). If you look at the Activity sidebar to the right, it will tell you all you’ve worked on recently. If you’re a Zotero user, as I am, you can put a link to the workbook in an appropriate place in your Zotero sources.

You can store the workbook in a folder on Google Drive. It continues to have an unchanged web address, but the file system allows you to get organized about finding things again. That’s especially valuable as you start to make multiple workbooks.

Locking in Cell Values

Google is saving data as you exit each cell. You do not have to manually save your workbook. However, if you put a value into a cell and do not physically exit the cell by tabbing, entering, or clicking in another cell, the value in the cell is not locked in. If you run a script from the menu or click a button before locking in that value, the script will not likely work as expected.

Following Links

Those who are new to Google Sheets will find that its method of presenting URL links is slightly different than most web interfaces. When you click on a link, it first presents a box beneath the link with the link again (left)—or a thumbnail image of the site being called (right). This is needed because the program does not know if you’re clicking to activate the cell that holds the link or to activate the link itself. Click on the second link to proceed to its destination.

If you’re seeing a thumbnail image, rather than just a link, you might find it annoying. Some thumbnails cover a good bit of screen real estate. You can turn the thumbnail preview feature off. It’s a rather roundabout method, but the setting can be turned off by opening a Google Doc. Click on Blank, choose Tools—Preferences, and deselect “Show Link Details.” You will need to close and reopen the workbook before the change takes effect.

A Word about Buttons

The Google programming environment has a glitch—hopefully temporary—in the handling of buttons. I have used buttons only where they are the most practical option. On occasion, you might find that a button is unresponsive. Or, even more rarely, it might run the wrong program. If you find this, refreshing the screen usually corrects it. On most computers, you can refresh by clicking the circular arrow to the left of your URL field at the top of your screen.

Caution and Informational Flags

The following cells within a sheet will light up with a color when certain conditions have been met:

• Column C turns blue if any data has been put into the Comments field. This is of use when the sheet is fully expanded, putting the Comment field out of view at the right end of the sheet.
• Column FU, to the right of the Totals, will turn red if this record is missing a formula or missing an ID number. To correct it, choose Utilities—Reformat Selection from the 90-60 Menu.
• Column FX, to the right of the ID field, will turn red until a record includes both a Head of Household and a Surname. The warning does not prevent you from operating; it is designed as a reminder that you might have to fill in your Filter & Sort Data at the right end of the row.
• Columns GL and GM will turn red and offer status information beside the heading rows as some processes run. This serves as a way to know if a process is still going, should it seem slow. If a process is halted midway for any reason, this flag will remain to alert you to where the process stalled. Running the process again will automatically remove the flag or you can manually delete the contents of these cells and the color flag will return to normal.

Deleting, Renaming, or Hiding a Sheet

You can delete, rename, or hide a 90-60 sheet using Google Sheet’s standard tools. Open the sheet, click on the arrow on its name tab at the bottom of the window, and choose your desired action. To apply the action to multiple sheets, either Ctrl-click each one or Shift-click a batch of consecutive ones, right-click on the name tab of one of them, and choose the action.

Rearranging Sheets

You can click and hold a sheet’s name tab at the bottom of the screen, drag it to its new location, and drop it. Or, you can click on the arrow on the name tab and choose to move right or left.

Restoring an Earlier Version

Google keeps track of earlier versions of your workbook. If you have accidentally damaged yours in a way that’s not easily reparable, you can go to File—Version History—See Version History. Find an earlier copy, before the damage was done. You can choose to either restore it in the current file or make a copy of the earlier one. You can then work on the copy and leave the damaged file intact. Or you can move the intact sheet over to replace a damaged one.

When a Program Fails

Occasionally, a program that has always worked malfunctions. Cached information might need to be deleted or fragmented memory refreshed. Clear your browser’s cached data by whatever means your browser uses. (See Chrome, Sarafi on Mac, Opera, or MSEdge instructions.) Close all open browser windows. Then, reopen your 90-60 Census Workbook and see if the problem has ceased. If your computer has been running many programs for a long time, you might also consider rebooting your computer to clear memory for greater efficiency.

Google Apps Script (Bound)

The programmed automation I have created to enhance your census capture and analysis uses a variation of Javascript called Google Apps Script. To ensure that you have full transparency about what is manipulating data in your workbook, I chose to make the 90-60 script “bound.” This means every 90-60 sheet has its own independent copy of the code. This cuts any tie you have to me in the functioning of your workbook. You don’t have to worry about your workbook calling code that sits on my server. If something happens to put me out of business, you’re still in business.

For most of you, you’ll rarely need to think about the coding behind your sheet. It is good, though, to keep in mind that you will need to apply any future software updates to every copy of the 90-60 workbook you maintain.

