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jmcbeth

transferring project and exhibits to new computer

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Hi,

 

A month ago my much beloved laptop with XP died, so I was forced to upgrade to Vista a bit earlier than desired (I was waiting for SP1 but c'est la vie). I'm loving the new computer, but it's brought up a little TMG issue that I suspected would be a problem for me - transferring exhibits. Maybe there is a simple way around this someone can point me at?

 

I've read and followed the instructions for running TMG on Vista, and moved everything over (http://www.whollygenes.com/forums201/index.php?showtopic=7462), it seems to be working fine. When I open up my TMG file, the exhibits are still there as thumbnails, but if I double click on the image in the exhibits window it tells me "File e:\MyDocuments\[my file path] not found, there is thumbnail 00019.jpg only". The path to my exhibits folder is the same on my new computer as on the old one, so I'm not sure what the hold up is. I've only bothered with small jpgs of individuals at this point, so not much is lost, but I'd love to reconnect them to their source folder. Any suggestions?

 

-Joyce

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Preferences / Current project Options / Advanced

Make sure that the exhibit path points to your exhibit folder.

 

File / Maintenance / Validate File Integrity

Check 'Search for missing external exhibits'

Click [selcify the folders to search...]

Add the path to every folder containing exhibits.

Click [save] to save those paths

Click [OK] to run VFI.

 

This should relink all exhibits. This process assumes that each exhibit has a unique name.

 

TMG Utility also has a feature to update exhibit paths so this could also be used to solve your problem.

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Thanks Jim, that seems to be fixing it. Just to add to your method above, in case anyone else runs across this problem - the program does not go into subfolders so you need to select every single subfolder individually. A bit of a pain, maybe I'll suggest this be changed for future editions. I'll give TMG Utility a try for it too though and update my comment here, maybe it is a bit more user friendly?

Edited by jmcbeth

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Just to add to your method above, in case anyone else runs across this problem - the program does not go into subfolders so you need to select every single subfolder individually.

That's why above I wrote: "Add the path to every folder containing exhibits."

 

You add the paths to all folders containing exhibits. This folder list is saved for that project. The next time that you need to run this feature of VFI, you already have the folder list constructed.

 

A bit of a pain, maybe I'll suggest this be changed for future editions.

It's by design for a number of reasons. A recursive search could really mess up the exhibit links depending on the base folder chosen for the search and depending on how some users name and store their exhibits. The link will be corrected to the first file found of the filename being searched for. If the user has two or more files with the same name, the link could be made to the wrong exhibit.

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Thanks Jim, that seems to be fixing it. Just to add to your method above, in case anyone else runs across this problem - the program does not go into subfolders so you need to select every single subfolder individually. A bit of a pain, maybe I'll suggest this be changed for future editions. I'll give TMG Utility a try for it too though and update my comment here, maybe it is a bit more user friendly?
I am not sure whether you'd call it user friendly or not.

 

TMG Utility's Find and Replace feature can be used to modify exhibit paths. If the paths have changed in a systematic way, then Find and Replace would probably do the job pretty quickly and easily. For example, if all the paths used to start with "c:\program files\tmg\pictures\..." and now they start with "c:\exhibits\..." then Find and Replace will fix things up in a jiffy. If paths have changed in a more random fashion (perhaps after reorganizing files and folders into a different structure), then the TMG feature Jim described is a better way to go.

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Thanks Jim, that seems to be fixing it. Just to add to your method above, in case anyone else runs across this problem - the program does not go into subfolders so you need to select every single subfolder individually. A bit of a pain, maybe I'll suggest this be changed for future editions. I'll give TMG Utility a try for it too though and update my comment here, maybe it is a bit more user friendly?

 

Unlike eggs, it is best to keep all of your exhibits in one basket (and all of your genealogy data in one dataset).

 

I highly recommend a single folder in the Root, where all exhibits are to reside (I once had the nightmare of multiple exhibit folders). Maintenance, management, backups and life in general are so much simpler that way.

 

If you are worried about exhibit sizes, I have about 9600 TMG exhibit files that occupy about 0.6 GigaBytes in a single folder for comparison, with no problems.

 

It is very easy to do. Add the new folder in the Root. Move all of your exhibit files to it. Run VFI specifying only that folder (you should also change the exhibit folder name in Preferences and delete unused folders, at your leisure). TMG will thenceforth be quite "user friendly" to you.

 

Best wishes, whatever you decide to do,

Mike Talbot

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I am not so worried about file sizes, I'm only linking in very small jpg photos for each person at this point. My main problem with these right now is not linking them into TMG but preventing windows vista explorer from crashing because it doesn't seem to like any jpgs I've produced with photoshop or paint (crashes if more than 2 of these in a folder being viewed). This is the only problem I've had with the OS but it is quite a pain when working with photos for genealogy. Saving as tifs is fine so I'm doing that where possible. Anyway, have taken your point about a single folder, will consider it for future reorganizations if/when this explorer issue ever gets sorted out.

 

I highly recommend a single folder in the Root, where all exhibits are to reside (I once had the nightmare of multiple exhibit folders). Maintenance, management, backups and life in general are so much simpler that way.

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I am not so worried about file sizes, I'm only linking in very small jpg photos for each person at this point. My main problem with these right now is not linking them into TMG but preventing windows vista explorer from crashing because it doesn't seem to like any jpgs I've produced with photoshop or paint (crashes if more than 2 of these in a folder being viewed). This is the only problem I've had with the OS but it is quite a pain when working with photos for genealogy. Saving as tifs is fine so I'm doing that where possible. Anyway, have taken your point about a single folder, will consider it for future reorganizations if/when this explorer issue ever gets sorted out.

 

Just an idea, however, how much RAM does your new machine have? The consensus in our local PC community seems to be that if you have Vista, you should have a minimum of 2GB of RAM, particularly if you do anything with photos........this could be at the root of your crashes.

 

B)

Joan

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