Best practice to store files for media, pictures, links etc

RootsMagic
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As a complete newcomer to RootsMagic11, I want to ensure that I follow the best practices, so as to ensure that I don’t have problems further down the line.

The family tree is virtually complete, and looking pretty good.

I have a folder on my pc “Roots Magic” where everything is stored, it also backs up to cloud.

My question is, how should I keep for example, media files (pictures and images), should everything be in one folder, or should they be separated?

Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated.

One further question, when searching through the family tree, it’s not always possible to know the names to look for, other products allow you to zoom in/out and see everything more clearly – is this possible with Roots, or is there another way to see things.

I am sure there are many more questions, but let’s leave it at this for the moment.

Thanks,

Colin

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“Family Tree is nearly complete…”

that gave me pause – unless you have only a few generations – and technically unless no more children are born – it will continue to grow.

as for media – initially I used one folder. I changed that because it was better to have subfolders
below is how I have categorized them

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no & yes - it possible to view things in other ways but likely the way you are looking for with the regular views –

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descendant view might be the closest to what you attempting it will show everyone down from starting person up to 7 generations.

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I have several RootsMagic folders–one for each family line I am researching. Each have subfolders by type of data I am storing. See below for a list of subfolders I use for each family line folder

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This works well except that when I open RootsMagic, I first need to change the folder settings to point to the folder/subfolders for the family line I plan to update.

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There once was a program called “Roots”, so RootsMagic users usually refer to “RootsMagic” or to “RM” to avoid confusion.

RM does not have a view that is similar to the “all in one view” that you can see on sites such as FamilySearch or Ancestry. RM does have a rich set of views in the main “people” screen. These include the Family View, the Pedigree View, the Descendant View, the People view, and the Couple view. I use the Descendant View a great deal, and I find it most useful when set to show 2 or 3 generations rather than the default of 7. The Family view is the only one that shows a person’s parents and children at the same time.

I switch between the views quite a bit. My sense is that most RM users do as well. The People view does not show relationships directly because it is just a list of people. But it includes very powerful filtering and searching capabilities because you can filter by name or by group, and the ability to create groups in RM is very powerful. These days, I use mostly the Descendant view and the People view, switching back and forth between them a great deal. I used to use mostly Pedigree View and Family View. So your usage can change over time.

RM also has smaller “views” in the bottom half of the side panel. The side panel can be on the left side of the screen or the right side of the screen, and it defaults to the right side of the screen. I prefer it on the left, but it’s your choice. It’s common to use the smaller “views” in the side panel in conjunction with the larger views in the main panel to achieve a very agreeable combined effect. For example, you can use the Index tab in the side panel to do the same filtering and searching that you can do in the main People View. And the Life Summary tab in the side panel provides an excellent summary of the person’s parents, siblings, spouses, and children. The Life Summary tab has three subsections you can expand or collapse. I usually keep the first subsection collapsed to make room for showing the parents, siblings, spouses, and children.

I keep my media in subfolders. It’s important to realize that RM itself doesn’t store media files nor does it put them anywhere. RM only links to where you have put them.

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I like others use Subfolders to organize media (ie: Census has a folder for each year 1850,1860, etc).

Be aware that if you have an Ancestry tree that you Download to RM, all the media will be in ONE folder called (database name)_media.

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that should not really be necessary – I must be misunderstanding

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That actually sounds pretty problematic because of the way RM manages its links to media files. Well, let my clarify. It may depend on your precise workflow. Do you have all your family lines in the same database, or do you have each family line in a separate database?

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yeah it sounds like he might have diff databases – but if not that would be my confusion.
If the list of folders is for each database – the makes sense from an organizational POV – but could be problematic by the design of RM and the way it manages folders by default – I think there have been various feature enchantments in past related to that in the past

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The key request has been for a Media Folders option that’s a database option rather than a program wide option. I’m wondering if that’s the problem we are running into here. And that’s why I asked the question I did.