Google Limits

Cell limits

Google limits a workbook to ten million cells, whether those cells are empty or filled. The hidden sheets that help to run the 90-60 software take up about 2% of Google’s limit. Each 90-60 census sheet within a workbook is 195 cells wide and begins at 300 rows long—58,500 cells. You can add rows as needed. At the bottom of each sheet, you’ll find an “Add” button, suggesting 1,000 rows. Choose a smaller number of rows, unless you are adding a large number of records in the near future on this individual sheet. An individual cell can hold up to 50,000 characters, which will matter most in the Comments field. I have been able to store substantially more than 200,000 characters in an inserted note, though I don’t recommend packing that much in a cell. Consider instead putting a link in the note that takes you to a freestanding Google Docs file or a PDF.

Sheet Limits

A workbook can hold up to 200 sheets. Seventeen sheets are used by the system. You can monitor your sheet-level data usage on the Dashboard (9060DASH). In most cases, you’ll find that your sheet is getting sluggish well before you hit these limits. You are encouraged to break up your research into more than one 90-60 workbook if it is getting slow. You can make as many copies of the workbook as you like for your own use.

Application Time Limit

The speed at which your 90-60 will process data will be affected by your Wi-fi, your computer’s processing power and memory, Google’s limits and server load, and other considerations. To control the impact of billions of users worldwide, Google will not allow any script to run for longer than six minutes. You may find that one of the more resource-intensive programs (like sorting or filtering) is stopping midway with this message:

If the program does not offer an obvious way to restart itself, check the documentation on this site. There is usually a way to run the program on a selection, so you can simply select the rows not completed and start that process.

User Limit

While this is very unlikely to be a problem for most, you should know that Google will not allow more than 100 people to use the same workbook. If you are teaching a class with more than 100 people, for example, and allowing everyone in the class to share your sheet for practice, Google may shut the sheet down. Instead, contact me, and I’ll work out a way for your students to practice.

The 90-60 Environment

90-60 Welcome Screen (9060OPEN)

The first time a new copy of the 90-60 Census Workbook opens, the welcome screen appears. It offers links to my company’s (Golden Channel Publishing’s) terms & conditions, privacy statement, and this online manual. A first-time user of this copy of the 90-60 needs to do two things:

1. Click “Authorize” to force Google to authorize the workbook. (Otherwise, the Authorization screens will appear when the next button is clicked. If it does, you’ll have to click the second button again.) If the 90-60 is already authorized with Google, the button will do nothing.
2. Click “Get Started” and click “Yes” to agree to honor the 90-60’s copyright protections.

The Welcome sheet is hidden when you answer “Yes” and should not appear again unless you manually open it.

90-60 Dashboard

Once you agree to the terms, the 90-60 Dashboard will appear and will always appear when you open the workbook.. You can return to this sheet whenever desired by choosing Show Dashboard from the 90-60 Census menu (or using the 3Key–0 shortcut). This sheet has three primary functions—selecting a sheet to view, viewing your system statistics, and setting up your user-defined fields.

90-60 Sheet Selection

This section offers a drop-down list of all of your census sheets in the current workbook, including any that have been hidden. It also sorts them in alphabetical order, which will be useful if you begin to have more than a few sheets. Google is case-sensitive, so lower-case sheet names will sort behind those that are title- or upper-cased. Click the tiny arrow on the sheet field, choose your sheet, and click Open.

If you prefer, you can click on your desired sheet (if it is not hidden) from the tabs at the bottom of the sheet. You may drag these into whatever order you wish.

If you change the names of sheets during a session or change their hidden/active status, the Dashboard menu will not immediately reflect your change. Click the “Refresh” button on the Dashboard panel to force the drop-down sheet list to recreate itself. Or, it will refresh itself the next time you open the workbook.

When you first authorize the workbook, an empty census sheet called “Census Sheet” will be your only sheet. You can begin to work on it and, if desired, change its name.

90-60 Census Workbook Statistics

The statistics display allows you to get a quick view of how you’re using the Google Sheets space and how your work is progressing. Since your workbook is stored on Google’s server, it will frequently be synced there, hitting its resources. Because of that drain by billions of users worldwide, Google has certain limits about how large a Google Sheet can be. For details, see Google Limits.

User Settings — User-defined Fields

The 90-60 offers two user-defined fields to hold concise data specific to your own purposes if you need them. Choose your field labels here and specify whether the field will be text (default) or numeric. In most cases, the text type will work. Only if you need to sort or filter the fields as numbers should you select the numeric type. Let’s say you put the numbers 342, 4, 14, and 2 in your user-defined field in four different records. If you have designated the field as a text field, the 90-60 will sort them alphabetically as 14, 2, 342, 4. As numbers, they’ll be sorted 2, 4, 14, 342.

You can get quite creative about how to use these fields. They are not, however, ideal for keeping lengthy data. You can put numbers, in order to sort things in an order not covered by the other options in the Sort & Filter fields. You might use one field to put X marks in if you want to filter a group of records for some purpose or to filter them temporarily out of view. You might have some sort of coding you use in your genealogy that would work here. Or you might want to put links to further information about the person. You could have the word Link in the cell, but link it to a URL address that goes to the person’s Ancestry profile. Or you could link to a Google Doc that describes your logic in identifying who the unnamed people are in a record.

