I’m in the process of cleaning up a big mess caused by using the “merge sources” and “merge citations” features without understanding their limitations. That’s on me (I guess I should have researched it more first) but as I’m fixing this, I was thinking about how many clicks this is taking and wondered why there aren’t more ‘helper’ features in that area. Sources and citations have to be among the most used features in the system. I think some additional features would save a lot of time for users.
When you copy a source, also copy the citations associated to that source. It currently only copies the source fields, as far as I can tell. (This might not be needed if you implement item #2).
It would be very helpful to have a “move or copy” feature for citations that would allow the user to copy a citation and/or to move it to a different source instead of having to re-enter it from scratch.
Ditto for media files. It would be helpful to move media records from one source or citation to another as well as to copy the media link so you can use it on another citation. (Not talking about the actual files, just the record that RM keeps about that media item).
If you’re not going to fix the issue that the Merge All Duplicate Citations and Merge All Duplicate Sources functions don’t look at the media files or web tags, please at least add a warning message so people don’t do what I did.
This might just be me as a newer user (about a year and a half in RM) but I don’t see a way in the application that I can see the source, its attached citation and the attached media in the application in a single view. You have to keep drilling down through screens. This results in a lot of clicks. When you have dozens or even hundreds of sources, citations and media files to reconcile, it’s hard to keep track of what you’re working on while you’re moving from window to window. Yes, I could probably get this with a SQL query, but I’m not a developer.
It would be extremely helpful if the media page had a filter to view the list of files with broken links. A list is available from the Enhanced Properties list, but it doesn’t jump to the sources page when clicking on it, and that window has to be closed before you can move anywhere else in RM. I ended up dropping the list into an Excel file to work from, and that worked, but it was kludgy.
I know I’m asking for a lot here but hopefully room can be made for at least some of these features on a roadmap for the application. Also, please let me know if I’m missing something or not understanding the features. I’m trainable, but I have already watched all your YouTube videos, read through the available documentation, and checked the community for ideas, so I feel like I have tried to do my homework.
On your #3, you can sort of do this one already. For example, click on the media icon in the Edit Person screen. You can get the same effect in the media list itself.
You can then paste the path into the search box for the Add Media panel after choosing the Select Existing Media option. That is still way clickier than it ought to be, but it does work pretty well for me. One caution is not to use the default Add New Media option by accident. Doing so will cause the media file to be linked into RM twice, which I think is either a bug or if not a bug is just a bad design.
This particular clickiness issue with trying to find all the media for a person goes all the way back to Family Origins, predecessor to RM. The issue was still there when there was a complete rewrite to create RM1. The issue was still there when there was a complete rewrite to create RM4. The issue was still there when there was a complete rewrite to create RM8. The issue has been much complained about through the years.
I just sort of accept the problem at this point. I have from time to time written SQLite scripts to look for places where there should be a media link but where there is no media link. But curiously, what I’m doing for the most part now is to publish my data to Web pages using a program called GedSite. And then I often do not actually publish those pages publicly except for very well researched people who are no longer living.
In other words, I’m finding it easier to see my RM data in Web pages produced by GedSite than to see the same RM data in RM. Doing it with GedSite is still one person at a time. But all the facts, sources, citations, and images are brought forth onto a single screen. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that quite a few GedSite users use it as more of a viewing tool for their RM data than for actually publishing public Web pages. Here is a link to a Sample Page
And in fairness, there is hope. RM now supports several icons at the far left of the Edit Person screen which provide additional function. One of those icons is a Media icon where you can see all the media for this person in one drop down list. I don’t find the drop down list to be very user friendly and I don’t use it very much. But it does exist. Perhaps the format of the drop down list could be made much more user friendly in the future.
Thank you Jerry. I didn’t realize I could do this, but it will definitely speed up the process. I have noticed the problem about things getting linked in twice, and I’m just cleaning that up as I go.
Now I also need to figure out how to get rid of all the extra media files that were downloaded from FamilySearch and Ancestry as I seem to have a ton of duplicates. I’m not sure if that’s due to how the download function works or if it was user error, but while disc storage is cheap, I don’t want to keep a bunch of duplicates. Unfortunately, it appears that they aren’t files with duplicate names- which Windows would have caught - but they are the exact same image. Just one more thing for the cleanup list!
Your comments about clickyness and the ability to see all your data on a person at once is why I still prefer the less powerful FTM 2019 (2024 update in the works?). Its edit screen shows all media as part of the list of events for that person.
