* FH Project Folders

[Sue036]

In addition to my main FH Projects I have a growing number of small Projects for the trees of people who are DNA matches, but I am still unsure how we are related. I also have a few Projects for people I am otherwise interested in, but not related to (examples being families that feature in local history projects and the families of friends who've asked me for help with their research). As these are cluttering up my Family Historian Projects folder I wondered if I could put them into sub-folders ... but after creating a sub-folder and moving one Project folder into it I find can no longer open that Project via the FH Project window. I can browse it, via the 'More Tasks...' button, but when I try to open it lists the files in the Project folder rather than opening the Project.

I did read the Knowledge Base and it tells me that I can open FH Projects stored in other places, so do I have to store them entirely separately from the Family Historian Projects folder?

Thought I'd better ask before experimenting further, in case I break something important.

[tatewise]

There are a number of possible options.

Firstly, keep all your Projects in the Family Historian Projects folder, which is what it is for.
The only impact on FH is in its File > Project Window and nowhere else.
Each Project is neatly packaged inside one folder, so cluttering up is a bit strong.
The Projects are listed alphabetically, so with some novel naming, they can be clustered into logical groups.

There is nothing to stop you from keeping unrelated trees in one Project.
For your potential DNA matches that will make linking to your family easier later on.
For friends trees, keep them all in one Project and just export the finished tree as a GEDCOM or Diagram & Reports.
It is quite easy to manage such unrelated sub-trees within one Project.

I have just moved a Project folder into a subfolder within the Family Historian Projects folder.
Then More Tasks > Browse for Project worked fine by opening the Project's .fh_proj file.
So I don't understand why it did not work for you. You must take care to move the entire Project folder.
In the Select a Family Historian Project File dialogue you must navigate into the subfolder you created, and then into the Project folder, and open its .fh_proj file.

An alternative to that would be to create a folder somewhere (such as ...\Documents\FH Other) to hold your 'other' Projects.
Then in the File > Project Window change the Location: to that ...\Documents\FH Other folder.
That will list all those 'other' Projects until you wish to switch back to the default Location:.

However, most users keep all their Projects in one folder and don't think of it as clutter.

[Sue036]

Thanks Mike,

I'll reply in the same order that you did.

That's good, I don't want to be hunting for my Projects all over my hard drive. (This also covers your later paragraph re having a folder elsewhere for my 'other' projects ... unless when you read the rest of my reply you can see why that might help me.)

There are currently 38 separate projects, which does make for a bit of clutter, to my eyes at least.
Of those, I am about to merge some because I now think it was unwise to keep them separate in the first place, but they were set up in TMG a long time ago and kept separate for reasons that seemed sensible at that time. However that will not reduce the total to less than 30.

I could use a naming policy to group the projects, but unfortunately I already have a naming policy that would be disrupted by that.

I had thought of having unrelated sub-trees in one project, but wasn't sure how easy it would then be to find the people I wanted ... especially as the same surnames would occur in more than one sub-tree? I will consider doing that in future, but for now I just want to be able to find things easily and recognise them what they are for.

For the Project that I moved to the sub-folder, I can indeed browse to and open the .fh_proj file. However, I am used to just clicking on the Project folder and wasn't sure whether I would lose something by just opening that file? This leads me to wonder if I even need all the other folders within those Project folders?? The ones I can see are all empty. Can I just save the .fh>proj files in my sub-folder ... or does FH need the full project folder structure to be present?

It has also occurred to me that for most of these small projects I really only need a Gedcom file, but I don't know how I would create and maintain one of those without setting up a FH Project to begin with?

All advice welcome.

Thanks again,

Sue

[tatewise]

Don't worry about the quantity. I have ~50 Projects, mostly because I need a test Project for each Plugin I've published.

Let me deal with the Project folder structure and what is essential...
In the Project folder is the .fh_proj file which is a tiny text file with some Project settings, but no actual data.
The Public folder is for you to keep any saved diagrams, reports, etc, but is not essential.
The .fh_data folder is essential and is managed by FH.
It holds the essential GEDCOM (.ged) file that is the main database file and a number of sub-folders.
You should rarely need to visit there and any unused sub-folders remain empty so just forget about them.
The Media sub-folder holds all the media files linked to the Media records within the GEDCOM file.

Could you adjust your naming policy to have a prefix letter or number to identify its group?
e.g. D for DNA, F for Friends, etc.

Not sure what you mean by being "used to just clicking on the Project folder".
Do you mean in the File > Project Window clicking on the Project name?
But that Project name is used for the Project folder, the .fh_proj file, the .fh_data folder, and the .ged file.
They all need that name for the Project structure to behave correctly.

