* Relocating Census Image files

[E Wilcock]

How do other people organise their census images?

And do other people download every census image, as prompted by Ancestral Sources? I am concerned about potential disc space. The census images are currently 615 MB.

My census images are cuurrenty linked to fh from an external folder called Census. In it there is a sub folder for each census year because the census images were put on line one year at a time.
I use multiple projects so the census images for each project are currently scattered in eight folders. This is awkward when I want to pass just one project to a relative.

When I moved to fh, I planned to link more census images to the census citation. Would it be a good idea first to re-organise my census images so that the census images are arranged by project rather than by census year?

And if I move them, will fh then be able to locate the ones that are already attached and create a new link?

[davidf]

How do other people organise their census images?

And do other people download every census image, as prompted by Ancestral Sources? I am concerned about potential disc space. The census images are currently 615 MB.

I drop all my downloaded census images (from FMP, Ancestry etc) into the media subdirectory of the relevant project. I save them with the name given to them by FMP/Ancestry - that way I get a useful alert from the Operating System if I try and download them again; which prompts me to look for neighbours etc. Keeping them in the media folder ensures that they "behave" relative to the project.

If an image is in two projects, I duplicate the image into each project's media folder. With disks measured in Terabytes (my first PC had a 10Mbyte disk; my current one has a 1TB spinning disk for data and a solid state ¼TB one for programs etc), I have ceased worrying about disk space.

Within the media records I title each image with "[Head of Household; Surname first] & family @ Town /locality" with the census year in the date. This enables me to find the image relatively easily.

As a lumper, I add the image to a census "source" as citation media. I do this immediately after downloading by "drag and drop" (from the media subdirectory) from my file manager which I have sorting so that the most recently downloaded image is at the top. (Under Linux - and possibly Mac, drag and drop from outside the project folder can occasionally be problematic - hence the initial download is always into the project media subdirectory.)

With Census records I have recently started transcribing the relevant households on each image (or pair of images where a household stretches over two sheets) on to a shared note with initial line [["[Head of Household; Surname first] & family @ Town /locality CensusYear"]] - ie. matching the media record title but with the census year added. I then link this note (via the all tab) to the citation.

[tatewise]

I download all Census images along with BMD Certificates, et al, into the Project Media folder, but organised into subfolders for convenience.
I am a 'splitter' so each source Media image & record are directly associated with a Source record on its Media tab.
As David says, I'm not concerned with disk space that is so large and cheap these days.

Evelyn, you can use Windows File Explorer to move your Census image files into the Media folder of each Project.
You may choose to use a Census sub-folder to keep them distinct from Certificates, etc.
Keep the year by year sub-folder structure exactly the same, so there will be a separate Census yyyy sub-folder for each Census Year. Keep whatever folder naming convention you use now.

Then in FH use Tools > External File Links and Auto Repair Links button to mend all the broken file path links.
That works by matching the filenames in the Media records with the filenames in the Media sub-folders.
So do NOT rename any of the Census image files, just move them from folder to folder.

What is important is that the original files outside the Project do NOT exist in their current folders.
Either create a backup or a ZIP file and then delete them or move them to another disk or pen drive.
Otherwise, FH will continue to 'see' those external files and never bother to migrate to the internal copies.

[E Wilcock]

It may not be PC on this forum, but I dont want my source images or family photos located within fh as no one else in the family owns fh software.

[dewilkinson]

I have a folder for every individual and I store the census image under the head of the household with a shortcut in all other family members present folders (I use the suffix 'and family' in the file name to indicate there are shortcuts elsewhere). In order to save disk space I use the snip tool to select a portion of the image including the heading, and when it is spread across two pages I combine the two bits into one image, see example. If I want the better quality original images (a rare event) I have to go aand get them again. I do not add such images to FH as it they make reports and my web site too cluttered.

I adopt the same principle for marriage indexes, immigration images etc.

Capture.JPG (93.78 KiB) Viewed 4618 times

[PeterR]

It may not be PC on this forum, but I dont want my source images or family photos located within fh as no one else in the family owns fh software.

Storing images and family photos in folders within the FH Media folder would not prevent access by a user without FH software.

[tatewise]

Evelyn, you misunderstand what putting the images inside FH means.
They are within Windows folders exactly as they are now ~ just different folders, that is all.
It is NOT like putting them inside some database system. It is simply that FH can manage them better in the Media folder.
You can still send those photos from the FH Media folder exactly as you did before.
My posting is at the same time as Peter's.

Also, the Export Gedcom File Plugin copes with sending GEDCOM and image files to other products that your family members may have.

However, if you wish to reorganise those images outside FH then that should work in the same way.
Create a folder dedicated to each Project and move the image files into that folder.
The FH Auto Repair Links button should still mend the broken links.
All the earlier caveats and advice apply in the same way.

[E Wilcock]

Thank you. I think I will do that.