"Mac PAF" has not been available for several years but there are still a few users. Last night at the FHC we had a lessson on MacFamilyTree, and afterwards a patron asked for help in importing his Mac PAF gedcom into his new Family Tree Maker for Mac software.
I told him to create a new (empty) file and import the gedcom. I watched as he tried unsuccessfully to import the gedcom. I suspected that the gedcom file might be corrupted, so I inspected it in a text editor (Notetab Light), and the gedcom seemed to be normal.
I tried importing the gedcom into PAF and PAF couldn't see it. Note to self: a file name extension of .GEDCOM is not normal. Change it to .GED so it is recognized.
I imported the gedcom successfully into a PAF 4 file, reasoning that PAF 4 was in use at the same time as Mac PAF, so there would be a better chance of a smooth import.
Feeling that the problem was solved, I exported a new PAF 4 gedcom and asked the patron to import this into FTM. FTM now recognized it as a gedcom but rejected it because it did not conform to gedcom standard 5.5.
Now I knew what to do. Back on the Windows computer, I opened the PAF 4 file in PAF 5, allowed PAF 5 to convert it to PAF 5 format, and then exported the data in gedcom 5.5 format.
This gedcom file was imported by FTM with no complaints. SUCCESS!!!
My patron was relieved and very happy. He was not looking forward to re-entering the data for 2000 people!
