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Old PAF5 Family Search program

Marlene Niland
Marlene Niland ✭
April 7, 2023 edited July 11, 2024 in Family Tree

I have my research on the old PAF 5 Family Search program and am not very computer literate. Is there an easy way to upload my information. If I do does it become part of a one large tree, or do I retain my individual tree to keep working on. thanks

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  • PAF program
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Best Answers

  • Wayland K Adams
    Wayland K Adams mod
    April 7, 2023 Answer ✓

    Hi Marlene - Welcome to FamilySearch Community and asking your question about our PAF-5 data. WOW, PAF-5. I still have my PAF-5 data as well, but I have also migrated it to other programs. But to your question relative to FamilySearch. You can create a GEDCOM file using your PAF-5 program. This can be loaded to FamilySearch in a couple of stages. First you would load it and it would become part of the pedigree resource file and remain intact as your tree. It is searchable by others however, it cannot be edited. The second stage is to compare it to FamilyTree and then load to FamilyTree where it becomes part of the one large public tree. Everyone has access to this tree. Loading to the public tree is often times not a great idea especially if you have a large tree and much of the information is already on the Family Tree.

    Another option and the one I used was to get a third party program that could open my PAF-5 file directly and interface with FamilySearch. There are several good programs that will do this. This allows you to continue working as you have with PAF-5 and also load information to Family Tree as needed. I think it is the best approach. Third party programs that interface with FamilySearch can be found on FamilySearch. See the link below. After clicking on the link, scroll down to the Family Tree Management section and there are several programs listed. Hope this helps. Please feel free to reply if you needed additional information.

    https://partners.familysearch.org/solutionsgallery/s/


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  • Graham Buckell
    Graham Buckell mod
    April 10, 2023 Answer ✓

    Adding to Wayland's comments, transferring your information into the tree via the Compare facility is almost certainly not a good idea. As Wayland says, chances are that many of your ancestors, except, perhaps, ones born in the last 100 years or so, will already be in the Tree. In theory Compare should pick these up but in practice it is not good at doing so thereby creating lots of duplicates that need to be sorted.

    Wayland suggests using a tree program that will open a PAF file directly. Many can do so. Of course you can also export a GEDCOM file from PAF and import it into another program. I think it safe to say that all tree programs have this facility.

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Answers

  • Marlene Niland
    Marlene Niland ✭
    April 11, 2023

    Thanks to both Wayland and Graham. I am going to give it a whirl and see how I go. I guess, after all these years of research, I worry about hitting the wrong bottom and losing it, but still want to make it available to others to save them the work. Cheers, marlene (In Australia)

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  • Graham Buckell
    Graham Buckell mod
    April 11, 2023

    If you are worried about losing your tree, creating a GEDCOM and uploading to FamilySearch as Wayland explained is a good idea. It is then preserved. Where I would hesitate is the second stage of transferring names into Family Tree.

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