You could have free-standing GEDCOM files, but they do not support several powerful Project features.
e.g.
If you add any Media they lose important management features such as GEDCOM & Media ZIP backups, and the ability to easily move to another PC location.
Also the auto Snapshot backup of GEDCOM files is lost.
See how_to:v4:understanding_projects#project_benefits|> Project Benefits.

So my advice is to stay with Projects, adjust their naming policy, merge a few, and don't worry about the sub-folders.

[Sue036]

Hi Mike,

I've been thinking about this and it's true that I can easily add prefixes to the Project names to group them together in pretty much any way I want to. As I don't need to alter the existing Project names in any other way, it won't disrupt my existing naming policy. In fact, the problem with my existing naming policy is that it doesn't already group the things that are alike together! Also, as it's a fairly simple thing to do, I can just go for a set of prefixes without worrying too much whether the ones chosen will always be the best ... because I can always change them again if I need to. This is actually easier than using sub-folders, since the presence of the sub-folder makes it more difficult to open the Projects that are in the sub-folder (yes, I did mean that unless the Project files are in a sub-folder you can just click on the Project name in the File > Project Window to open the Project).

It also strikes me that I could make life a lot easier for myself by making more use of the option to set the Project I am working on NOW as the default for FH to open on start-up, rather than insisting on keeping it set to open the Project that I believe that I should be working on?!

Thank you for your advice, which has made me think much more carefully about what I was trying to achieve and why my existing set-up was giving me so much trouble.

Sue

[Sue036]

Btw I have just found a use for sub-folders - they are useful for storing FH Projects that you'll probably never need again because you've merged them into your main Project. Worth keeping for a while, at least, and don't clutter anything up in the meantime.

[tatewise]

It would be better to save an FH Full Backup of the Project and then More Tasks > Delete Project altogether, so it just exists in your Backup folder rather than comprise the FH Project structures.

[Sue036]

It would be better to save an FH Full Backup of the Project and then More Tasks > Delete Project altogether, so it just exists in your Backup folder rather than comprise the FH Project structures.

I have already done that, of course, and also backed up the backups on an external drive.

OK, you're right.

I have a feeling that you're the sort of person that would also decimate the almost 5K emails in my inbox (all of which I have read and either dealt with or chosen to ignore)? I MIGHT want to read them again though??

[tatewise]

Doh!
I hope those 5k Emails are not actually in your Inbox which can dramatically slow down your Email server/client.
I do keep a lot of Emails but organised into sub-folders in much the same way as my documents are not all in the Windows Documents folder but organised into sub-folders. I also backup & purge my Emails & Contacts to a separate database file to keep the active database a more manageable size.

[E Wilcock]

You are quite right not to delete emails. I lost important email for 1991-1992 because of aol inconsistencies about back up.

I dont like having a crowded list in the project folder. My system in TMG, and also fh when the time comes, is to use an additional sub folder called Completed, created in windows explorer. Projects I have finished are put there. Sometimes I saved a Project as xxxxold. Or old plus a year date on which it was saved. FWW2017 is my First World War database as it was in 2017.
I also had a folder for Friends' trees where I had stored trees worked out for people I knew.
Trees that originated in other software and have been worked on in fh have fh added to the name. So Wilcockfh cannot be confused with previous version from TMG.

[Sue036]

You both make useful points.

I do keep a lot of emails in my inbox, only because I find it tiresome to spend ages going through them to delete the dross and save the interesting but unimportant ones.

All of the important emails are safely stored somewhere else.

Nothing is irreplaceable. I used to make the mistake of storing my emails on my PC, only to lose them all whenever a PC died or the client software was no longer maintained. Some were more recently lost when an email provider decided that I couldn't keep free access to their server any more. I had already saved the most important ones so I let the rest go.

As for FH Projects, I'm gradually moving away from having multiple trees and towards having something that, however imperfect, is at any rate as complete as it can be for now. I've discovered that a tree that you can't share with anyone because it only has some of the relevant people in it is of limited value. Also, if I have to keep maintaining multiple views of a subset of people then many of the other benefits of having a digital tree are lost. My original idea was to have a 'Master' tree for each main family with only things that I had fully verified and to keep additional trees for more uncertain research results. I now think it's better to have one tree per family and to reflect any uncertainty within that tree (a simple note such as 'her ancestry is unconfirmed as original PRs not yet consulted' will do, especially when the detail is readily accessible elsewhere, whether on paper or digitally).

In all of this, I don't keep ANY source information in my FH (or TMG) Projects so I am not a typical user and that will be reflected in my approach to maintaining my Project files.

What is a 'finished' Project? I have none of those and don't expect to, ever.

I agree that it's important to keep track of Gedcoms received from other researchers, but I don't keep those in my FH Projects folder.