I too am having trouble making a CD GEDCOM which I want to mail to Bavaria. I select Nicholaus LINHARDT, GEDCOM 5.5, Unicode, Descendants, and 172 is the number selected. I hit OK and Export. First I am asked to put a disk in drive A, but when I click that off I am able to choose CD-RW Drive E under MY computer. But then I can never enter the file name the program will accept.I always receive the window saying "path does not exist" How do I know what file name the program wants? LaVerne, Researching BACHMANN, BOEHMKE, HEMMANN, HEINEMANN, LANDL, LINHARDT, OTTO, PIETSCHMANN, ROEHL, SEHLER, SIEVERS, TELLE, ZACHARIAE, ZEITLER

Hi LaVerne, Unfortunately there is no uniform standard for CD-RW devices like there was for floppies, so the process of writing to a CD-ROM is not as straight forward as intuition would expect. When you insert a blank CD into your CD slot, your system should recognize that a blank CD is now available and you should see a pop up dialog box that asks you what you want to do with it. There may be several options ranging from prepare it for writing down to do nothing. If you chose to prepare it for writing, it will create a buffer in your memory where you must copy all the data you want to write to the CD. Only when you are actually ready to dump the buffer to the CD will it actually write it out. In other words, the Export a GEDCOM routine in PAF does not have the ability to recognize a CD device and cannot write directly to one. (Hence the misleading message about "path does not exist".) You will have to follow the specific instructions on your system for where to write the GEDCOM file and let your operating system handle the actual transfer to the CD. If you want to use this method, you will be forced write the GEDCOM file to some folder on your hard drive and then copy it to the buffer set up by your system. An alternative method and one that I personally prefer is to use the software package that came with your CD-RW device to copy files to the CD. So you would write the GEDCOM to a folder on your hard drive and then run something like Easy CD Creator or an equivalent program that is more user friendly to copy it to your CD. If you can tell me more about your system such as which version of windows and what program you have to run your CD R/W device, I can be more specific with these instructions. Don't be discouraged. You are one of millions who have this same confusing problem. Richard Rands At 06:45 PM 6/21/2005 -0700, LaVerne wrote: >I too am having trouble making a CD GEDCOM which I want to mail to Bavaria. > >I select Nicholaus LINHARDT, GEDCOM 5.5, Unicode, Descendants, and 172 is >the number selected. > >I hit OK and Export. >First I am asked to put a disk in drive A, but when I click that off I am >able to choose CD-RW Drive E under MY computer. > >But then I can never enter the file name the program will accept.I always >receive the window saying "path does not exist" > >How do I know what file name the program wants? > > > >LaVerne, > >Researching BACHMANN, BOEHMKE, HEMMANN, HEINEMANN, LANDL, LINHARDT, OTTO, >PIETSCHMANN, ROEHL, SEHLER, SIEVERS, TELLE, ZACHARIAE, ZEITLER > > >==== PAF-5-USERS Mailing List ==== >RootsWeb's WorldConnect Project: >Connecting the World One GEDCOM at a Time >http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/

LaVerne wrote: > I too am having trouble making a CD GEDCOM which I want to mail to Bavaria. > > I select Nicholaus LINHARDT, GEDCOM 5.5, Unicode, Descendants, and 172 is the number selected. > > I hit OK and Export. > First I am asked to put a disk in drive A, but when I click that off I am able to choose CD-RW Drive E under MY computer. > > But then I can never enter the file name the program will accept.I always receive the window saying "path does not exist" > > How do I know what file name the program wants? > > > > LaVerne, I *think* you have to generate the report to your HD and then copy it onto the CD. Cheryl