I DIDN'T KNOW PAF COULD DO ALL THAT!

©2009 by Donald R. Snow

• Welcome and Introduction to Class
• The ALT-S-F Trick
• Calendars and the Date Calculator
• Entering Special Symbols
• Exporting Data in csv Format (Comma Separated Variables Format)
• Narrative Books
• Multimedia in PAF - Photos, Sound Clips, Slideshows, and Scrapbooks
• Forming Webpages from PAF Databases
• Conclusion
• Assignment

• Instructors are Donald R. and Diane M. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu , dms34@juno.com ) of Provo and St. George, Utah.
• These notes with active Internet links are posted on the Utah Valley PAF Users Group website http://uvpafug.org under Class Outlines , Don's Listings , and are linked on the St. George Regional Family History Training Center webpage .  Many other class notes for family history are linked on the UVPAFUG website also.
• This class will discuss some of the lesser-known features of PAF (Personal Ancestral File) 5.2, the free genealogy management program from the LDS Church.
• Go to http://www.familysearch.org for free download of PAF 5.2.
• For basic information about PAF see our class notes at http://uvpafug.org under Class Outlines , Don's Listings.

• When connected to the Internet, highlight an individual in PAF and while holding down the ALT key, press S, then F, in that order
• Takes you to http://www.familysearch.org , enters the name, does the search for you, and shows you the results
• Can refine the search to narrow it down
• If you are LDS, you can log on with your FamilySearch user name and password to see the ordinance data -- may have to repeat ALT-S-F for the individual  

• PAF will print blank calendar pages in various formats for any month of any year from 100 to 2100 (to see these limits type in any year outside of this range)
• Go to the Reports and Charts print menu and click on the Calendars tab
• Can also print a birthday/anniversary calendar of any set of individuals in the database, e.g. your descendants for a family calendar
• Date calculator
  • Given any two dates, i.e. beginning (birth date), elapsed time (age), and ending (death date) - PAF will calculate the third date
  • Helpful for calculating things like birth date from death date and age on tombstone or exact age from birth and death dates
  • Accounts for leap years, changes in calendars, etc.
  • Can get to the Date Calculator on the Tools menu and also on the Options menu on Individual Edit screens

• Special symbols are things like the British pound sign £
• Symbols can be entered on Individual Edit screens using Options/Symbols and selecting any of the 35,000 unicode symbols (British pound symbol is on bottom row)
• Symbols can be entered in notes by using the Unicode number, e.g. 00A3 for £ , and then pressing ALT-X.
• Can find the Unicode numbers for symbols on websites such as http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFF00.pdf -- do a page search for "pound" to find 00A3 for £

EXPORTING DATA IN CSV FORMAT (COMMA SEPARATED VARIABLES FORMAT)

• PAF will export the data you select to go to a text file with fields separated by commas -- csv format
• Many other programs can use this csv format as imports, e.g. Excel spreadsheets, so you can see and sort the data in ways that you can't do in PAF
• Can export data for a group or the entire database this way
• To do the csv export go to the Reports and Charts print menu and click on the Custom Report tab, do the selection of columns, records, etc., and click on "Print to Comma Delimited File"
• Click on Preview first to be sure you are getting what you want

• PAF has the ability to write a book from your genealogical data, either ancestry or descendancy data  
  • Ancestors (ahnentafel)-- a form of "compressed" pedigree charts -- father's number is twice that of child, mother's is twice that of child plus one
  • Descendancy -- Modified Register format (from the New England Historic Genealogical Society Register)
• Go to the Reports and Charts print menu and click on the Books tab
• Select the options you want, e.g. Ancestry or Descendancy, starting person, how much of the sources and notes to include, whether to include RIN's and MRIN's, photos, LDS data, etc.
• Can edit the Event wording for narrative reports by Edit/Individual Event List, highlight an Event, and click Edit -- can change wording for each way it is used in the resulting narrative book
• Preview the result without printing or saving it, then go back and edit data, and do the Preview again to get it exactly the way you want it
• Gives a good way of examining your data and, particularly, your notes and sources to see what needs correcting
• You can use a freeware program like PDF995 to print the entire book to pdf

