Migrating from another product - issue with pictures

[Adam Adshead]

Hi,

I'm testing out Reunion as a possible solution to help me migrate from Windows. The main Gedcom data import seems to be OK, but I'm having a problem with photos. The source program is a British product called Family Historian - it's really great but I desparately want to dump my Windows VM.

When looking in Reunion, the photos are of a greyed stock image with a red question mark. I assume this means it hasn't either imported or located the images. Unfortunately I can't see from any of the options where it thinks it is looking (the "Reveal in Finder" option is greyed out).

My images are in a number of different folders, based upon the family branch (Surname) and then the type of image (photo, certificate, census).

So for example for my direct branch I'd have the images stored as follows :

~/Documents/Genealogy/Adshead/Adshead Census/
~/Documents/Genealogy/Adshead/Adshead Images/
~/Documents/Genealogy/Adshead/Adshead Certificates/


I've tried resetting the default for multimedia to the root folder ~/Documents/Genealogy but this doesn't work.

Examining the Gedcom file with a text editor, I see this type of reference to the image :

1 _FILE \\.psf\.home\documents\geneaology\Adshead\Adshead Certificates\Adshead, John (I28) - Marriage Certificate.JPG

Just out of interest I changed all of the Windows directory references to Mac ending up with :

1 _FILE ~/Documents/geneaology/Adshead/Adshead Certificates/Adshead, John (I28) - Marriage Certificate.JPG

I then re-imported but that hasn't worked.

I'm sure the answer is obvious (or at least I hope so .... I've got a lot of images and I don't want to have to re-import each individually).

Can anyone help ?

Many thanks.

Adam.

[theKiwi]

Re: Migrating from another product - issue with pictures

Examining the Gedcom file with a text editor, I see this type of reference to the image :

1 _FILE \\.psf\.home\documents\geneaology\Adshead\Adshead Certificates\Adshead, John (I28) - Marriage Certificate.JPG

Just out of interest I changed all of the Windows directory references to Mac ending up with :

1 _FILE ~/Documents/geneaology/Adshead/Adshead Certificates/Adshead, John (I28) - Marriage Certificate.JPG

I then re-imported but that hasn't worked.

Well if the above is copy and paste, there's a spelling mistake in genealogy that may be a factor?

But even given the above, you should be able to go to the Preferences ------> Multimedia ------> Repair and have Reunion find all the images for you based on just their file name - does that work?

Roger

[Adam Adshead]

Re: Migrating from another product - issue with pictures

Thanks Roger.... the spelling mistake (whoops !) was just a typo in the post.

I've just tried the "repair missing links" option. Just to confirm, the multimedia folder is ~/Documents/Genealogy.

Reunion identifies 354 missing files but cannot find any. At the bottom of the report it says "(null)" was used 354 times...

This seems to imply that maybe it isn't searching down the folder hierarchy ?

[Mark]

Re: Migrating from another product - issue with pictures

Hi Adam,

Try editing the GEDCOM to completely remove any path information before importing it.

E.g., change:

1 _FILE \\.psf\.home\documents\geneaology\Adshead\Adshead Certificates\Adshead, John (I28) - Marriage Certificate.JPG

To just:

1 _FILE Adshead, John (I28) - Marriage Certificate.JPG

[ttl]

Re: Migrating from another product - issue with pictures

My apologies for a couple really stupid questions: do you have the photo files physically present in the ~/Documents/Genealogy folder? Do you have ~/Documents/Genealogy listed in the multimedia preferences as a place to search?

Reunion should drill down in the folder hierarchy if it knows where to start. If it has the image file names, repairing the links should work. If it doesn't, I don't have any other suggestions.

Edit: Oops, too slow, wouldn't have posted if I saw what Mark said.

[Adam Adshead]

Re: Migrating from another product - issue with pictures

Thanks all for your help. I tried all suggestions but to no avail.

However, in the end I saw that a Reunion Gedcom export with pictures used the "FILE" notation, whilst the Family Historian was using "_FILE".

I changed all occurrences of _FILE to FILE, imported, set my multimedia location to ~/Documents/Genealogy, rebuilt the links and all appears (at first glance !) to be OK. Will need to do some detailed checking to make sure everything has come across, but it looks like Reunion could be a go'er.

Many thanks.

Adam.