90-60 Census Workbook Layout

Hundreds of records can be put in any sheet, organized in whatever way is useful to you. Each census sheet has multiple sections in which to organize the census information. Access to this manual is available from the help link on each 90-60 sheet, which appears as a big white H on a blue background. Detailed instructions for entering census data can be found at Adding a Census Record.

The sheets can be collapsed to hide the census detail, showing only four totals of household inhabitants: White, Freed, Enslaved, and Total. The sheet sections can be collapsed or expanded through the 90-60 menu or using the little plus/minus icons displayed above the column letters.

The heading rows and the first two columns stay frozen as you scroll through the data, making it easier to know what you are looking at in these voluminous sheets. If you accidentally overtype or delete a cell from the heading rows, you will receive a message that these cells cannot be changed. The cells will be restored to their original state.

You can add information about a particular census or family in the Comments field in column FV. Any record with Comments will display a purple line to the right of the Head of Household field. Or you can put information in a note in any cell. Right-click, choose Insert Note and type your notes. A cell that has a note will display a small triangle in the top-right corner.

You can access this help documentation from any census sheet. You should see a large white H on a blue background at the top of column FW. (Think of it as your Hospital directional sign.) It links to the table of contents in this page. Most of what you need to know about the census sections of the sheet will be discussed in Adding a Census Record.

Printing Sheets

A single sheet of 195 columns is not geared to effective printing—not in full on paper. But you have a couple of options, using Google Sheets’ standard print technology at File—Print.

The most desirable option, in most cases, would be to print to a PDF. You can choose a custom paper size, measuring 55 inches wide and a height that works with your number of records. This could be a good way to create a document that can be offered as evidence to back up an assertion about your ancestors. Viewers can zoom in and view the entire sheet.

If it is important to print your sheet to paper, you can print pieces. Collapse and/or hide pieces you do not want to print. You can shrink the view to the smallest possible percentage. You can use legal paper or larger if your printer can handle it. You might want to print a single section of a family’s changing census information between 1790 and 1860. Small pieces are workable. A full printing of your workbook could be hundreds of pages.

Notes can be printed. They are treated like footnotes and write a bracketed reference number into the cell they are attached to, as shown below. If it is a very narrow cell, it might not be readable. If you plan to print regularly, using notes, consider attaching the notes to larger fields, like the name field.

Running 90-60 Scripts

The items you choose from the 90-60 menu or the buttons you click will launch little programs called scripts. In most cases, the script will show a green window like the one below toward the top of your screen while it runs. Some scripts can be a bit slow, but this is the best evidence the program continues to run. In most cases, the scripts will end with a dialog window that tells you the program has run successfully.

Google will stop any program that has been running six minutes. If you see this notice, you will need to start a program again on the unfinished records or break the records into two sheets to run time-consuming processes. See Google Limits for more information.

90-60 Menu

The 90-60 Menu appears as the last menu item on Google Sheets’ menu bar. If you see the menu bar but do not see the 90-60 menu, refresh your screen or exit and come back in. If your window is not at full width, it’s possible your Google ID bar might be covering the menu. You can get to an obscured menu in a roundabout way by using the keyboard shortcut Alt+H to display Google’s Help menu, then clicking the right arrow to move to the adjacent 90-60 Census menu.

If you don’t see the menu bar at all, it might be collapsed out of sight. Look for a small arrow at the right end of the toolbar. Click it and see if the menu appears.

9060 Online Instructions

This menu option comes to the Table of Contents of this page.

The 3Keys Shortcuts

The 90-60 menu offers keyboard shortcuts for a few of the most-used processes. On the menu, you’ll see the process description and, out to the right, a notation like this: 3Keys–0. You will hold down four keys at once. The “3Keys” portion refers to the Ctl, Alt, and Shift keys on a PC keyboard and the Cmd, Option, and Shift keys on a Mac keyboard. The fourth key is a numeral. Please note that the keys must all be above the main keyboard—not on a numeric keypad to the side. As a quick online reminder, the 3 keys are described at the top of the 90-60 menu. Typing the four keys simultaneously, once you’ve memorized them, allows you to bypass the menu.

Show Dashboard (3Keys–0)

This option opens the Dashboard (9060DASH) if you want to select a different census sheet. This will become most useful once you have more sheets than can be displayed in the tabs at the bottom of your window.

Manage Sheets (Submenu)

Add a Census Sheet

This option creates a fresh 90-60 census sheet, applying your selected name and moving it to the first position after the Dashboard.

Add a Blank Sheet

This option simply inserts a blank sheet to the right of the currently displayed sheet. While it might rarely be used, you might find an occasion that requires spreadsheet space for a purpose other than census data entry. This sheet will not appear in your Dashboard sheet list.

