Tuesday’s Tip – Media Files (Intermediate)

Tuesday's Tips provide brief how-to's to help you learn to use the Legacy Family Tree software with new tricks and techniques.

Media Files 

We get a lot of questions about the right way to handle media in Legacy. Here are a few tips that will help you keep everything running smoothly.

• It is a good idea to keep all of your Media in a single folder (sub-folders within this folder are perfectly okay). What you don't want is your media scattered all over your hard drive. It is also okay to have separate main media folders for each family file you have, if you have more than one.
• You do not have to use the Legacy default folder, The default folder is \Documents\Legacy Family Tree\Media. If you use another folder then simply tell Legacy where it is in Options > Customize > 6. Locations > Option 6.2. Notice that Option 6.2 has a (ff) behind it. This means it is Family File specific and that is why it is okay to have separate media folders for multiple family files. You can keep your media on another drive, partitioned or external hard drive, or on cloud storage. Again, all you have to do is let Legacy know where the media files are. If you are using Cloud storage be aware that your media is actually in the LOCAL cloud storage folder on your hard drive. This folder will automatically sync to the cloud service.
• Windows imposes a 260 character limit on file paths which include the drive letter and any spaces. You can read all about Windows file paths HERE. Here is my base file path, C:\Users\Michele\Documents\Legacy Family Tree\Media\ I have already used 52 characters. For those people that have a complex system of subfolders and/or file names you can easily get up to the Windows limit. If you are in that position, you might want to put your main media folder directly on the C: drive like this… C:\Media\ I am now down to 9 characters for my base path.
• You do not want to have media files that have the same name, for example, 50 files named deathcertificate.jpg. A lot of people do this and think it is okay because they have all of these files in different sub-folders. This is not a good idea. Every file should have a unique name. You will thank me if you ever had to re-link your media.  

• If you need to rename an image file do it from within the Picture Center (Tools > Picture Center) so that you don't lose your media link. Right now this only works for image files. If you rename a .pdf or other type of non image file you will need to manually re-link it.
• When you link a file please select the correct file type from the drop down menu (.jpg = picture, .pdf = document, .wav = sound, etc.)
• When working with images, please take a look at this excellent article that Jim Terry wrote.
• Run the Media Relinker (Tools > Media Relinker) periodically just to make sure everything is okay with your Media files. I always do a Check/Repair and run the Media Relinker before I backup my file.

I hope this information will help you keep your media organized and linked.

Find tech tips every day in the Facebook Legacy User Group. The group is free and is available to anyone with a Facebook account.

For video tech tips check out the Legacy Quick Tips page.  These short videos will make it easy for you to learn all sort of fun and interesting ways to look at your genealogy research.

Michele Simmons Lewis, CG^® is part of the Legacy Family Tree team at MyHeritage. She handles the enhancement suggestions that come in from our users as well as writing for Legacy News. You can usually find her hanging out on the Legacy User Group Facebook page answering questions and posting tips.