Best way and place to upload gedcom files
I have an assortment of PAF files I've accumulated over the years; basically either sorted by locality or by earliest known Jackson ancestor. I would like to upload some of these files to FamilySearch and would like directions on how or where to begin.
Answers
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Chances are that most of the people in your GEDCOMS are already in FamilySEarch Family Tree - and uploading them would merely create duplicates. Keep in Mind FamilySearch Family Tree is a single massive database that we all share collaboratively.
However, that being said - you should try the Pedigree Resource Files option - which allows you to upload your files as disjoint stand alone databases that you retain control of.
https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Pedigree_Resource_File
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The single shared family tree at FS does not work anything at all like other sites like Ancestry. You do not have a private secured area where you build your own trees and can work unaffected by other work going on. There is a tremendous likelihood that most of the data in your PAF files is ALREADY in the FamilySearch FamilyTree! Also if your Great Great Grandfather's record is in the tree, there is only ONE copy in the entire FS database and EVERYONE on the system can read, write, and modify it as they see fit.
Using something like GECOM files to dump all that information into the FamilyTree will likely just produce lots of duplicates and possibly damage research data that has long been in place with studies and work by others for ages. Remember, there is only ONE tree here that you would be trying to merge your GEDCOM data into. And when it comes to GEDCOM files, it'll get the hackles up on a LOT of people because of how poorly they are handled in the system. There has been a LOT of damage done with GEDCOM files.
However, in your situation with the pre-existing PAF files, you are in a great position to take advantage of some much better mechanisms. I would suggest the following as being far superior:
Download the free Ancestral Quest basics application from Incline Software. When PAF was given to the church years ago, the original author changed the name to Ancestral Quest and continued development and refinement on it. AQ *IS* PAF and MORE. It can read and manipulate your PAF files Identical to the way PAF did.
https://www.ancquest.com/index.htm
AQ will allow you to go through each of those PAF files, and then link each record to the corresponding records already in the FS FamilyTree. This is fairly fast from AQ (and really clunky in FS's GEDCOM compare tool). Once all of the links are in place, you can do an instant comparison with records in your PAF files and the associated/linked to records in the FSFT to determine differences.
When you see a difference, you can look at not only the values in FS, but you can also see all the sources, notes, and discussions that exists for those individuals over the past many years. From that you can either update your PAF file record by downloading values from FS, or update the FS record by uploading from your PAF file record. If there are other relatives that have been recorded in FS that you do not have in your PAF files, you can download them from FS. The reverse is possible too. If FS is missing a person in a particular family, you can upload that person from your PAF files.
There are many advantages to using AQ with FSFT, not the least of which after you have worked on a record or family for a while and get it to where you like it, you can back it up to AQ in seconds. If someone comes along in the FSFT and changes anything there (again, remember that any of your ancestor records in the FSFT are accessible by EVERYONE using the tree), you can see exactly what happened by using AQ's side by side comparison capability that is far easier than trying to figure it out using the cryptic change history logs that FS has.
And if you are really familiar with PAF, well AQ uses the same layouts it always has so it will be quite familiar to you. AQ is one of the only 3 PC based tools that are certified to work with the FS website. However AQ is the only one that can write natively to PAF files, and has an interface that still looks like PAF making the learning curve a lot shorter.
I am not associated with Incline Software other than I really like the application and it can solve a whole lot of issues that people using the shared FamilyTree run into on a regular basis.
Hope this helps!
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I wanted to one more note here. If you decide to try this out, even though you can natively manipulate PAF files from Ancestral Quest, it would probably be beneficial to you when you are first starting out, to not actually manipulate those PAF files that you have. Instead create a new AQ file and import your PAF file into it (it's a one step procedure--very simple). That way you haven't touched your original data files, and you can use several of the enhancements that AQ has over PAF (if it is not in an AQ file format you can't use some of the nice AQ features).
Explore and experiment all you want. Scramble the records if you want. All you need to do is throw the file away and then create a new AQ file and import the PAF files as you did initially. That way you can't damage or change any of the data accidentally in your old PAF files (they are now like a backup for your). Once you are comfortable with using the tool, you can just archive those old PAF files and then work entirely from the new AQ files. It is a terrific "No-risk" way to try out what you want to do.
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