This walkthrough takes you through the whole journey end-to-end - searching the National Archives of Australia, saving each page of your digger's service record, uploading the scans to Decode My Digger, and downloading your finished Word and Excel reports.

If you have never touched a service record before, this is the best place to start.

What's covered

How to search the NAA RecordSearch database for your relative's file
Which series to look in for Army, Navy, and Air Force records
How to save every page of a multi-page file with a clean naming convention
How to upload your scans to Decode My Digger and start a decode
What to expect in your finished Word report and Excel spreadsheet

Prefer to read it?

If you would rather follow the steps in writing, the companion guide How to Find War Records on the National Archives Website covers the NAA search portion in detail.

The video walkthrough above uses Andrew "Banjo" Paterson's service record as the demonstration example.

Source

National Archives of Australia: Australian Imperial Force, Base Records Office; B2455, First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920; PATERSON ANDREW BARTON (Item ID: 4028776). View original record on RecordSearch

Crown copyright on this record expired on 1 January 2024 under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth). Material made or first published by the Commonwealth before 1 January 1974 is no longer in copyright. Images are reproduced with acknowledgement to the National Archives of Australia. NAA citation guide