Show Only Dashboard

This option hides every sheet but the Dashboard (9060DASH). It is useful for clearing the glut of sheets that may sometimes overwhelm the desktop. The hidden sheets will appear on the Dashboard list to redisplay.

Show All Census Sheets

If some of your census sheets have been hidden, this will reveal them all.

Hide All Administrative (9060) Sheets

If a process gets stalled in the middle by an error or by reaching Google’s 6-minute limit, you might find that some of the administrative sheets—those beginning with 9060—have been left open. The next time you come into your workbook, they’ll be hidden. But if you want to hurry that process, you can choose this option.

Add Census Record (3Keys–1)

This option (or the use of its keystroke shortcut) will bring up a prompt window, asking what census year template you want to pull into your 90-60 sheet. Position your cursor in the row where you want to place the census record before you ask for the template. For detail, see Adding a Census Record.

Complete Sort & Filter Data (This Row–No Override) (3Keys–2)

This option should be used regularly in the creation of census records to complete the Sort & Filter Data section of the active record. It will fill the cells based on what you’ve entered in the first two columns. You may override its filled-in values, where useful. If you have filled in this data and then run this script, it will not override what you’ve entered. If, however, you use the version of this script that is designed to fill the values on a whole sheet or a selection of rows (Sort & Filter submenu), it will override anything it finds in this section. See Adding a Census Record, Filtering a Sheet’s Records, and Sorting Records for more information. If only a single name has been keyed into the Head of Household field, this utility will make it a given name in the Sort & Filter section. The absence of a Surname will keep a red alert glowing in Column FX as a reminder that a Surname hasn’t been identified. It will not prevent you from working.

Insert Subheading

This option automates the creation of and provides a consistent format for subheadings in a 90-60 census sheet. If you are in a cell on a blank line, the script assumes you want to place the subheading in the current line. If your cursor is in a census record, this script will insert a blank line above. It will ask you for your topic title and place it in the standard font and colors of the sheet. You may alter the subheading and format at any time. If you decide to run the Sort Sheet script on a sheet with subheadings, the subheadings and any blank lines will be eliminated. Consider sorting a copy.

Collapse Sections (3Keys–3)

This option collapses the three census categories—White, Freed, and Enslaved—into a single column of subtotals for each category. I recommend that the process of entering census data begin with the sections collapsed. You can enter the information in the first two columns, use 3Key–2 to fill in the Sort & Filter Data section, then expand the sections for detailed census data entry.

Expand Sections (3Keys–4)

This option expands the three census categories—White, Freed, and Enslaved—for full viewing or data entry. This opens 195 columns of data, which can be unwieldy. If you only need a single section, I recommend you use the plus and minus icons that appear above the column letters at the top of the sheet.

Hide Selected Rows (3Keys–5)

This script will hide any rows you have selected. This can be helpful for putting out of sight the census records you have deemed inapplicable to your current research. By hiding, rather than deleting, them, you keep a record that you have already researched and eliminated a particular record. You might later discover that the person you hid belongs in the family tree after all. You can easily unhide them by clicking on the arrows in the left margin.

Sort & Filter (Submenu)

Complete Sort & Filter Data (Selection–Overrides)

This option will complete the Sort & Filter section of a selected group of records or entire sheet if no specific records are chosen. It will fill the cells based on what it finds in the first two columns of each record. Its primary use will be in filling sheets that have been imported from older EFCW spreadsheets. You may override its filled-in values, where useful. If you run this after data has already been entered in the Sort & Filter Data section, it will override the values. See Adding a Census Record, Filtering a Sheet’s Records, and Sorting Records for more information. If only a single name has been keyed into the Head of Household field, this utility will make it a given name in the Sort & Filter section. The absence of a Surname will keep a red alert glowing in Column FX as a reminder that a Surname hasn’t been identified. It will not prevent you from working.

Sort Sheet

This option opens the Sort Sheet panel for you to choose your sort options. It will sort the entire sheet. You cannot sort records from multiple sheets. For detailed information, see Sorting Records.

Restart Sort

Using the record numbers that remain in the top-right corner after a stalled sort process, this script picks up where the Sort Sheet script left off.

Filter Sheet

A filter is useful to temporarily remove certain records from sight in the current sheet. If you prefer to hide them more permanently, choose the Hide Selected Rows option. This filter script calls the Filter Sheet panel to get your chosen filter criteria. See more at Filtering a Sheet’s Records.

Remove Filter

A filtered set of records is a temporary state. A red “Filtered” flag will remain visible in the top-right corner of the filtered sheet, as a reminder that you are in this state. When you are ready to show the records again, run this script.

Utilities (Submenu)

The 90-60 Census Workbook offers a handful of utilities that will rarely be needed. When they are needed, however, they can be essential aids. You might be asked to run them when you encounter issues and seek support.

