Fellow list members - This month, I was wrestling with how I was going to index 18-months worth (900kb) of emails gathered by Frank Ruff's ad hoc PITTMAN e-mail list, as well as the rest of my genealogy files. Then, I found out about the recent decision by DIGITAL Equipment Corporation to make the Personal 97 (PC) version of it's Alta Vista Search Engine available as a free download. It is available at: http://www.altavista.digital.com/av/content/searchpx.htm For a description of what this tool can do, go to: http://127.0.0.1:6688/?pg=h I heartily recommend this free software to any PC-based genealogist having data management problems (is anyone not?). In under 7 minutes, the Indexer prepared an index for over 3000 text documents (including 3.8 million words) on my hard drive, including my e-mail archives and my word processor files on all surnames. Test searches demonstrated an outstanding improvement in my ability to find some genealogical tidbit, based only upon my partial recollections of location, names, sources, etc. This is not a commercial endorsement, just a tip! Hope it helps, Craig P.S. - PITTMAN-L folks -- I am working away on our web page, but slowly. Expect to see Frank's files (November 1996 to February 1998) up and available somehow within the next few months. Due to the hiccup with the RootsWeb archive server software, Dr. Brian has inidcated that the subsequent PITTMAN-L archives (February 1998 to present) won't be available for a few more weeks or months.