Family Historian User Group

I'm not sure if there's a way round this problem:

I've been using FH for a couple of years now and have added several non-embedded photos to my FH data file. I've now purchased a laptop and have successfully transferred the FH software, data file and photo folders & jpegs to the new PC. Unfortunately the laptop isn't displaying any of my photos. I can see the reason for this: the file reference is slightly different: FH shows the path (as per my old PC) as: C:Documents and SettingsOwnerMy DocumentsMy Pictures[folder name][file name]. On the laptop the folder 'Owner' is 'Martin & Jean' (my wife's and my names). I tried changing 'Martin & Jean' to 'Owner' on the laptop but the computer wouldn't have it and displayed the message: 'Martin & Jean is a Windows System Folder and is required for Windows to run properly. It cannot be removed or renamed.'

As I would like to use FH on both PCs and subsequently move files between them using a memory stick, the photo location details will always be as per the original PC. I guess I can add all new photos via the old PC and then resign myself to not seeing them on the laptop but it would be nice if the laptop were able to display photos also.

Any ideas?

Regards, Martin Page

ID:1288

You can use 'Work with External File Links...' from the Tools menu to adjust the links to your pictures.

If you create a folder at a fixed location on your C: drive - say 'C:Family Pictures', you can store your pictures there, rather in 'My Documents', the full address of which changes depending on your username on the particular PC.

Create a folder of the same name on each PC, then once you have used 'Work with External File Links...' to adjust the links in your FH data file, it should behave the same on either system.

Personally I store my GEDCOM files in a folder called 'C:Family Tree' and my linked pictures in a subfolder 'C:Family TreePictures'. This allows me to copy both data and pictures by simply dragging the Family Tree folder onto or off of a memory stick.

Mike

Thanks Mike, that would seem to do the job. One problem though: through messy jpeg file-keeping on my part, although the majority of my files are in one particular folder, there are several files in other sub-folders within the 'My Pictures' folder; therefore I need to locate them first. A couple of questions: 1. Is it possible to print a list of all my photos from somewhere in the Multimedia window showing file names paths etc? & 2. Can I just make copies of the relevant files in the new folder that you suggest or should the files be moved; i.e. will the External Links procedure not mind whether they are either copied or moved?

Cheers, Martin.

You can create a query to give you that information.  I created a custom query based on the standard query 'Links to Multimedia Objects' and added a 'File' column - this shows filenames with full paths.

You can copy or move the files, it won't make any difference as long as they appear in the new location you require.

Mike

Thanks a lot Mike - mission accomplished! Everything's now running as expected. One thing though: when I was running the query, I noticed several photos in the database that had no record links to them. Curiously, there was even a picture of a friend's wedding, which was nothing to do with my genealogy research whatsoever! Just to tidy things up, I can move the extraneous pictures out of my new FH piccies file and presumably just delete the zero links via the mulimedia query...?

Thanks again.

Regards, Martin.