Rearrange Media window

I have a windows 10 pc and rootsmagic 9 latest version. When I go to the rearrange window part of the file name is cut off. Is there a way to expand the field to see complete name?

I tried to recreate the issue using RM9 and Windows 11 but could not. In Win 11, the full file string is shown with the bottom scroll available as expected. Hopefully someone with Windows 10 and RM9 can recreate the issue.

Have you tried hovering the cursor over the far-right column border? When over the right spot, the cursor might change to indicate the column width can be adjusted by the click-hold-drag motion used with spreadsheet columns.

Sorry to be so dense on this one, but how do you get to the Rearrange Media window?

EVERYONE knows how to do THAT!!!

From the Edit Person window, click Media in the left menu then click the up and down arrow icon on the right side of the bar that lets you select list or grid view.

On Mac, as @KimberlyGreen stated, I can resize the Rearrange Media window but there is no way to resize the Caption versus Filename columns relative to each other. Also, there is no way to expand the Filename column width to the full size of the window when scrolling right as the Screenshot shows.

If you have many characters in your file path and/or filename then the only solution I am aware of is to drag the whole window large enough to eventually see the whole filename. As I recall this same ‘column resizing’ behavior has existed since RM8 in several places.

Bizarre. I guess I had missed that one. I opened RM9, and the feature was there. So I went back to RM8, and the feature was not there. Then I resumed using RM9, and the feature had mysteriously disappeared. I opened and closed the Edit Person screen three or four times (nothing else), and the feature suddenly reappeared. It’s very puzzling.

The missing left sidetabs on the Edit Person window just disappeared again very mysteriously. I have no idea what I did to cause it, nor do I know what I did previously to get the sidetabs back again. This time I decided at least to get a screenshot, which is posted below.

I can replicate the bad behavior of the Rearrange Media screen as described by others. It’s even worse for me than it is for others. Namely, the number of captions I have in my RM database is exactly zero. But the completely blank captions column occupies half the width of the Rearrange Captions window, so I don’t get a lot of benefit out of making the Rearrange Captions window wider.

A previous version of RM (RM5, I think, but I’m not sure) destroyed a bunch of my captions because of a design change in the way captions were handled. Using the philosophy of “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”, I decided to delete all my captions from RM and never to trust RM again with my captions.

In retrospect, I don’t think it was that irrational of a decision, even though it was a decision taken in anger. Keeping your captions in your genealogy database means that if your images are ever separated from your genealogy database then your captions are lost. So I went a different way with captions to keep the captions with the image files.

RM8 and RM9 seem to place a great deal of emphasis on captions in the screen design and display, and the emphasis remains even when the caption field is blank. I find the emphasis on captions very annoying when working with media in RM9. For example, captions and file names are often stacked on top of each other instead of being in separate columns as they should be. The result for me is that I can only get half as many files listed in a given space in List mode as I could pre-RM8. And the Rearrange Media window is a case where the caption and file name are side by side in columns as they should be everywhere in RM9, but where the column for the caption expands to be as wide as the column for the filename, even when the caption is blank.

Given that the feature did not exist in RM8, it is no surprise that you didn’t see it there. As for the rest of it, I tried going back and forth and couldn’t make it disappear so I have no guess as to what happened. Sounds like RM8 and 9 are stumbling over each other’s settings. It might be like the issue in RM9 when there was no Association fact on files imported from RM7, which was later fixed.

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Your guess is probably correct. I shut down both RM8 and RM9, and started up only RM9. At that point, the sidetabs on the Edit Person screen re-appeared in RM9.

My Rearrange Media screen has the blank caption column on the left half of the screen and the file name column on the right half of the screen. The Rearrange Media screen posted by Luckie has the file names on the left half of the screen and nothing on the right half of the screen. “Nothing” is not the same thing as a “blank caption column”. That difference seems really strange.

If you move the scrollbar at the bottom of the Rearrange Media window all the way to the right you should be able to recreate the screenshot that Luckie posted.

Indeed I can. My original interpretation was completely incorrect.

I tried to expand the field but could not get anything when I hovered of the edge of the column as in excel. It look like there is plenty of room. I did not include the caption part of the rearrange Media in my screen print. I could not expand that column. I would like to see the complete file name. I use a full screen. Thanks for all the comments.
Luckie

I did not take a full screen print. I have the caption column on left and the filename column on the right and after that blank area.

Yes. Now that I know what to look for, I think that’s what everybody is seeing. The columns definitely need to be able to change size. It’s not clear if an automatic size change or a manual size change would be best.

On it’s face, would seem that an automatic size change so that no characters from the caption are lost and no characters from the file name are lost would be best. But that could lead to a horizontal slider bar if both the caption and the file name are extremely long. I could live with that if it would remember the slider bar’s position.

I really I think the column widths should be under user control and should be remembered. Putting the column widths under user control without remembering them would only be doing half the job.

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@Luckie, if you can you should change the tag on this post to enhancement request, because that’s really what this is. The user is unable to resize the table columns within the Rearrange Media window which makes the filename unreadable when the file path + file name are long. Jerry’s suggestion nails it for me – the user should be able to resize the columns in the table and the column sizing should be remembered. While this is not a bug, it is certainly a User Experience deficiency and your screenshot clearly shows the problem.

Adding @rzamor1 for awareness.

Confirming the ability to resize the Rearrange Media columns has been reported to development.

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In the edit person media panel the up down arrows at the top right open a new rearrange media window only for that person which does show the long file names if you expand the window. If you move an item and then go to the all media window that item is moved but loses its position as soon as you switch sorting.
In the media window the up down arrows simply change the sort from file name to file caption.
Overall pretty useless handling of media compared to FTM.

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I get no media to rearrange!! Guess it doesn’t see my media

Same here. Apparently, unless there’s more than a screenful of media names… rearrange is not on the table.

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