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I have six separate RM data files, one for each major family line I research. Each family line has a dedicated folder and four subfolders titled backup, data, export and reports. The data sub-folders contain the RM data file and a media folder like “Jones_media”. The media folder contains both Ancestry.com media and other media files related that the family line. So, whenever I open a RM file, I always check the RM settings to make sure I have the correct folder settings. Otherwise, I could end up with images and reports being stored to the wrong folder/sub-folder. For my situation, it would be better if RM retained the file folder settings in each RM file settings instead of the RM program settings.

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if you use Drag-n-drop method to link files (it will not create duplicates)– then what it set in the folder option does not matter.

THANKS the logic makes sense though might have some challenges the way RM stores settings

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Thanks to everyone, I have had a lot of positive replies, but yours, kevync1985 looks more along the lines I was thinking, I want to start off on a good practice basis, and not have to change things further down the line.

Currently I have a folder on my pc “Roots Magic”, which backs up to cloud, and contains my main tree – roots magic file, and a subfolder “media”

My thoughts were to create subfolders, such as births, deaths, marriage, residence, census, photos etc.

Then within those folders, create another set of subfolders, 1600-1700, 1701-1800, 1801-1900,1901.2000, 2001-2100 etc.

Each document, picture etc., would be individually named, for example in pictures bob … 1952, peter …1972, olive… 1847, etc.

The documents would be named bob … birth 1952, peter …marriage 1995, olive … death 1881 etc.

I know this may sound overkill, and a lot of work, but if it’s done in the beginning, it would keep everything in a nice clean order.

What do you think?

Thanks,

Colin

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Yeah, I think I am running up against that “program wide” hurdle. I want to make a shareable file on a flash drive but when I set separate media folders for different files the links for the media files are broken because each file is now points to the same folder.

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If the main “media” folder contained sub folders, would that work, because you are only pointing to the one “media” folder, all the others would be inside. Hopefully someone with far more experience can advise.

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I am unsure but I asked in another thread is it best practice just to have one main “media” folder. Your suggestion may be the answer.

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It seems a logical way, but let’s see what others with more experience say.

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Yes, that’s pretty much what you are going to have to do. That’s because the folder settings options are program wide rather than being for a specific database. And I didn’t realize that you weren’t just worried about the folder settings for the media files. You were worried about the folder settings for all your files.

By the way, I think your system of organizing your folders and files for your six family lines is an extremely good system. I wouldn’t change a thing if I were you. It’s just that RM’s way of managing files doesn’t support your system very well. There really is no way around changing all your folder settings when you change which family line you are working on.

A lot of RM users just put all their family lines into one big RM database. And that can work well. But there occasionally are messages from researchers who do genealogy for hire. In such cases, their situation is exactly like yours. They really need to keep the files for each of their clients completely separate from the files for the other clients. But even if you are not doing genealogy for hire, separate folders for separate family lines can still make very good sense.

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hey Colin-- just wanted to make sure that when you are using Roots Magic ( RM) that you have disable your cloud service until you are done and that only your backup is in the cloud?

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”One Big Folder” appears to be the way to go. On my other thread, I was informed that even when making a Shareable CD, (or flash drive for my purposes) RM automatically builds a single media folder for all files/databases including Tree Share files. All media links point to the single media folder. Thanks for yours and “thejerrybryan” assistance.

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The RM tool to “Fix broken media links” make the task of re-linking media that has moved location very straightforward as long as:

  1. Your folder structure is nested under a single folder
  2. There are not multiple media files with the same filename in different folders
  3. The media filename has not changed

You just choose the “A selected drive or folder” option and select the top level folder. RM will quickly sort things out.

Your media file naming strategy is more painful to change. And the filename is important if you do decide to change your folder strategy down the road.

For example, a few years ago I ended up changing my folder strategy significantly. It became clear that RM was not prioritizing enhancing it’s data privacy model with respect to the ability to restrict media transfers based on copyright or Personal Information (PI) designations. The only way to ensure compliance with copyright policy or prevent personal media from being uploaded to Ancestry was to put restricted media in a folder and temporarily rename the folder before the upload. (Renaming the media effectively breaks the links, preventing the file from being transferred.) I now have high level folders for media containing PI and for repositories that have copyright rules stating ‘personal use only’. The reorganization went quickly because I happen to put the name of the repository where I found the citation in the media filename.