• PHOTOS
  • PAF can link photos to an individual -- you only see the default photo for the person in Primary Position on the main screen
  • Highlight the individual and click on camera symbol or Edit/Multimedia to get to Multimedia Collection screen for the person
  • Click on Add/Photo/Browse (by clicking on the "...") and select the file you want -- check Preview so you see a thumbnail copy of photo there
  • Click on Make Default, if you want this photo to be the default one for the person
    • Default photo has an * by it and is the one that shows on screen, on family group sheets, and on pedigree charts
    • If only one photo is attached to that person, it is the default photo automatically 
    • Change default photo by highlighting another photo and clicking Make Default
  • Click on Modify Photo to add caption and description -- these are seen in Scrapbook -- make the caption short or it won't show all of it
  • Click on Edit Photo to flip, crop, select for Slide Show and/or Scrapbook (see details for Slide Shows and Scrapbooks below)
    • Same photo can be used in several places with different croppings for different individuals
    • Cropping keeps same outside frame size, but expands a part of the picture so you can select one individual out of a group picture, for example
    • Easiest to crop by clicking on photo and dragging the rectangular box to size wanted, but can also do it by setting margin numbers
  • Photos can be included on some reports if you click Show Photos
    • Family Group Sheets, Pedigree Charts, and Scrapbooks all have options to include photos
    • Preview these on screen before printing to be sure they are the way you want
• SOUND CLIPS
  • Can make a sound clip to describe each photo
    • Requires a sound card and microphone -- mike plugs into a jack in the sound card, usually at back of the computer
  • PAF can run these narrations while changing slides to have a narrated Slide Show
  • For recording the sound clip you can use Windows Sound Recorder SNDREC32.exe -- is a program in all versions of Windows
    • SNDREC32.exe is usually in a Windows folder somewhere
    • There are better free and commercial programs, but this works and is already on your computer
    • For ease of use you can make an icon for it on your Desktop by right clicking Start/Programs/Accessories/Multimedia/Sound Recorder and dragging the shortcut to the Desktop
  • Reasonable audio settings are 11,025 Mhz mono-16 bit, so sound is clear, but file is not too large
  • Saves the file as a .wav file
  • When saving the file, include its length in the name, e.g. "Don's Study-7 secs.wav" -- this helps in setting up a Slideshow later
• SLIDESHOWS AND SCRAPBOOKS
  • Can only set up slideshows for individuals, not couples, nor families, so all photos and sound clips for that person must be linked in that individual's record; but can also link to the same photos and sound clips for other individuals
  • Go to individual's Multimedia Collection screen from Highlight Individual\Camera icon or from Edit Individual\Camera icon
  • Click on Add and put in the path and name of sound clip -- note length of sound clip from the name you gave it
  • Click on Add and put in corresponding photo immediately after sound clip
  • Click on Edit Photo/Include in Slide Show, and set length of time to show it from the length of the sound clip
    • Include photo in Scrapbook by clicking on Edit Photo/Include Photo in Scrapbook
  • Enter path and name of sound clip for that photo in Attached Sound (at bottom of screen)
  • Enter the photos in the order you want them to be shown in the Slide Show -- sound clip, photo, sound clip, photo, etc.
    • Can rearrange order of photos by moving both sound clip and photo, but keep sound clip just before photo it goes with
    • Be sure to Save results when you are done
  • Viewing the Slideshow -- go to Multimedia Collection screen and click on Slideshow to see the slides and hear the sound clips
    • Can go back and adjust the time a slide is shown if it doesn't quite match the sound clip time
  • Viewing the Scrapbook -- go to Multimedia Collection screen and click on Scrapbook
    • Shows all the photos you included for that person and scrapbook may contain other photos and sound clips that you didn't include in the Slide Show
    • Click on small speaker in upper right hand corner of photo to hear the sound clip for that picture
  • Print Scrapbook by Print/Scrapbook -- set options including numbers of rows and columns of pictures you want, box styles, borders, background, colors, what to include, etc. - Preview it on screen before printing
  • Can use a freeware program like PDF995 to print the scrapbook to a pdf

