Wills and Probate 1858 - 1996
 

https://probatesearch.service.gov.uk...rch=True#wills

Could be addicitive.

Thanks for that, Elizabeth.

Something I noticed after I had done a few unsuccessful searches was that there are separate tabs at the top for 1996 - present and 1858-1996, but if you are on the wrong tab you will just get "no matches", not a message telling you that the year you entered is out of range.

There doesn't seem to be an advanced search facility for 1858-1996, just surname and year, although there is an advanced search for 1996 onwards. You will get back a page or set of pages from the National Probate Calendar which you have to browse through to see whether there is an entry for the person you are looking for. In the early years, note that there may be pages for Wills and separate pages for Administrations.

And if you are looking for someone who died in the year 1996, you need to use the "1996 to present" tab, not the 1858-1996 one, although you might think it was included in both. They should change the second one to 1858-1995.

I can't see why they have included "Folio Number" in the fields to fill in when ordering a will, since it isn't shown in the calendar?

If you don't find the entry you are looking for, try searching the National Probate Calendar on ancestry (up to 1966), because there do seem to be some omissions from the new index. It seems to be particularly confused by people who died before 1858 (yes, they can still be included if probate hadn't been granted before the new system was introduced.)

National Probate Calendar on ancestry

And I see it still says "any person in the UK" on the new website although it only includes England and Wales.

Something else I have found now - although the year that you enter is labelled "year of death", it actually searches for year of probate, so if you don't find the entry you are looking for, you should keep going through the next few years in case it took a while for probate / administration to be granted.

Much better than Ancestry's copy, because it has all the annotations, not just some of them.

Ooh, excellent!

How annoying that the year of death field is still compulsory, though.

Oh, I'm just looking at some of the later entries (1979), and the names of the executor/administrator aren't given. What a pity - it makes it much harder to identify people. Anyone know which years that applies to?

1968

Do you mean that executors/administrators' aren't named in the calendar from 1968 to date?