Dropbox is Full!!

[alan]

I have just upgraded to Reunion Ver.13 (all went well) and have recieved a message from Dopbox that my account is Full and I should up grade to 3TB of space.
I haven't seen what they would like to charge me, but in the meantime have deleted some files from D/Box which were only small and insignificant, and also removed my iPhone6+ from the devices leaving only my iPad Pro and iMac.
How does one go about freeing up more space on D/Box please? Currently I have 3.75GB and my Reunion file is 3.22GB in size.
In the meantime I am reducing my images down to the 800 size.

Alan

[eric.vanbeest]

With a file this large, I suspect you have a lot of media items? Do you keep the original pictures in the Dropbox folder as well?

When media is added to a Reunion file, it makes two thumbnails – a small one of ~50 K and a large one of 80–120 K – and saves these within its database. If you have a large number of media added to the tree this will cause it to bloat; I have over 20,000 images of source documents and consequently my family file is 3+ GB even if the actual family file database is only 150 MB. I do keep the original media in a separate folder on my hard disk – away from iCloud or DropBox – but they are backed up. (*)

If you have many media items, the only thing I could suggest is to cull many of them. There is no option in Reunion to not create any thumbnail, or a small one only, to help reduce file size bloat.

If you reduce all your pictures to where the maximum size (height or width) is less than 1000, Reunion will (should) only create the small thumbnail. After doing so, you must ask Reunion to rebuild all thumbnails, otherwise it may retain the original large one. This is under Preferences > Multimedia.

(*) Why not the pictures on iCloud as well - I have 2 TB? All my source images have the source number in the Finder comments to keep track of them. iCloud does not synchronise Finder comments - and indeed deletes them if changes are made on another computer...

[Mark]

There is no option in Reunion to not create any thumbnail, or a small one only, to help reduce file size bloat...

While it's not possible to have Reunion not create any thumbnail of the image (it will always create a small one), it is possible to have Reunion not create the large version of the thumbnails (thus only storing a small version) via:

Reunion -> Preferences... , Multimedia, Rebuild Thumbnails...

Simply select the option to Remove/Omit the large thumbnails that's found there. This can significantly reduce the file size, especially when you have a lot of images.

You can also choose to create lower quality large thumbnails by reducing the Size and Quality options, which might be useful if you want to retain the larger thumbnails but reduce the file size.

HTH

[eric.vanbeest]

Mark:–

You're quite right. Apologies for getting this wrong. It is explained in the manual.

[alan]

Thanks for your replies.

To make sure I'm doing the right thing, I have many thousands of images of census records, birth, marriage & death certs. relating to the many people in my tree.

What I have always done is to keep all these documents etc. in a separate file, (which is stored in my "Home" directory - not stored in Dropbox), numbered & indexed to the person concerned and named "ancestry recordsxxxx".

I then link them to the individuals which show up in the m/media window in Reunion. I find this is very handy and a neat way to always see whats been found.

Is this the way other Reunion members do this?

In the meantime I rebuilt the "thumbnails" and selected size 800 and best quality and remove/omit Large thumbnails. In doing so my file has now grown in size from 2.5.GB to 4.7GB!!

Obviously I've done something wrong and have now removed/omit "Large Thumbnails for people/families" and also "Large thumbnails for sources". the result being my file is reduced down to 427.2MB. As some m/media files were missing I clicked on repair/proceed with a resultant window saying there are 34159 links to m/media files and No Repair necessary.

Is this the way to go?

Alan

[theKiwi]

The other option is to look around for ways to increase your DropBox storage capacity - eg referring new members to DropBox - you could refer yourself if you are able to create some other eMail accounts for example. I recently got 5GB added when I purchased Quicken 2019 and put my Quicken file into DropBox. I now have 10.9GB of DropBox storage on a free account.

Roger

[Bob White]

................ What I have always done is to keep all these documents etc. in a separate file, (which is stored in my "Home" directory - not stored in Dropbox), numbered & indexed to the person concerned and named "ancestry recordsxxxx".

I then link them to the individuals which show up in the m/media window in Reunion. I find this is very handy and a neat way to always see whats been found...........

Alan

Minus the linking to Reunion, this is what I have done for years. IMHO, there is no point in spending time linking when I can find any of those stored records in well under one minute AND the having to find them is a low occurrence event. Maintaining any kind of index system is overkill in my opinion. e.g. unnecessary work.

My filing system is very simple and very fast to locate items. All documents are named in the format LastNameFirstName_Year_ShortDescription. Example would be DoeJohn_1920_FresnoCACensus for John's census sheet from the 1920 Federal Census.

[Susan Freas Rogers]

Roger, THANK YOU for mentioning the 5GB of free Dropbox space if you have Quicken. I have a Quicken subscription and didn't know that offer was available, but went and found it and now have 5 more GB! As far as I can tell, you don't actually have to put your Quicken file in Dropbox -- mine is not there and nobody made me add it in order to get the bonus space. THANKS again.

P.S. even if you will never need Quicken, getting it is a much cheaper way to pay for extra Dropbox space than signing up for a paid Dropbox subscription, which is one of the company's major downsides, IMHO -- the least expensive paid Dropbox sub is $9.99/month for 2TB, far more than most normal people would need. Quicken subscription starts at $34.99 for a year. The page I was on said the 5GB free space will renew annually after you renew your Quicken subscription. So, that may be an alternative for people who need more space but don't want to pay $120/year for 2TB.

P.P.S. I freed up a LOT of my Dropbox space when I started using Resizeit app to quickly reduce file sizes for certain groups of record files. It's 99 cents on the App Store and will reduce multiple large files all in one go -- great for those giant multi-megabyte Census images that download from some of the major sites in dimensions much larger than you'd ever need. The App Store rating is pretty low but it works for me, and you're not risking much at 99 cents. Be sure to read the July review about where it puts your files (apparently into Pictures and nowhere else due to the latest Apple sandboxing rules. I have an older version and can choose where to put them.)

P.P.P.S Bob White, I tried to email you but have an old address, I think. Mine changed two years ago, is now firstlast@nccn.net where you sub in my first and last names ahead of the @. This is about a weekly Reunion User Group Zoom meeting I'm planning to start.