Another Mess

Years ago I divided my own genealogy information into two files, one for my maternal line and one for my paternal line. I can't remember why I did this. I must have thought it was a good idea at the time. Now I think it wasn't such a good idea.  This is my the family of my grandmother, Augusta (Anderson) Carlson.

I have some backups. I'm not certain which backup is the latest version. The data was in Personal Ancestral File (PAF).  On my old computer I don't have a copy of my maternal line available to PAF. As a matter of fact I can't remember how long ago it was when I last looked at this information with PAF.

Yesterday, I found three backup floppies with the latest backup dated, 24 Aug 1998. Using the old computer I created a folder to house the files that make up my maternal line and I loaded the backup file into PAF.  It worked. I recovered a copy of the information that I can access with PAF.

Unfortunately moving the information from PAF to RootsMagic isn't a simple matter.  There are  edits that need to be accomplished to get ready. From past experience, with larger files, I know that this task can take several days, if not weeks.

• I want to add the county abbreviation, "Co.," to county names.  
• I want to expand cemetery names to eliminate truncation. 
• And, most important of all I need to edit the textual information in the Note fields so word wrap will work in RootsMagic.

Dick Henthorn
16 October 2014