Filter your ancestry.com hints by database ID

**4/18/16 Update - The URL to filter hints has changed - see updated link below in blue!

Do you have an excessively big ancestry.com tree? Do you have enough hints to keep you busy for the rest of your life, and possibly your descendant's lives? Curious to see if you've missed any of those key older census records, or maybe you are just looking to search for birth/marriage/death records among the thousands you have? Here's the answer:

Each record database in the ancestry card catalogue has an identification number. Once you know that number, you can plug it into the following link: 

http://hints.ancestry.com/tree/yourtreenumber/hints?hf=record&hdbid=databaseID

You can find your tree number by clicking on "All Hints":

Your family tree number is the number that shows up in your browser (circled in black):

To find the record database ID number, go to the card catalogue:

Roll your mouse over the record database your are looking for - in this example, the 1860 census record - then, without moving your mouse, look at the bottom of your browser window:

7667 would be your record database identification number.

You can do this with every single record database in the catalogue:

Since it's not easy to remember the links - I recommend using bookmarks - one for just the standard record database link (without the record number) -

http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/yourtreenumber/hints?hf=record&hdbid=

Then another bookmark folder for all the census (or type of record database search you are interested in):

This can also be a good way to clear out the hints that fill up your "All Hints" list that you aren't as interested in.

Happy genealogy hunting!