* RE-use Sources across different projects

[ruthhenrietta]

Hello,

I use FH for researching different unrelated families but who are connected to a particular period in history. I therefore tend to start a new project for each family. The sources I use - books, databases, etc. - tend to be the same across projects, but every time I start a new project I have to add in the source information anew which is time consuming and irritating. Or am I missing a trick?!

[Gowermick]

I therefore tend to start a new project for each family.

Why?

Fh is quite happy having lots of unrelated individual in a project. To make the different families easy to identify, you could give each person an ID to indicate which family they belong too, it will enable you to share your resources and place names. Furthermore, should a person from one family marry a person from another family, you won’t have duplication of individuals, and you won’t suffer from keeping both trees up to date in two separate projects.
It also makes it easier to spot when individuals from different trees marry if they are in same project.

Even without custom ID’s, each member of tree is given a ‘Pool’ number, so everyone in same tree will have same pool number (shown in records window) . People in other trees will have their own pool number, so will be easy to spot in records window. Should you join two trees, the pool numbers will be changed so they will all have same pool number.

[tatewise]

I agree with Mike that keeping unrelated families in one Project may well be easier than you realise.

However, if you really want to keep them separate it should be possible to migrate common Sources, Places, etc.
Use the File > Import/Export > Export > GEDCOM File... command but do NOT select any Indiviudal records.
Choose what other Records to Exclude but untick Unconnected Records.
You probably need to set Media Records to Exclude and Source Records to Include.
Click OK and ignore the warning about no Individual records being selected.

If starting a New Project... from scratch you should be able to use Import a GEDCOM file and choose the GEDCOM exported above.

[ruthhenrietta]

Thanks both - I can understand why it seems crazy starting a new project... it makes sense to me because of what I'm doing, but I'll think again... in the mean time, I'll do the exporting as suggested

[E Wilcock]

I have four large place studies and keep them separate.
To copy the sources. Following Mike's instructions when I was new to fh, I copied the fh project with the sources. Created a dummy person to facilitate deletion of everyone else. Then deleted all the people in the copy and was ready to start again retaining the sources.