Probably the very first time I found something new and promising in an extracted record in the IGI, it came up on the screen with a batch number, but no source information. Very exciting to find a new "fact," but very frustrating to have no documentation, no way to find the film it came from. Sometimes you can work out what the source must have been by searching the Family History Library catalog on the location given in the record, but in areas where a lot of different records have been filmed, especially at different jurisdictional levels, it can be like finding a needle in a haystack.
A method I've found that almost always works is this:
When you've found the event in the IGI, and you're on the IGI Individual Record page, click download (and then download again on the next page you're given). For an example, I just used Mary Goodman's marriage to JMH Crank, 23 May 1886 in Michigan - there's a batch number (M017414), but no film number shown.
Download the .ged file, and open it in notepad or any text viewer. It may look like a bunch of gibberish to you, but bear with me here and have a look around. There may be goodies in there. Usually there's a line somewhere that'll look like:
"PAGE Film #: 2342479, Batch #: M017414"
If so, Presto! you've got your film number. Of course, check it in the FHL catalog to make sure it's really what you're looking for. If not, well, sometimes there's just no "Film #" in the downloaded file. But I'd estimate that more than 9 times out of 10 it has worked for me.Whenever I've told anybody about this, they've acted like it was somehow breaking the rules to go poking around inside a gedcom file. Really, it's not complicated, and you can't hurt anything - you don't have to understand all that stuff in the file, just look for the word "Film."
