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JohnR

V8/9 Exhibits

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I was updating/moving TMG 9.1 onto my laptop from my descktop before a trip. The exhibits went missing on my desktop and I found them in C:\Users\John\Documents\The Master Genealogist v8\Exhibits whilst every other directory was pointing to TMG9 (This was after I had uninstalled V8)

 

I have no recollection of overwriting the defaults, so what were they doing hiding there, and how do I get all my exhibits in TMG9 to stop looking for their files in V8? I have had to recreat the V8 exhibits path so that I can see my exhibits in context.

 

It might be worth checking your current project options as I suppose I should have done.

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John,

 

You didn't overwrite any defaults. The "defaults" are just that - default values for new Projects you created. They have nothing to do with existing Projects.

 

When you move an existing Project to a new version of TMG the paths set in it are left intact. That's the whole reason for having paths in the project, so each project can have it's own paths and you can keep everything separate for different Projects if you want.

 

Your Project now in TMG 9 is using the old exhibit paths because of one or more of the following:

  • You never moved the exhibit files to a new location.
  • You never told TMG to find the existing files in their new location.
  • You never told TMG to put new exhibits in the new location.

Only this last is accomplished by changing the path in Preferences > Current Project Options > Advanced.

 

See may article on Moving Data to New Computer or Version for details on how to do all three.

 

In my opinion putting exhibit files in the default location, under a version-specific folder, is a poor choice. If they had been placed in a "version-neutral" location you wouldn't need to deal with this in the course of an upgrade.

 

BTW, you should check the other paths, not just the one for exhibits, because they too will remain as before, which may not be what you want if you have used the default locations for them.

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Thanks Terry, I don't see why you have to provide the help for TMG !

 

Your Project now in TMG 9 is using the old exhibit paths because of one or more of the following:

  • You never moved the exhibit files to a new location.
  • You never told TMG to find the existing files in their new location.
  • You never told TMG to put new exhibits in the new location.

As far as I can remember TMG never asked me to do any of these things. The only question I ever get asked by TMG is the location of the Project (which it asks me every time I load it because it wants the serial number each and every time). I assume that after that it can work out for itself that exhibits are part of a Project. There is no health warning for Add/Remove TMG8 when uninstalling the old and redundant programme (which I find through your answer is not redundant).

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Unlocking the program and asking if you want to use the default exhibits path have nothing to do with one another.

 

The program asks if you want to use the default exhibits path only if the exhibits path in Preferences is not valid.

 

Anytime that you update a project to a new version of TMG, you need to check all of the paths on the Advanced tab in Preferences and make any necessary corrections.

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Your Project now in TMG 9 is using the old exhibit paths because of one or more of the following:

  • You never moved the exhibit files to a new location.
  • You never told TMG to find the existing files in their new location.
  • You never told TMG to put new exhibits in the new location.

As far as I can remember TMG never asked me to do any of these things.

John,

 

No, it never asks. :(

 

Removing the old program itself doesn't really make any difference - that doesn't delete any of your data. However, if you should decide the data files used for TMG8 are no longer needed and delete them before you figure out the exhibits there are still the active ones you would have a problem.

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I really have to ask how the blazes are we meant to know that a new programme decides to use old data files without moving them to wherever the new files should be. It was only yesterday that I found that TMG9 was using TMG8 exhibits. I wonder at what stage TMG9 decided to stop using TMG8 data files and what data I have consequently lost. It is only today that by removing TMG8 exhibits TMG9 asks for the first time if I want to use the default files.

Why didn't it ask this when I first bought the upgrade?

The manual says that file structures change sufficiently often that their publication is not practical and that these file structures are now posted on our website - I can't and haven't been able to find them for some time.

Grrrr.

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My exhibits are in a "version-neutral" location - - a separate folder in my c:drive called MY DATABASES. And this folder name is referenced as the "Exhibit folder" in file/preferences/advanced. btw, this is also the location I use for the tmg backups, which then gets moved to an offsite location once a week.

 

I can see a big headache if a user wants to move the exhibits to a different folder. Why? ... the path to the each external exhibit is stored individually in tmg. A user would have to re-add each exhibit, one-by-one, to re-establish the new path. I'm a new user, so I haven't looked at the available utilities yet. Perhaps there is a utility that "fixes" all exhibit paths when we move them to a different folder (?).

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Perhaps there is a utility that "fixes" all exhibit paths when we move them to a different folder (?).

 

See the 'Missing Exhibits' help topic.

 

File / Maintenance / Validate File Integrity / use the external exhibits feature to update the paths for relocated exhibits

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