Restore Admin (9060ADMN)

A hidden administrative panel contains data that is critical to the operation of this tool. If it becomes lost or corrupted, many things will not work properly. Users are strongly discouraged from accessing this panel at all unless guided by someone who knows the programs well. But a copy of the original 9060ADMN can replace a damaged or missing one, using this Restore Admin utility.

Restore Filters (9060FILT)

If anything has rendered your Filter Sheet (9060FILT) panel damaged, or the filter function is not working properly, this utility will restore the panel to its original state.

Restore Sort (9060SORT)

If anything has rendered your Sort Sheet (9060SORT) panel damaged, or the sort function is not working properly, this utility will restore the panel to its original state and might correct the problem.

Restore Templates (9060TMPL)

If something has changed about the templates you’re pulling in for your census work, you can restore the Templates (9060TMPL) sheet to its original form with this option.

Restore Work File (9060WORK)

The work file is a utility space for the filter and sort scripts and serves as a placeholder to prevent errors in the census worksheets in between filtering and sorting. If 9060WORK becomes damaged or is missing, the restore process should replace it.

Clear All Workbook Data

This option deletes all data you’ve added, restores the 9060 sheets to their original format, brings your ID counter back to zero, clears the filter-and-sort criteria panels, recreates all backup copies for the restore processes, refreshes the sheets list, and prepares the workbook to require reauthorization of the sheet the next time it is opened.

Reformat Full Sheet

This option will reformat an entire sheet—including Early Federal Census Workbook (EFCW) data—to fit the 90-60 design and layout. If converting EFCW sheets, prepare your old data as described in Upgrading Early Federal Census Workbook (EFCW). This process makes numerous changes to every record, which means it will be a bit slow. If you are reformatting a long page of records, it might reach Google’s 6-minute time limit before completing. You may complete it by selecting the records that remain and running Utilities—Reformat Selection.

The reformatting script prepares your existing data, as best it can, for use with other utilities. It attempts to convert the name and location fields, both in column B to a proper format for parsing into the Sort & Fill Data fields. If you used parenthetical text in name or location fields on your existing data, the process will move the extra text to the Comment field.

Reformat Selection

This utility performs the same function as the Reformat Full Sheet code, except it works on selected text, rather than the whole page. This can be useful when formats or hidden formulas have been accidentally wiped out in a record. If your cursor is sitting in a single cell, it assumes you want that record only. Select a series of records to do a group.

Refresh All Headers

This option refreshes cells that offer an administrative function if they appear to have broken links. Primarily, this restores problems with the header rows in the census sheets. But it also can restore links in copyright on panels like the Dashboard and sort and filter criteria selection screens. If you see something like “#REF!” in a cell, this utility might correct it.

Freeze Headers & Lead Columns

Census sheets are designed to have the top five rows and the first two columns “frozen” in the view. As you scroll far to the right or down into your records, those columns should not disappear from view. If they do, run this utility. It should correct the problem for the current sheet.

Adding a Census Record

The 90-60 Census Workbook facilitates meaningful analysis of the rows of numbers that have made pre-1850 censuses very tough to use for descendants of white and free black families and pre-1870 for descendants of enslaved families. It adds detail to the lives of the unnamed majority of our ancestors. it helps us to find the names. It helps us to know what connections are liable to be worth our research to confirm.

The structure in this sheet illuminates the things that were implied in censuses, like birth year ranges. It stacks information about the unnamed family members that lets us see change over time and change in the constitution of the household. It gives us questions to ask that guide us to the records we need. We see a boy disappear in his teens. Did he go to war? Go to help his uncle on his farm? Get married and leave the household? Did he die? The questions create our research plan, in a way.

We’ll work through a census sheet and its elements to demonstrate what can be deduced and what may yet be found. You can enter census information in any order that’s useful for you. Maybe you want to watch the changing configuration of an ancestor’s household decade by decade. Maybe you’re unsure who your ancestor’s parents were, so you’re checking every household with a certain surname in a particular state that had a boy of a particular age in a certain year. The flexibility of your workbook is key to its value. It allows you to get creative in how you look at data.

Processing a Record

There are three steps to adding a census record to a 90-60 sheet:

1. You begin by clicking in the cell where you want a census template to be placed. Choose Add Census Record from the 90-60 Menu and type the census year you want to record. The correct template will be pasted where your cursor sits.
2. Fill in the ancestor’s name (as it appears in the census) and locality in columns A and B. See the field explanations below for details about data entry.
3. Choose Complete Sort & Filter Data (This Row—No Override) to parse out the census information for use in filtering, sorting, and reflecting more accurate and complete versions of names and locations than the census record might contain. Edit any obvious or clear errors in this section. Your goal is to have these records filtered and sorted most effectively for your use. If spelling errors or an earlier version of a locality will mess up the sorting, this clean-up of data can fix it.
4. Fill in the census information for all household inhabitants.

