Talk:Family History
From LDSOSS
Current Temple Codes for PAF
For those of you using PAF5 to do your genealogy, you already know that there are only about 50 temples listed in the program's temple list where users can select their codes. This is because the last update to PAF was nine years ago in 1998. These codes are necessary to identify where the ordinance work was done.
Genealogists badly need a complete list of the 5-letter codes (SLAKE for Salt Lake) for ALL current functioning temples. There have been more than 60 temples opened and the Church has the list of codes but it's not posted anywhere. Without this list, users all over the world are inventing their own 5-letter code (MANHN or MANHA for Manhattan New York) and this is wrong. All those codes will eventually have to be updated before the genealogy is correct.
In June of 2004 I contacted the Church's temple department by phone but they treated me like I was trying to get a secret from them and refused. A year later, June 2005 I finally conviced them that it was neither secret nor sacred data and genealogists need it. They then emailed me the list of current functioning temples as of that date. I have shared it with many people at the Ogden Regional Family History Center and others online. But more temples have been added since then and we still don't have a current list published on a Church website. Is it really that hard to do? When can genealogists hope to get the codes right if the Church doesn't tell us what the code is for each and every temple?
Thanks for reading my rant.
Frank Reid Ogden Regional Family History Center
Frank, it appears you have a good point. Google found a few lists at apparently unofficial sites. In case it might help, I sent the question to the familysearch.org and got a reply just a few minutes later. The instruction was to bring up PAF, go to the 'edit individual' screen, and double click on the arrow key for 'Temple'. At least with PAF running in Wine on Linux, I had to single-click on the arrow icon, but it gave a list that included the last two temples on the lds.org chronological list, Helsinki, Finland and Sacramento, California. I don't know whether PAF downloads the list from a Church server or whether I just have a recent enough copy of PAF. If the former, Wireshark could spill the beans on where PAF is getting the list. If the latter, one workaround would be to download and reinstall PAF every so often.
HTH
Robert Riches