Almost literally tearing my hair out here, or would be if I had any left.

First problem:

Unintentionally I have managed to create 2 .paf files containing different versions on my family tree. As far as I can tell they are identical up to individual RIN 1241 but each have different individuals after that point.

How can I make a single file with all the information and be 100% confident nothing has been lost ? I do not think I can face adding data again by hand. :-(


I tried the Match/Merge and the Merge Duplicate Sources options on the menu, but neither seemed to do anything sensible. In fact neither asked me for file names to work on to start with !


Second problem:

I though I might be able to tackle this by exporting GEDCOM files for both and looking to see if there was text I could copy across with the intention of importing it to a new paf file in the hope it would solve the issue. (Probably wishful thinking.) But it is continually asking for a name and address before it will export, which as far as I can tell it clearly already has ?!?!

Any advice gratefully received.

Been there done that - look at the creation date of the newest file then take the other one and select only those individuals that have a change date equal to or greater than the newest file - and this is you export file to merge into the newest. You have to merge the notes of the two files and then clean them up because you could miss something but hopefully this will limit the amount of records to merge. Good Luck

Thanks for the suggestion. I have started to create a repaired file from advice given me from the family search organisation, but it proved very tedious since I merged both files and had to spot masses of duplicates, and merge them. Too easy to press the merge button in error, and took hours.

I may give it a second go, trying to move across only the new/change individuals afterwards, and then compare the result of both. Bit paranoid I'm going to ruin the original good file with one full of errors and lost bits. Problem I have with passing over only certain individuals is less where a new individual has been added, but more where existing data has been updated. Only needs different edits in each file for something to go awry.

Still I'm on the way now, thanks.

PS any good comparison/check software out there ?

GENviewer and GENmatcher from MudCreek Software, which you can Google, and purchase for a very reasonable price may fit your needs for this problem. These programs work for any ancestry software program. I have used them for PAF and RootsMagic many times with great success.

Thanks for the tip, but the Matcher seems to operate in a strange way, unless I'm not understanding.

Since the trial version only allows you to look at 4 individuals, I deliberately created 2 test GED files containing 4 individuals in each, 2 individuals were in both, 2 were different. But Matcher seemed not to show it had found the mismatched individuals at all, and only claimed to find 2 individuals.

Is that how it is supposed to work, or did I get something wrong ?

The program compares files and looks for matches ie duplicates. You are seeking 2 individuals that are not common to both files so they will not be displayed. You can look for duplicate surnames and/or given names and it will search using that criteria. You can choose to include common dates or not.

Ah ok thanks. My mistake.

i have experimented with it a bit, and it seems that even a small change to the data and the 'almost duplicate' isn't picked up. Methinks a version 2 could probably be a commercial opportunity ;-)

Anyway I am making progress so thanks everyone for the suggestions.

PS I shall "play" further with different search criteria and see what can be achieved.

OK, following advice given, and with a little help from a demo of a Family Insight app, I ended up with 2 files created from slightly different routes, and apparently almost identical (ref. numbers excepted).

But there is still a difference. Apparently one has 262 citations and the other 257. I'm not even 100% sure what it is counting.

Any idea how to list and compare the citations, or even where to find them ?

Thanks.

Although I DON'T use PAF anymore perhaps this help file question/answer will give you an idea as to what to look for:
Using the Source List
The Source List shows the source descriptions in the .paf file and allows you to add, copy, edit, or delete them.
You can access this list in three main ways:
1. From the Edit menu, select Source List.
2. From an Individual or Marriage screen, click the appropriate source button. If the record already has sources, a screen showing these sources appears. To view the Source List, click the New button.
3. When you print the list of citations referencing a source.