Key Fields

Census Year

The Add Census Record script puts your chosen census year in the first column, with a link to related educational information in the U.S. National Archives. This will help when the census headings are missing or unclear and will include the laws related to that year’s census gathering. The script repeats the decade in column GE, for its use in sorting and filtering. Also, for convenience, the Census Day for that specific decade has been included just below the year in column GE.

Page

It’s valuable to capture the page or image number that held this census record. You will often find a record somewhere the Ancestry or FamilySearch index never sent you. Putting the page or image number here will prevent you from having to search for it again.

You will also find very great value in knowing when two potentially related heads of household appear with the same or consecutive page number. I encourage you to go one step further and create a link from the page number to the URL where the data was stored. From then on, you can return to the original census with a few clicks. To create the link, double-click to select the page number, then right-click and choose Link. Paste in the URL address for the census.

Head of Household Name

Column B in the first row of a census record holds the ancestor’s name as it appears in the census (adding only the surname if it has been implied by ‘dittoing’ a name above). Inaccurate and incomplete names can be improved in the Sort & Filter section.

Location

The second row of the record, column B, should contain the location where the census taker found this ancestor. Use a comma to separate the elements. You can capture three pieces: the community or town, the county or parish, and the state. The information will be parsed in the Sort & Filter Data section, and state information will be reduced to its standard 2-character initial. (You might choose to enter it in that format yourself to reduce keystrokes.) Otherwise, enter the information as the census taker found it. If you want to capture the later name of a county or locality, you can override the data in the Sort & Filter Data section.

Comment Indicator

Any record that has comments entered in column FV will display a purple vertical line beside the name/location column (B), as shown in the example above. Even if the comments have scrolled out of view, you will know to look for them, when you see the purple line.

Sort & Filter Data Fields

The Sort & Filter Data breaks information down in ways that allow filter, sorting, and overcoming the problem with the wildly different variants of names in the censuses. The information is created automatically as you run the Complete Sort & Filter Data script from the 90-60 menu. This saves you keystrokes, and you can perfect the data if it’s inaccurate. Just be aware that if you later decide to run the Sort & Filter—Complete Sort & Filter Data (Selection–Overrides) script on a selection or on the whole page, you will change the data back.

ID

The ID field is populated by a counter that increments every time a new census record is created. This is not a unique identifier, exactly. As you begin to copy your data to new sheets for analysis, you’ll find yourself duplicating a person in various lists. This is useful for analysis. The ID can help you to know when you’re looking at two copies of the same person. It can also be useful in recalling the order you put people in, as they cease to be in that order.

Names

Use the Sort & Filter Data section for more formalized, complete, and corrected names. This version of the name will be used for sorting and filtering and will allow you to find the person by their real name vs. the misspelled version from the census. If you want to distinguish one person from another with the same name, it is best to use the Comment field. The Suffix field might be used, as well—just be aware that it might affect how names are sorted.

Locations

If you know more about the location data than the census taker did, you can enter the better or more usable data in the Sort & Filter fields. The census taker would not have known the county would be renamed the next year. You might know the name of the town or community that the census taker didn’t record. If adding detail makes it easier for you to figure out which people belong together, this is the place to capture that helpful information.

For efficiency and the best view of data, I recommend that states be entered with their 2-character initials and that the terms County, Parish, and District also be abbreviated as Co., Par., and Dist. or left out.

Census Details

The census detail sections have been designed to manage all of the variations made by the U.S. government—decade by decade—to capture data. First, it offers three sections to handle the separate numeration of white, free nonwhite, and enslaved persons. Each section has been headed by a different color, to make you aware when you might be entering information into the wrong section. Be aware that the government was not consistent from decade to decade in the order the free nonwhite and enslaved sections appeared. In the 90-60, they will always have the free nonwhite section ahead of the enslaved.

I encourage you to capture the census data of every member of your ancestor’s household, regardless of their kinship. The data provides a valuable picture of your ancestor’s life situation. The changes in data can raise important questions about births, deaths, marriages, and the buying and selling of enslaved persons.

With a few exceptions, the cells in the main census detail areas will match the cells in the applicable census. Look below at the special circumstances around 1820, 1850, and 1860.

When you enter a value in any census detail cell, it will turn yellow. As you begin to stack censuses behind each other, the yellow fields help you to determine if households from two different decades might be the same family.

Ages and Birth Years

The layout of the census templates has two levels of information for each tally of household inhabitants. Beneath the tally is the age range, which aligns with the census ranges. In the interest of space, these ranges show only the upper end—leaving the user to deduce the lower end of the range from the previous cell. The first cell below in the 1800 census of white males is <10 and the second is <16, rather than the handwritten categories of, respectively, “Under ten years of Age” and “Of ten & under Sixteen” from the original census. Given the constraints of spreadsheet design, I could not protect the age information beneath your tally from accidental deletion or replacement with text. If you accidentally destroy the age labels, copy and paste the labels from another record of the same decade and replace the damaged cells.

