HOW TO USE PAF INSIGHT

GENERAL

I suggest you first practice doing each of these steps until you understand and remember how to do them

• Clicking on column headings sorts all the data either ascending or descending. Largest either at the top of the bottom of the list. Particularly useful to do this on the count heading in Edit Place

• You can change the height and width of the data panes to show more or less columns or records. As you move the mouse pointer over a boundary it will change to 2 lines. Click hold & drag to move the boundary You can also change the individual column width in the same way.

No changes to your PAF file are made until you press save. Or you can use Save As and then type in a new name to create a new PAF file without altering the original.

Use Mode to select which of the basic Insight functions you want to do

It will help you to master each function in the order listed below

EDIT PLACES

This allows you to make global corrections to place names. Click on the count heading till you get the big numbers at the top. Then come down the list highlighting each entry and make changes to each entry as necessary. If something disappears just press Esc to bring it back

EDIT RINS & PEDIGREES

This allows you to do 2 things First you can see if there are any unconnected individuals or groups in your file. You may be surprised by what you find. Second you can edit individual info in just the same way that you can in PAF itself.

MERGE

This tries to find any duplicate records that are in the same file. Click on % Match till the big numbers are at the top.

For each record on the left hand side, one or more possible matches are listed on the right hand side. That is why the same details sometime appear more than once on the left hand side, each paired with a different possible match on the right. As you highlight each record line, you can compare the details in the 2 panes below. Try clicking on % Match. Anything much below 90% is not a very close match. Remember you can move the pane boundaries.

Tick the boxes on the right pane where you want to transfer info FROM the right TO the left pane and then click on Merge. The pink highlights differences between the 2 records and the green highlights missing or additional information.

You may have several correct matches for the same record. For example the first may have a death date you didn’t know about and the second march may have a marriage place you didn’t know about. Using Merge you can add these bits of info to your main record.

The Status column shows when you have updated records of if you want to mark a record to say that you need to investigate it further then click on Research to put a note of that in the status column. Or you can note the pair as “Not A Match”. The Status column helps you when finally review your records before you save any changes to your PAF file. The Swap button simply swaps right to left and back again.

You will mainly be using the “Normal” filter option but the other options are useful as well.

COMPARE AND SYNC

This tries to find any duplicate records that are in 2 different files. You start with your main file which will appears in the LEFT hand column. You then load up the 2^nd file which appears in the RIGHT hand column. Things then work exactly in exactly the same way as they do for Merge. When you finally Save you update your main file with the selected changes and additions. You can then keep or discard the 2^nd file as you want.

SEARCH IGI

The first time (only) that you try this you will need to put in your username and password for Familysearch.

To see how this works first highlight a group of say 4 records only. Make sure you are using the correct filter – usually “All Records” to start with. The other filter options are useful later.

Click on Search – you will see the search progress on the right hand side. Wait until the search has finished. Remember that you can adjust the column widths.

Note that searching more than 1 year produces many more results – sometimes too many. Make sure that the Match column is visible.

Look now your group of highlighted records. Each highlighted entry should have several possible alternatives from the IGI listed below it (which are not highlighted). The % Match is a helpful indicator. You can then look at each, one at a time, and copy over any selected info from the IGI entries at the RIGHT to your file records at the LEFT – in exactly the same way as for Merge .

Note that if you highlight many records it can take a very long time indeed to complete the search. To make it manageable you might want to run the search on groups of say 10 or 20 at a time.