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What PAF Pedigree And Gedcom Files Are On My System?

(Article 23)

If you have been doing genealogy for several years, or have had relatives share their genealogical research with you over the years, you may have several copies of old pedigrees on your computer. Knowing what you have and selecting the most current pedigree will help you avoid making updates to obsolete pedigree databases. In the following example, we will be working with 4 pedigrees and deciding which pedigrees to archive (long-term storage, probably never to be used), and which pedigrees to use for future updates.

Here is some simple evaluation you can do to know if there are files on your system that need attention.

Start PAF 5 and go to the Open window (File, Open). In the lower-right-hand corner is a Search-button. Click the Search-button to have PAF scan you hard-drive(s) to find any pedigree from PAF version 2, 3, 4 or 5. If you are not familiar with the files that are listed, you might consider getting some help to organize the genealogy files on your computer.

From the desktop do a Find (Search in Windows ME) operation to look for GEDCOM files (Start, Find, in Files and Folders type in the word GED, in the last field make sure you are searching the entire C-drive). If you see files with an extension of "ged" (Hawkins.ged), and you do not know what they represent, you may want to get some help to evaluate them.

PAF can be "trained" to open pedigree databases from a specific folder and save newly created pedigree databases to the same folder. From within PAF, click on Tools, Preferences, and the tap called Folders. If the fields have not been filled in, you may want to get some help to set up the environment for PAF to operate more efficiently. See Setting Up the PAF 4 Environment and/or Setting Up the PAF 5 Environment instructions.

For a printer friendly version of this document contact CGS by email and request this document by number and title. It will be returned to you by email as soon as possible.

23 What PAF Pedigree And Gedcom Files Are On My System?