Personal Ancestral File (PAF)

by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Personal Ancestral File is a very popular genealogy program that has been available free for many years. The LDS has stated that it will no longer be updating the program, so it will be stuck at version 5.2.18.0 (2005). They have a Users Group.

Free • Unsupported • Windows • Full Featured
http://www.familysearch.org/eng/paf/
14 Reviews, latest Jul 20, 2010
Enjoy Using It4.65 out of 54.65 out of 54.65 out of 54.65 out of 54.65 out of 5 4.65
Use It Often4.82 out of 54.82 out of 54.82 out of 54.82 out of 54.82 out of 5 4.82
Easy Input4.51 out of 54.51 out of 54.51 out of 54.51 out of 54.51 out of 5 4.51
Useful Output3.83 out of 53.83 out of 53.83 out of 53.83 out of 53.83 out of 5 3.83
Overall Rating4.39 out of 54.39 out of 54.39 out of 54.39 out of 54.39 out of 5 4.39
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14 Reviews of Personal Ancestral File (PAF)     RSS 2.0 RSS

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) Review by David Rogers,  Jul 20, 2010

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I Have been using it for yeary. Good reports & Books, Over 8000 Names in my tree with no problems.

Biggest Pro: free
Biggest Con: not updated

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) Review by hugh tornabene,  Feb 8, 2010

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Have used PAF for years, love it, it has not crashed.
Though the output is limited, the companion PAF software is excellent++.
It will not allow a male-male marriage. A kinky Mormon restriction, doesnt bother me, probably a workaround.
I love the way it makes gedcom files, like others do.
The only feature I use other software for, is making partial Gedcom files, of selected parts of my tree.

Biggest Pro: does not crash
Biggest Con: no partial gedcom file creation ability that I have found

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) Review by Betty Jo,  Dec 14, 2008

  • 5 out of 55 out of 55 out of 55 out of 55 out of 5
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I’ve used all the genealogy programs for the PC, but keep my data in PAF. The advanced focus/filter feature is worth using the program for — even if it didn’t have lots of other great features. With the advanced focus/filter, I can produce a list of folks who meet a specific criteria — i.e. men born or died in OH who were born between 1880 and 1900 who may have been on the WWI Draft registration. I haven’t found that feature in other programs. The others keep adding bells and whistles — I want something that records my data so that I can use it - and doesn’t clutter up the program with unnecessary features. I use PAF to teach beginning Computer Genealogy classes for SrNet — it’s free so everyone can have a copy, easy to use and does the job! Using it with PAF Companion gives me what I need most of the time. If I need other features, I can GedCom to others…

Biggest Pro: Price, advance focus/filter, lack of “bells & whistles”
Biggest Con: none

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) Review by Jon Thomas,  Dec 14, 2008

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Always used since Day 1, and will continue to use. But when adding a photo, it wants to just record the absolute path to where that photo happens to exist at the time it was added. The problem is 1) the path probably will be very temporary, and 2) the path is relevant to that computer only. I like to port my whole PAF database to other computers, and expect the photos to come along with it.

I wish the program would have just either made it’s own copy of the photo to maintain inside it’s own database, or at least make the path relative to where my PAF database exists.

So for now I have to resort to moving the entire PAF database+program to a “generic” location such as “C:\PAF52\”, and keep a sub-directory there called “Photos”.

Biggest Pro: Free, Standardized, Runs off Flash drive
Biggest Con: Multimedia (photos) location management prone to getting lost after port to other computers.

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) Review by Bill Buchanan,  Oct 22, 2008

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This has got to be one of the best supported products I have ever seen! Besides the toll-free phone number and email address, there are online forums on YahooGroups, Rootsweb, and GenForum (and possibly others), various users groups, 4500 Family History Centers around the world use it and teach it.

I like the fact that it can be run from a flash drive without installing it on the host computer, complete with the multimedia files.

Ancestral Quest 12.1 and FamilyInsight allow PAF to interact with the new FamilySearch, so in effect they act as add-ons for PAF.

I have used PAF since (DOS) version 2, and while I have tried several other programs, I can’t find anything I like as well. Data entry is as easy as it gets. Merging supports unique record identifiers as well as AFNs.

I wish it allowed linking individuals to a wider range of document types. PAF supports some common formats of images, video and sound, but the repertory is rather limited. (You can not link to PDF files.) Still, free is good!

I have used PAF to create genealogy websites, books, reports, etc.

Biggest Pro: Fantastic support! 1-866-406-1830, support@familysearch.org, online forums, knowledgebase
Biggest Con: Printed output is limited to 6 charts plus various configurations of them

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) Review by Anne,  Oct 4, 2008

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I’ve been using PAF since about v3. The later versions did away with the useful facility to repeat part-addresses when entering data. The biggest gripe I have is that when presented with a possible match, or with an apparent error (e.g. child born before parents’ marriage), there is no way of marking this as checked so that it doesn’t come up again and again and again whenever I run the utility. I also wish it wouldn’t flag up ‘this sibling is younger than the previous sibling’ but just alter the order of siblings automatically by birth date.

