NAUVOO UNIVERSITY FAMILY HISTORY CLASS
Class 09 -- PAF GOODIES
©2010 by Donald R. Snow

This page last updated 2010-03-09.
Return to the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page , or Don's Class Listings Page .
REVIEW AND INTRODUCTION
  • Instructors are Donald R. and Diane M. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu and dms34@juno.com ) of Provo, Utah; St. George, Utah; and Nauvoo, Illinois.
  • This page with active Internet links is posted on the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group website http://uvtagg.org under Class Outlines , Don's Listings , Nauvoo University.
  • Spiritual thought
  • Review of last week's class on PAF Preferences and Reports -- any questions?
THE ALT-S-F TRICK
  • When connected to the Internet, highlight an individual in PAF and while holding down the ALT key, press S, then F, in that order
  • Takes you to http://www.familysearch.org , enters the name, does the search for you, and shows you the results
  • Can refine the search to narrow it down
  • If you are LDS, you can log on with your FamilySearch user name and password to see the ordinance data -- may have to repeat ALT-S-F for the individual  
DATE CALCULATOR
  • Under PAF Tools > Date Calculator -- also under Edit Individual screen > Options > Date Calculator
  • Given any two dates, i.e. beginning (birth date), elapsed time (age), and ending (death date) - PAF will calculate the third date
  • Helpful for calculating things like birth date from death date and age on tombstone or exact age from birth and death dates
  • Accounts for leap years, changes in calendars, etc.
ADDITIONAL EVENTS
  • Edit Individual > Options > New Event/Attribute
  • Allows entering additional events to be able to enter data for any individual
  • Can change the Template to contain additional events so Edit Individual screens all show the additional events or can just add events for one person
  • Additional Events could be things like Residences, Religion, Military Service, Missionary Service, Adoption, Links to websites, etc.  
  • Can select title, description, dates, things you want PAF to show, ways you want it to read in the narrative books, etc. 
  • LINKING PHOTOS, SOUND CLIPS, PDF FILES, HTML FILES, ETC. 
    • Go to Edit Individual > Multimedia (Camera icon) and add photo, etc.
    • To add a link to a pdf, html, or other type document on your computer select either Sound Clip or Video Clip (even though they are not sound or video clips) and enter the path, name, etc. -- When ready to show these click Play and PAF will open the pdf reader, browser, or other program and show it, if that program is associated with the file extension 
    • Can make a sound clip to describe each photo -- requires a microphone and sound card and most new computers have them
    • Record it using Windows Sound Recorder (built into Windows) or any freeware sound program, e.g. Audacity
    • When saving the sound file you can include its length in the name, e.g. "Don's Study-7 secs.wav", to help in setting up a Slideshow later
    • Can have PAF run these while showing a slideshow about a person
  • SLIDESHOWS AND SCRAPBOOKS
    • Can form a slideshow for any individual in your PAF database  -- go to Edit Individual > Camera icon
    • Click on Add and put in the path and name of photo and path and name of sound clip -- need the length of sound clip so you can set how long to show the slide with it 
      • Put in sound clip BEFORE the photo it describes
    • Click on Edit Photo > Include in Slide Show and set length of time to show it from the length of the sound clip
      • Include photo in Scrapbook by clicking on Edit Photo > Include Photo in Scrapbook
    • Enter path and name of sound clip for that photo in Attached Sound (at bottom of screen)
    • Enter the photos in the order you want or rearrange them to be shown in order you want - sound clip, photo, sound clip, photo, etc. -- Save results when you are done
    • Viewing the Slideshow -- go to Multimedia Collection screen and click on Slideshow to see the slides and hear the sound clips
      • Can go back and adjust the time a slide is shown if it doesn't quite match the sound clip time
    • Viewing the Scrapbook -- go to Multimedia Collection screen and click on Scrapbook
      • Shows all the photos you included for that person and scrapbook may contain other photos and sound clips that you didn't include in the Slide Show
      • Click on small speaker in upper right hand corner of photo to hear the sound clip for that picture
    • Print Scrapbook by Print/Scrapbook -- set options including numbers of rows and columns of pictures you want, box styles, borders, background, colors, what to include, etc. - Preview it on screen before printing
    • Can use a freeware program like PDF995 to print the scrapbook to a pdf
    LINKING OTHER URL'S AND FILES
    • To include a link to an Internet URL or an html file saved on your computer do the following.
      • In the Edit Individual screen click on Options/New Event-Attributes
      • Give it title such as Title: htmlInformation, Short Title: htmlInfo, Abbreviation: HI and check Use Description and uncheck the others
      • In the No Date or Place box type:  "For information about this person click here <a href= "%6">%6</a>." (without the quotes) -- this can be modified for male, female, or unknown gender later when you see how to do it
        • The %NN items show what will be substituted for the number used, e.g. %6 means it will be replaced with the Description later
      • Click OK > Select and you will now see the Event htmlInformation listed in Other Events for the Individual
      • In the Description field for Event htmlInformation type in the URL you want, e.g. http://www.familysearch.org
      • Now when PAF generates the webpage there will be a link in the individual's notes that says, "For information about this person click here http://www.familysearch.org" and this will be an active link, i.e. clicking on it will take you to that URL
    • Can use this method to link to any html file stored on your computer, for example, a timeline saved as an html file from  http://www.ourtimelines.com  
      • Go to the ourtimelines.com website and generate the timeline for some individual in your PAF database
      • Save the html file of the timeline to your computer
        • Click on File/Save Page As/Web Page, HTML Only -- this is the wording from Mozilla Firefox and will be slightly different for other browsers 
        • Save it with a name like "DoeJohn-Timeline.html" in a folder called "html Files"
      • In PAF follow the same steps as above to enter an active link, but in the Description field, instead of the URL, type "../html Files/[name of html file]" (without the quotes) -- this tells PAF where to find the html file on your computer later
      • Use PAF to generate the webpage for your PAF database
      • Move the "html Files" folder so it is a subfolder in the same folder as the web folder generated by PAF for the webpage, since that's where the wording in the Description field tells it to look for it -- you can change that, if you know how 
      • Now, in the PAF-generated webpage, clicking on the link in the notes will show the stored html file, e.g. the timeline
      • With this method you can link into your PAF database any file that can be put into html format, e.g. text files, images, video clips, sound recordings, etc.
    CONCLUSION
    • PAF is a powerful genealogy program and most of us use only a small part of its features.
    • Viewing your data in other formats helps in finding errors and cleaning it up the display of it. 
    • Knowing what PAF can do gives you a vision for further work, analysis, and uses of your data.
    ASSIGNMENT
    1. Try the ALT-S-F trick on some name in your database.  You must be connected to the Internet for it to work
    2. Do a narrative book, Ancestry or Descendancy, of everyone in your database to see what the format looks like.  You don't have to print it, just look at it on screen.
    3. Make a webpage of everyone in your PAF database and see what the data looks like in this format.  You don't have to post it on the Internet, just generate it and look at it on your computer. 

    Return to the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page , or Don's Class Listings Page .