Exporting Ged or PAF friendly Files from Family Search/Family Tree for import into a stand alone pro

LegacyUser

Wendy Walz said: Help please!!! Years ago in had a geneologist assist me with uploading generations of my ancestors dating back to Mary Queen of Scotland.. however, it is on floppy disk, paf/GEDCOM files. Or however it is now. Newer computer/laptops do not have floppy disk drives. I purchased an external floppy drive for this purpose. Can anyone please guide me how to transfer data to a cd? Please....
Thanks,
Wendy
hugaladybugg@gmail.com

LegacyUser

Wendy Walz said: Wendy Walz less than a minute ago
Help please!!! Years ago in had a geneologist assist me with uploading generations of my ancestors dating back to Mary Queen of Scotland.. however, it is on floppy disk, paf/GEDCOM files. Or however it is now. Newer computer/laptops do not have floppy disk drives. I purchased an external floppy drive for this purpose. Can anyone please guide me how to transfer data to a cd? Please....
Thanks,
Wendy
hugaladybugg@gmail.com

LegacyUser

Phil Jeffrey said: If you have a CD that is writeable you can format it as a Data CD and then just cut and paste or drag and drop to the CD. Basically, it formats it to look like a folder. If it's in PAF format you will have to have PAF or you can use Ancetrail Quest to read the data and then export as a GEDCOM. I personally wouldn't use a CD. I use a flash drive as it's more portable and easier to use.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: In the Solutions Gallery, download the free version of Ancestral Quest from the AQ site (https://www.ancquest.com/index.htm), which is called Ancestral Quest Basics. The AQ program is written and supported by the same person who wrote the earlier versions of PAF. I don't know where the break came from him being the sole author and when the Church used its own team to add to the program. However, the author maintained a certain compatibility with PAF, regardless of its version and the later PAF versions are compatible with AQ.

Connect your external floppy drive via a USB port. If you have a newer computer, it may have a USB C port. That is an oval-shaped connector. There should also be a normal USB port (likely 3.0), so you'll use that and it should be active. It should recognize the external floppy drive as drive A or B.

I recommend the following, although it is possible for AQ to use the floppy drive directly.

Put the floppy disc in the drive and copy the contents to a temporary folder on your computer. If the data cannot be copied, then it is likely that the disc has become corrupted. Since these things are magnetic in nature, there isn't much you can do to recover the data.

Once copied to a temporary folder on your computer, look to see what the file extensions are. File names included for version 2 include INDIV2.dat, MARR2.dat, NAME2.dat, NOTES2.dat, REPTITL2.dat, etc. PAF software versions 3-5 used a single .PAF file to store data. A file extension with .ged is a GEDCOM file.

Incline Software, the owner of Ancestral Quest, has a very good FAQ on the subject of PAF files. It is toward the bottom of this page https://www.ancquest.com/faqs.htm#PAF... -- Be sure to read through all of the material. I have personally not tried to use AQ to convert version 2 files, but according to the information, it can be done.

Note that the difference between the free version of AQ and the paid version deals with advanced features. There is a comparison chart at https://www.ancquest.com/CompareAQVer... -- The chart is long (which will require you to use the scroll bar at the right side of the chart), and can include or hide a comparison with PAF. You can download a pdf file of either the Basics/Full comparison or the PAF/Basics/Full comparison.

If you cannot plug your external floppy drive into a newer computer, you may need to obtain a conversion cable that will convert the floppy drive's USB cable to a USB-C cable.

LegacyUser

Arm Meladius said: Hello,
Today, is it possible to export my data (familly tree) back into a GED file?

Regards
Arm

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Not directly.

3rd party tools such as Roots Magic or Ancestral Quest will let you sync portions of the FS family tree down to your PC where it can be exported by that same program into a GEDCOM format.

Note that GEDCOM is an old standard and is being deprecated, so those file types are having less and less value over time.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: The reason you cannot export your data back into a GEDCOM file is that FamilySearch FamilyTree is very large (now with over 1.2 Billion profiles. The largest segment, to which most of us are related has over 300,000 profiles (now, probably much larger) and so the first action needs to be to export just your ancestral lines. I really don't think than anyone wants that very large and interconnected family as a GEDCOM or consider the fact that it would take a lot of computing power and time to be able to build the GEDCOM file with its internal connections.

All three fully-certified programs, which includes Legacy as well as the two that Jeff mentions, give you the option of downloading your ancestors and their descendants. Even the free versions of the three programs have that option.

LegacyUser

Arm Meladius said: Thank you Jeff and Tom for your message.
I'll have a look on the free programs.
(For fun I still have PAF5 on my old machine)

LegacyUser

Jeff Wiseman said: Since your are already familiar with PAF5, have a look at this page at Ancquest.com:
https://www.ancquest.com/pafcomp.htm

Also, here is a comparison of the free and paid Ancestral quest tools. Note that If you click on the "Include PAF in Comparison" button, it will add all the PAF features in a column where you can compare it directly to the AQ and AQ Basics tools:
https://www.ancquest.com/CompareAQVer...

And here is the one feature that will pretty well eliminate most of your need to use GEDCOM files: