Hi Group, I agree with Sherrie that listing all Ancestral File numbers in your notes is a very good practice. I have been doing this for years and have found these numbers very useful if I need to return to the Ancestral File to check on information. I record lots and lots of information in my notes, all census information, complete wills, land deeds and other things. When I look at notes I have a complete file of all items researched on this person. I only load Vital Records or Public Records in the sources section of PAF. I found that sources from a book or articles repeated for each time entered and made my source listing very long when I print out a book. As I have stated before the use of Rin number to identify people that I need to find or do research for has proven to be very necesaary when managing a large database and has saved me much time and takes me to the exact person that I want to see and not guess about is this the right person. I also want to say that keeping more then 2 database for information that you are researching can lead to problems in the future, with double entries, missed links of related persons. If you and your spouse are both researching your ancestors and each do data entry then 2 files would be best but I would recommend that the 2 files be combined every so often into a single file. This new single file would only be save and never have any data entry done on it. Each individual file would have only the spouses name in the other file so that when they are joined only 1 names is a duplicate and 1 can be deleted. I realize that the rin number on 1 file is going to change but since this is not a working file that does not matter. Later Philo __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com