Biggest Pro: Easy to use
Biggest Con: Doesn’t include in-laws’ names on charts; no way to suppress error messages once checked

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) Review by Di Maloney,  Oct 2, 2008

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I have used PAF for so long I can’t remember. I recently purchased PAF Companion and it has enhanced what I already had in the free version of PAF. I find it extremely easy to use and it does exactly what I need.
I have been researching my family history for over 25 years and not all of it on the internet.

Biggest Pro: Ease of use
Biggest Con: None that I can think of.

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) Review by Dennis Gries,  Oct 2, 2008

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I’ve had PAF for several years, and have taken a look at others.

Beats me what updates in the database engine would do. I don’t think it will do same sex partnerships, but other than that, one can record children to have different last names than the father (or mother, I suppose). Since my projects are true genie studies of blood and marraiges, this causes me no concern.

Yes, the reports don’t appear to match the programmed flexibility of some of the commercial programs, but I still am able to put out (from a nearly 10k person history), some very useful reports, including the whole “family” for several historical societies.

Agan, easy, and limited number of screens input, and plenty of space for Notes.

Biggest Pro: Ease of use and maybe what the LDS was trying to accomplish (KISS)
Biggest Con: Reports could be more imaginative

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) Review by karen helfert,  Oct 2, 2008

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I have used this program for years and am very sorry to hear they will not be updating it further. I have found it easy to use and it met the needs have…not alot of extras, cute interfaces, but does the job.

Biggest Pro: does the job
Biggest Con: won’t be updated further

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) Review by Terri,  Sep 29, 2008

  • Not Rated
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  • Not Rated

Have tried PAF a few times, keep going back to FTM. PAF is more confusing to first time users over other programs. I find it hard to get around in, not as user frinedly as FTM.

Biggest Pro: it’s free
Biggest Con: no updates, just don’t like the program overall

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) Review by Benjamin S. Beck,  Sep 29, 2008

  • 5 out of 55 out of 55 out of 55 out of 55 out of 5
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Very usable, very few limitations, very stable. I’ve tried commercial software, but always end up returning to PAF.

Biggest Pro: Ease of use, ease of data entry.
Biggest Con: No real support for dropline trees.

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) Review by Keith Mathis,  Sep 27, 2008

  • 4 out of 54 out of 54 out of 54 out of 54 out of 5
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I started using PAF because it was free when I began my family research. I have tried FTM, but seem to keep coming back to PAF. It works well for me.

I don’t particuarly like the outputs, reporting that it provides. They could make it easier to generate reports, and could give a better range of options and choices for what the user wants or desires. It just seems a bit outdated when it comes to the output portion of the software. I don’t care for the format on some of the reports it generates either.

Overall though, for free, it does everything you would want from a genealogy program, and I would have to give it high marks. I just think that if they wanted, it could be made easier, more current and provide a robust report menu or even ad hoc reporting. But I understand they are no longer going to update the software, so doubt we’ll ever see any improvements like that.

Biggest Pro: Ease of use
Biggest Con: Outputs/Reports

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) Review by Marg,  Sep 26, 2008

  • 4 out of 54 out of 54 out of 54 out of 54 out of 5
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This is an excellent program for beginners and since it is free, it invites newbies to get started on recording their genealogy without having to pay money right away. It has a link under the Tool menu to 7 very good lessons that teach how to enter data properly and how to document. For FREE it can’t be beat. I would encourage beginners to start with PAF and then when they feel comfortable using a genealogy software program and want more features, they can Export their data to one of the newer full featured programs OR stay with PAF! There are enough good features - a person may never need to change to something different.

Biggest Pro: Good support through Free lessons and online at http://www.familysearch.org.
Biggest Con: No future improvements

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) Review by Doug Steward,  Sep 25, 2008

  • 4 out of 54 out of 54 out of 54 out of 54 out of 5
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I started with PAF in 1987 because of its low cost, and have stayed with it over the years, primarlily because of the same reason. For my purposes, it has served me well, and I was disappointed to learn that it would no longer be updated. It runs fine on my Vista computer in XP mode, and has had no problem with a database of 45,000 individuals and growing.

The only minor drawbacks I’ve had are when editing notes or source data on individuals, one must close out of that screen to check on other information, and you cannot run two windows screens at once. There also appears to be no way of telling the program that people are twins, eliminating the error message that birthdates are too close together. (Unless I’ve not looked deep enough in the help section.)

If PAF were revised and updated to current OS platforms, I would probably stay with it, as it has served me well over the last 21 years.

Biggest Pro: Ease of use
Biggest Con: No longer supported and updated

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