* Project Media File Locations

[Hanning]

Hi All
In the process of tidying up I have moved all my media from the Media folder within the Project to other locations on my hard drive and relinked everything. Thats all worked well, and I thought I would be very smart and make shortcuts to those other folders so that when I copy mediae and wish to paste I can easily navigate to the appropriate folder. However the shortcuts do not appear, so I am guessing that there is no flexibility in managing the storage of copied and pasted items with FH? And that one must save as an external file and afterwards link? (Or accept the Media folder then go and change everything afterwards....)
Just checking that I have not missed a trick here...
Marlene

[Mark1834]

Correct - the only difference between the two situations is that linked file paths are stored with an absolute path description (e.g. C:\Users\Mark\Documents\... etc) instead of a relative one starting from the project media file (e.g. Census\... etc).

There is no support for file links, but they can be useful in File Explorer so you can quickly navigate to your preferred storage location when setting up the link.

[tatewise]

Marlene, you are correct. You must move the Media file to the external location folder using Windows File Explorer before using FH to link it into your Project.

Are you aware that such external Media files are NOT included in any FH Project Backups?

Are you aware that when (not if) you move your Projects to a new PC then you will have to repair the broken Media links?

[ADC65]

Also, I have read questions from a number of users that are not aware that you can create a folder structure within the project Media folder - I think some users believe they have to store all files in a flat-folder structure, whereas in fact you can create as many directories and sub-directories as you want. I mention this, Marlene, in case you moved the files to external folders for this reason.

[Hanning]

Thank you all. Thank you Adrian for your suggestion of subfolders within the Media folder - I had tried that (and it worked well) but I still had too much stuff, so to speak.
I think if I was starting all over again, I would do it differently - I would decide on a consistent file naming convention and minimal storage structure (eg not too many folders and subfolders.) I would then use the finding option in Explorer, or preferably an external tool such as Everything from VoidTools, which is so fast. I think we bring our hangovers about organisation and the filing cabinet mentality to our research, whereas perhaps we need to move past that and harness the power and technological tools we have at our disposal.
Mike, I didn't realise that I could move the Media folder and relink - I will do that for new projects.