Hi Gary and all, I agree wholeheartedly with Gary's sentiments - I have a huge work in progress at this moment in time with well over 189,000 people listed on it... (I'm attempting to connect as many of the South Australian Pioneer families and their descendants as I possibly can) Please don't ask how it got started, that would fill a chapter in a book... Anyway, with those people listed I would have thousands of families and wouldn't be able to remember where and what I was doing if I had them in separate files... Backup every time you use PAF and use the suggestion of Gary's to put the date (I've called mine P------_J---- 201207) and it WORKS!!! Regards to all, and have a wonderful Christ filled Christmas, may you and your families be safe and happy at this joyous time of the year... the time when we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Best regards Barbara in Victoria Australia - where it's been in the high 30C (about 100F) all week

Barbara wrote: > I agree wholeheartedly with Gary's sentiments - Oh, yes. If you're working on a single project or your own family, I can't overstate the case for a single composite database, even if bits are loose "trees" in there. Otherwise, you'll end up not ever knowing whether you put that in this database or that one. Been there, back in floppy days and the clean-up now isn't fun ... and hasn't been for maybe 4 years now. OTOH, if you're doing professional genealogy for hire ... may as well keep each client's work in a separate database so you can be sure you don't share inappropriately. Cheryl -- There should be no attachments on this message, unless I specifically mentioned them above.