"So You Want to Take Your Genealogy Information and Make
a Book For Your Family..." by Robert Ragan (Part THREE)

You can leave the PAF program running. Just "minimize" it by clicking on the icon that look like a minus symbol (-) on the very top right hand side of your screen (while you are on the PAF program). You should be able to see your desktop.

Open your Web browser and go again to the FamilySearch Web site. See- www.familysearch.org

Do a search as shown in my previous example. Use whatever surname and place name that you want. Just look for a "Family" link to click on. Find one where there are parents and children listed.

Look for the "Download GEDCOM" or the plain "Download" link and click on it.

When you do this you are downloading a GEDCOM file of that information. You can name it what you want and save it wherever you want on your computer. I suggest saving it in your "My Documents" folder.

In my example above, I created a GEDCOM file named "RAGAN-1."

Go back to the PAF program (still running - just click on the PAF button on the bottom of your screen).

Click on the word "File" at the top of the screen and choose the "Import" option.

You will now import or "put" the information from the GEDCOM file into your PAF software.

Click on the GEDCOM file you created. Again, mine in the example is RAGAN-1.

Now click on the "Import" button.

You should see the parents and children all listed in your PAF program. You didn't have to type in any of them.

Our objective was to create a genealogy book or booklet.

Click on "File" on the top of your screen and choose the "Print Reports" option.

Ta-Da! The "Reports and Charts" window opens. Here is where the magic happens.

There are lots or reports and options to choose from here. I will not go into them all in this lesson. Just this one:

Click on the tab named "Books."

You can print your data in book format, but you can also preview it first. Click on the "Preview" button.

This shows you what it will look like when it prints.

It is okay, but I am kind of picky about how I want a document to look and the fonts I use, etc. Here's the solution to this problem:

From the Reports and Charts window, look at the bottom right of the window (above the graphic of the purple book). See where it says "Print to File"?

Click the "Print to File" box so that it IS checked.

MS Word is my word processor so it defaults to that. So when I click on "Print" from the Reports and Charts window, the information comes up in my WORD PROCESSOR!

I can edit it any way I want now.

Try it. Check the "Print to File" box and then click on "Print." It should come up in YOUR word processor.

You can use these tools to help you create your genealogy books. There are many options in PAF. You can pinpoint one individual and just print their information. Take a good look at all of the options.

Of course, you learned how to install the PAF genealogy program. If the whole downloading thing scares you or you just don't think you can do it - all you have to do is get a friend who knows about computers to help you. Print this step-by-step information and show it to them. It will be easy for them.

You saw that you can create GEDCOM files and download them AND import them into the PAF program. There are other places on-line to get GEDCOM program as well. If you want to get them and look at them, simply create a NEW PAF file and import the information and take a look at it. You can always delete both the GEDCOM file and the PAF file if the data is not helpful or what you need. Just remember, it may come in handy later.

For the sake of learning wonderful things, we worked with a GEDCOM file from FamilySearch. But what is important to remember is this:

When you type your OWN genealogy information into PAF or any other genealogy program, you only have to do it ONCE. Then, you can print different reports and all kinds of things with that data.

If you already have information in a DIFFERENT genealogy program, you can always create a GEDCOM file of it (read the Help files in your program to see how to do it) and import it into PAF.

You can CREATE A BOOK with your genealogy data. It is easy to do with a few clicks of the mouse and if you want, some editing in your word processor.

This is the site of the organization that houses the largest amounts of genealogy data in the world.

In early editions of the Treasure Maps newsletter I quoted a leading genealogy authority of the day who said that the FamilySearch collection of information and databases was so immense that it would never be on the Internet.

That was wrong. It did get to the Internet in a big way and keeps getting better.

Go back to PART TWO of genealogy book guide

Go back to PART ONE of genealogy book guide