Extracting Notes From Personal Ancestral File (PAF)

Extracting Notes from Personal Ancestral File (PAF)
Written: 2 Mar 1996 (Revised 15 Apr 2010)
by
Richard E. Henthorn

Have you ever wished that you could extract the "notes" you saved in Personal Ancestral File (PAF) version 2.31 so you could use them somewhere else?

It is not hard to do. Here are the steps you need to follow to create a text (ASCII) file of extracted notes. The note or notes you extract are selected using the Record Identification Numbers (RIN). You can select one note, a series of contiguous RINs or separated RINs.

Starting From the Pedigree Search menu, enter:

....... W - to sWitch menu
....... P - to Print
....... 1 - to Select Printing Option
....... 2 - to Print to Disk
....... On the "Disk for Print File" line enter the path to the sub-directory where you want to save the extracted notes

....... On the "Name of Print File" line enter the name of the file that will contain the extracted notes, default is, PRINT.DAT. I suggest changing the file extension from .DAT to .TXT.

....... F1 to Continue
....... 3 - Range Print
....... 4 - Notes for Individuals
....... Enter the RINs you want to extract
....... For individuals enter the numbers separated by a blank or comma
....... 1 3 5 7 (or) 1,3,5,7
....... For ranges of individuals enter two numbers separated by a hyphen
....... 1-7
....... F1 to Continue
....... 1 - Print All Notes (or for selective note extraction)
....... 2 - Print Family Group Notes
....... 3 - Print Tagged Notes
....... 0 - Return to Previous Menu
....... 0 - Return to Pedigree Search
....... x - to exit PAF

After the note or notes have been extracted start your word processor or text editor and look at the file you have created. You may want to removed page numbers or do other editing on the file that PAF created.