Ancestry.com.au · Australia · Military

Australia, World War II Military Service Records, 1939-1945

Entries in this collection at Ancestry.com sometimes have a link to records on Fold3.  There are two reasons why I prefer to go directly to the National Archives of Australia website.

Firstly, the National Archives website is free, so you don’t need to take out a separate subscription to access the records, and secondly, it’s easier to save copies to your computer from the National Archives website.

For starters, the page number is on the bottom of the screen

National archives page number cropped

This helps you to keep track of which pages you’ve done, and how many you have left to do.

Secondly, you can right click on the image, and select Save Image As, and then you can save the file with the name you want, and save the file where you want on your computer.

If you download them from Fold3, they are automatically saved to your Downloads folder with the file name Fold3_Page_1, so you then need to go and rename the file, and move it to where you want it on your computer.

If you use Fold3, you can attach the record directly to your Ancestry public member tree.  Since I have branches of the family in the United States, I do have a subscription to Fold3 to access the US military records, so I download the images from the National Archives of Australia website, but I also go into Fold3 to attach the record from Fold3 to my Ancestry public member tree.