The year ranges above your census data give you something the censuses don’t offer—the probable range of years in which the ancestor was born. The birth years have been broken down to the smallest ranges needed to be usable in every census year. As decade stacks on decade for a given person, the areas of intersection start to narrow the range of birth years.

Take a look at the hypothetical John Mayberry. As you can see from the long yellow 1 in 1790, John could have been born any time before 1774, making him anywhere from 15 to 100 or more. It tells us little. In 1800 we have a narrower range, now 1751 to 1774. The next decade, 1810, layers in a way that narrows the possible birth to 1761 to 1774—encompassing the only two columns that appear yellow in all three decades. We’ve narrowed his birth year range from more than 85 years to 15. The 1820 decade makes no difference to the birth range.

The determination of the birth-year range is a gray area, of course, not only because of the problems with errors by the census taker or information provider but because the official Census Day was usually mid-year. If your ancestor was born near the cusp of the data range, they might actually belong in the neighboring range—depending upon the Census Day that decade. Because the federal government was not consistent in the age ranges it used from decade to decade, you will notice that the year ranges at the top of the 90-60 window are of varying lengths—sometimes with a single year displayed.

Special Handling for the 1790 Census

The 1790 was the only census to put the older males before the younger ones in the census columns. In order for your columns over time to align properly, the columns have been reversed in the 90-60. Prior to December 9, 2024, there was no note to explain this. A note was added December 9 for all future purchasers of the product.

Special Handling for the 1820 Census

The 1820 census had an oddity requiring special care. The legislature instructed census takers to create a column for white males ages 16 to 18, then include those same men in a column for white males ages 16 to 25. For our purposes here, you should do the math to separate the 16- to 18-year-olds from those ages 19 to 25. When you are doing the 1820 census, you will see a message in the blank space to the left of the census detail and green shading in the affected column, as a reminder. Hover your cursor over the message to see the comment about this.

Special Handling for 1850 and 1860 Censuses

For white and free nonwhite families, the names of women and children began to appear in the 1850 census. In order to make the 1850 and 1860 data for white and free nonwhite people useful in comparison to the earlier censuses, we have to manually take the detailed data and collapse it into the appropriate cells. While it might no longer seem necessary given the more robust census data available, it has a value. If the census describes a white son born in 1831 and one in 1834, you would enter “2” in the <20 cell in your 1850 census. You might want to insert a note that gives the names and actual years of birth for the two young men. This may help you to identify them in the 1840 census. It allows you to continue the mapping of the yellow cells, but this time with a name for each tally. It also reveals the continuing demographic changes to the family which is particularly useful in mapping changes to the enslaved populations of the family. If white girls of marriageable age have disappeared from the household in 1860, for example, it could be useful to see if the number of enslaved persons with the family has also been reduced. It can reveal the wedding gift of enslaved persons to a daughter.

For the 1850 and 1860 censuses, slave schedules recorded every enslaved person individually, rather than tallied in age categories. They are usually listed under the name of the slaveholder. While we rarely have names, we do have age, sex, often a note if a person was mulatto, and occasionally an occupational skill. To match the 1850 and 1860 enslaved populations to earlier decades, you will need to tally them yourself from the detail, much as you did with the white family.

Clearing and Moving Information

If you want to clear something you have typed in a cell, simply click on it and press your keyboard’s Delete button. This will clear the highlighting, along with the text. If you want to get rid of an entire census line, click on the gray number to the left of the Census Year, hold your Shift key, and click on the number below that to highlight both lines. Then right-click in the highlighted area, choosing “Delete.” You can also select the two-row sequence of a census and right-click to cut and paste or drag it elsewhere.

Filtering a Sheet’s Records

Google Sheets, like most popular spreadsheet programs, offers the capability of quickly and easily filtering simple datasets based on shared criteria. The 90-60 Census Workbook, however, is not a simple dataset. To optimize its value, each record requires two lines of data. This cannot be filtered with Google Sheets’ standard filter tool. I have created a script that can filter the data, though rather slowly. Google shuts down any script that has run for six minutes. If you have a great deal of data in a single sheet, you might have to break it into portions.

To filter a sheet, do the following:

1. Go to the sheet you want to filter.
2. Choose Sort & Filter—Filter Sheet from the 90-60 menu. The Filter Sheet criteria panel will appear.
3. If there are old criteria you don’t want to re-use, choose Clear All. Do not delete full columns or rows from the criteria table.
4. Choose your census criteria, filling multiple criteria in from the top down. The script assumes you want records that match every criterion you enter. It does not have the capacity to choose one criterion OR another. Make sure you physically exit the last cell you enter data into before running the program, or its value will not be saved.
5. Click “Filter Records” to start the filter process. A red filtered flag will remain on the top-right corner of the filtered batch, as a reminder that you have records filtered out of view. The Sort & Filter—Remove Filter script will remove the filter when you are ready to redisplay the records.