• PAF will generate web pages
  • Uses a browser, e.g. Firefox or Internet Explorer, and shows you data in new ways - doesn't need to be posted online
  • Tools on the browser work, e.g. the back arrow button to go back 
  • To generate a web page in PAF click on Tools/Create-Web-Page or just click on the World icon (3rd from the right end)
  • Opens the Create Web Page menu to allow you to select the options you want
    • Type of web page -- Ancestors, Descendants, or Selected Persons
    • To show everyone in database use All in Selected Persons
    • Most options are self-explanatory
    • Embedding vs Linking of Individual Notes means whether the notes will be displayed with the person (takes up space) or whether there will be a link to them (looks neater, but then you don't see the notes unless you click on the link)
• Looking at the webpage will show things you will want to change, e.g. formating of sources or notes -- very helpful view
• How to include active Internet links in PAF webpages
  • Can include active links in several places in PAF, e.g. sources, notes, and events
    • For sources and notes see details in my notes Internet Links in Web Pages Generated From a PAF Database on http://uvpafug.org under Class Outlines , Don's Listings -- requires using another program like Ancestral Quest or PAF Wiz on the PAF database -- AQ is free for Family History Centres by contacting the author at http://www.ancquest.com/
    • For events PAF itself will generate the active links
  • Examples of active links -- see our our online Early LDS database on http://earlylds.com which is generated with The Next Generation software from a PAF database -- examples are Jane Maria Shearer born 1819, Lyman Wight born 1796, and Eleanor Jane Davis born 1824 
  • To put an active link in an event do the following
    • In the Edit Individual screen click on Options/New Event-Attributes
    • Give it titles such as  Title: htmlInformation, Short Title: htmlInfo, Abbreviation: HI and check Use Description and uncheck the others
    • In the No Date or Place box type:  "For information about this person click here <a href= "%6">%6</a>." (without the quotes) -- this can be modified for male, female, or unknown gender later when you see how to do it < /b>
      • The %NN items below show what will be substituted for the number used, e.g. %6 means it will be replaced with the Description later
    • Click OK/Select and you will now see the Event htmlInformation listed in Other Events for the Individual
    • In the Description field for Event htmlInformation type in the URL you want, e.g. http://www.familysearch.org 
    • Now when PAF generates the webpage there will be a link in the individual's notes that says, "For information about this person click here http://www.familysearch.org " and this will be an active link, so clicking on it it takes you to that URL
  • The website URL can be replaced by a link to any html file stored on your computer, for example, a timeline saved as an html file from  http://www.ourtimelines.com  
    • Go to the ourtimelines.com website and generate the timeline for some individual in your PAF database
    • Save the html file of the timeline to your computer
      • Click on File/Save Page As/Web Page, HTML Only -- this is the wording from Mozilla Firefox and will be slightly different for other browsers 
      • Save it with a name like "DoeJohn-Timeline.html" in a folder called "html Files"
    • In PAF follow the same steps as above to enter an active link, but in the Description field, instead of the URL, type "../html Files/[name of html file]" (without the quotes) -- this tells PAF where to find the html file on your computer later
    • Use PAF to generate the webpage for your PAF database
    • Move the "html Files" folder so it is a subfolder in the same folder as the web folder generated by PAF for the webpage, since that's where the wording in the Description field tells it to look for it -- you can change that, if you know how 
    • Now, in the PAF-generated webpage, clicking on the link in the notes will show the stored html file, e.g. the timeline
    • With this method you can link into your PAF database any file that can be put into html format, e.g. text files, images, video clips, sound recordings, etc.

• PAF is a powerful genealogy program and most of us use only a small part of its features.
• Viewing your data in other formats helps in finding errors and cleaning it up the display of it. 
• Knowing what PAF can do gives you a vision for further work, analysis, and uses of your data.

1. Try the ALT-S-F trick on some name in your database.  You must be connected to the Internet for it to work
2. Do a narrative book, Ancestry or Descendancy, of everyone in your database to see what the format looks like.  You don't have to print it, just look at it on screen.
3. Make a webpage of everyone in your PAF database and see what the data looks like in this format.  You don't have to post it on the Internet, just generate it and look at it on your computer.