Personal Ancestral File Companion 5.0 The following article is from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 2001 by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author.
Personal Ancestral File for Windows is one of the most popular genealogy programs in the world. There are good reasons for the program's popularity: it is easy to use, stores most of the information that genealogists want to record, and can easily import and export data to and from other programs. Of course, the biggest reason for PAF's popularity is its price: it is free. You can download this Windows program directly from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Web site at: http://www.FamilySearch.org
While Personal Ancestral File is a very good program, it doesn't have all the on-screen or printed reports that many people want. For some time the producers of the program have offered "Personal Ancestral File Companion," which adds extra functionality. Now a new version of the Companion has been released. Personal Ancestral File Companion version 5.0 adds high-quality printed pedigree charts, family group records, ancestor charts, descendant charts, hourglass charts, fan charts, kinship reports, descendant reports, and narrative reports. The following reports are new with version 5.0:
- Standard Family Group Record. A variable format that will print all user-defined events.
- Hourglass Chart. Print both ancestors and descendants on one chart for an individual, displayed in a format that resembles an hourglass with ancestors displayed above the focus individual and descendants below.
In addition to the above new reports, the following enhancements are in version 5.0:
- Photos - Several reports and charts allow you to print a photo for each individual in the chart, including the Ancestor Chart, Descendant Chart, Hourglass Chart, Ahnentafel Report and Register Report.
- Confidential Notes and Events - You can choose whether or not to print confidential notes and events in your charts. By default, confidential notes and events print only if both these settings are enabled in your Personal Ancestral File program. You can temporarily change this option in Companion at any time. This will not affect your settings in Personal Ancestral File.
- User Defined Events may (optionally) be printed in reports.
- Footnotes and Endnotes - You can now select whether to print sources as footnotes or endnotes.
- Metric units of measure - Previous versions of Personal Ancestral File Companion allowed the user to specify the size of printed charts and box sizes in inches. The new version allows for metric specifications.
- Compare to PRF Master Index - the Companion finds individuals in the Pedigree Resource File (PRF) who may match those in your Personal Ancestral File database. The Companion does this by comparing one or more individuals in your file to all individuals on a PRF Master Index CD-ROM (note: the Master Index must be for Discs 1-15 or newer). The results are presented in a WordPad document that you can print or save for later use. WordPad documents can easily be imported into any modern word processor.
- Kin Search is a feature of the Companion that allows you to find all relatives (kinship) of an individual and browse through this list, selecting only those you are interested in. You can also print individual relatives and their relationship with the subject.
- The Name List presents the entire list of individuals contained in your Personal Ancestral File database. From the Name List you can search for specific individuals by surname and given name (optional) or by RIN.
- Foreign characters - Companion will now display and print Western European characters with diacritics.
I took Personal Ancestral File Companion version 5.0 for a "test drive" this week and found that it is as easy to use as the previous versions. The program does not have a printed manual, nor does it need one. Most of the options and selections are self- explanatory. However, just in case you do find something that is not intuitive, the online Help feature will illustrate the proper operation. I looked at the online Help for several topics, and it seemed to display information clearly in all instances.
While not new in version 5.0, my favorite feature of Personal Ancestral File Companion is the wall charts. This program makes excellent charts that you can print out locally in color or black- and-white, tape the printouts together, and take them to a family reunion or other gathering. In fact, you can also print to diskette and take the diskette to a commercial service that will print your output on large paper on a plotter or similar commercial-quality printing device. A number of other programs feature wall charts also, but the ones in Personal Ancestral File Companion have a more pleasing appearance than most of the others. If your present genealogy program does not feature wall charts, or if its wall charts are a bit "weak," you can download Personal Ancestral File, import your data from your primary genealogy program, then purchase Personal Ancestral File Companion to create nice looking reports.
Personal Ancestral File Companion 5.0 requires Windows 95, 98, ME, NT or 2000. It works with Personal Ancestral File versions 3.0 for MS-DOS as well as versions 4 and 5 for Windows. The Companion costs $13.50 (U.S. funds).