When the program is complete, it will present a message to say it is complete. When you close this message, you will find the sheet with the filtered records displayed.

Sorting Records

If you wish to rearrange just a few records, it is more practical to use Goggle’s drag-and-drop method, rather than running the Sort Records option from the 90-60 Menu.

The 90-60 Sort process will sort a sheet of records according to your chosen criteria. Any subheadings or blank lines within the selection will be deleted from the sorted output. I recommend you back up the sheet before beginning.

To sort the records:

1. Choose Sort & Filter—Sort Sheet from the 90-60 Menu. It will display the Sort Sheet panel for you to set your criteria.
2. Fill in your criteria, being sure to physically exit the last field you type in.
3. Click “Sort Records.”

The sort process is operating under Google’s time limit of 6 minutes per script. If you are attempting to sort more than 100 records, you might hit this limit. If you hit it, select Sort & Filter—Restart Sort from the 90-60 menu. Because the last record processed is still displayed on the screen, the program knows where to begin.

Upgrading Early Federal Census Worksheets (EFCW)

If you have used the Premium or Lite edition of the Early Federal Census Worksheet (EFCW) in its designed form without modification of its structure, your data can be pulled (a sheet at a time) into a new 90-60 census sheet. You can then use tools on the 90-60 menu to reformat your old sheet and add the Sort & Filter data at the far right of the sheet.

Any notes you have added to cells in your EFCW sheet can be pulled in successfully. However, if you have used formatting—altering data with font changes, or coloring of text or backgrounds—the formatting will be replaced with the new 90-60 standards.

The 90-60 will not work with the program called “Pre-1850 Census Analysis Tool” that I once offered free from my Golden Egg Genealogist website. It did not include the 1850 and 1860 censuses and had a different column structure.

The 90-60 program does what it can to interpret things you’ve put into your EFCW that are not standard. If you have put anything in parentheses in the Head of Household or Location cells, it moves the parenthetical text into the comment field. This puts the name and location in a more viable format to allow for meaningful sorting and filtering by name. It converts the full names of states to the 2-digit postal code. If the program cannot recognize your data as sortable fields, you might have to do some cleanup to your data after your import.

If the reformatting process encounters a row that does not appear to hold a census record, it will take one of two actions:

• If it finds values in the A or B cells, it assumes you have created some sort of subheading, and it will format the text that way.
• If it finds nothing in A, B, or FV (Comments) it assumes the row should be handled as a blank line.

Import and convert your EFCW sheets

1. In your 90-60 sheet, choose Manage Sheets—Add a Census Sheet from the 90-60 menu and give it a meaningful name that reflects the new information about to be pulled in.
2. Import a copy of your EFCW sheet, if it is not already in Google Sheets. Or, open it, if it is already a Google Sheet. To import,
   • Select File—Import.
   • Choose “Upload” from the tabs.
   • Find your EFCW sheet and drag it into the square or choose “Select a file from your device,” and click “Open.”
   • Select “Create new spreadsheet.” and click “Import data.”
   • When the words “File imported successfully” appear beneath the sheet title, click “Open now,” which appears as a text link just to the right of the “file imported successfully” message.
   • Select and copy all of the rows you want to move to 90-60. (Do not select the header rows.)
3. Back in 90-60, close the import dialog.
4. In your new 90-60 sheet, put your cursor in the top-left available cell (A6), and paste your EFCW records.
5. From the 90-60 menu, select Utilities—Reformat Full Sheet.
   This is a time-intensive utility. If you are converting a lot of records, Google will time out at 6 minutes. If that happens, select the rows that have not been processed and run Utilities—Reformat Selection.
6. Run Sort & Filter—Complete Sort & Filter Data (Selection–Overrides) from the 90-60 menu to fill in the new fields at the far-right end of the sheet.
   Once again, this will be time intensive. If Google times out, select the range that has not yet been processed and run the program again.
7. Look over your sheet to see if anything needs manual editing.
8. The workbook you imported should still be open. You can find it in the tabs along the top of the screen. If you have other EFCW sheets (tabs) within the imported workbook, you may repeat the process to move and convert the remaining data to your new 90-60. You may close the imported EFCW workbook when you’re sure you have what you need.

Sharing Your 90-60 with Others

Genealogy is collaborative, and I encourage you to share your work with others, so long as it’s done responsibly. It is a violation of copyright to give or sell this technology (or a derivative of it) to others. But Google Sheets offers you an excellent way to share your own sheet with others. You’ll see a green Share button in the top-right corner of your sheet—or you can share from Google Drive. If you are putting a link to your video as evidence to back up facts, only give Viewing permissions.

You may share your sheet using a person’s email address or copy a link that gives access to anyone who has it. You will need to identify the rights the other person(s) will have. If you give Editor rights, they can alter your sheet. If you give Viewer rights, they can only see your work, without changing it. As long as you are the Owner, you can withdraw the rights.

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