I have never used the photo portion of my FO even though I am really big on photos and have numerous (non-computer) albums Having put together those albums I realize from experience that the best albums are the ones I planned in great detail ahead of time. Would any of you care to share your experience with "FO albums"? Any helpful hints before I undertake this task? Floreda

You will have many different suggestions as to what works best for different folks. As soon as the program offered the capability to include photos, I started including them. I now have about 3500-4000 photos linked to individuals in my FO master database. I would suggest a very key element up-front is that you plan carefully the way you wish to file your photos for use in your scrapbook, to keep their organization manageable. That may depend on the number of photos you anticipate having. I used to keep them all in one folder together with very short file names. Initially, that worked very well. I think that works best for many people. For me though, as the number of files grew and grew, it became an unwieldy organization. The number keeps growing. Quite sometime back now, I changed my method and organization of photos.I know that having a separate spread sheet to track them works well for some folks. I didn't want to have to keep a separate spread sheet though. I now have a folder at the root: "c:\Photos" and I keep a shortcut to that folder on my desktop. Then I have a folder for each major surname line: c:\Photos\Smith c:\Photos\Yates (etc.) For all the photos related to my parents and siblings (which by far is the greatest number), I have a directory which is a combination of my father and mother's surnames: c:\Photos\Dawk-Ped I DO use a descriptive home-grown naming convention using longer individual file names, using surnames first, including dates of photos if known, etc. For example: c:\Photos\Dawk-Ped\dawkins-walt-1990x-fam.jpg (or) c:\Photos\Dawk-Ped\dawkins-walt-1990x-clan.jpg c:\Photos\Dawk-Ped\dawkins-walt-marge-pedigo-1936-Feb22-wed01.jpg c:\Photos\Dawk-Ped\dawkins-walt-1990-faday.jpg Those examples being 1. The Walt Dawkins Family, Christmas 1990 2. The Walt Dawkins Clan, Christmas 1990 3. Wedding Photo, Walter Dawkins & Marge Pedigo, February 22, 1936 4. Walter Dawkins, Father's Day 1990 You might choose to keep the "Photos" folder in your "c:\My Documents" folder. I prefer to keep it at the root level because it shortens the pathname. You DO have to backup your photos directories as faithfully as you (hopefully) backup your FO data... and do it as a separate operation, because while backing up FO data will backup the links to the photos and captions, it will NOT backup the photos themselves. You have to remember to do that as a separate operation. I have used the album printouts a LOT and have developed some caption and description conventions I use. If you are interested in those, let me know. What works best for one will not necessarily work best for another. A lot of it will be experimenting trial-and-error to see what you think will work best for you and the amount of data you want to track with a photo, etc. The data you include in the "description" box for a photo will not all necessarily print in the scrapbook, depending on the length. But it will print if you print the photo separately. The convention I developed works to accommodate what FO will and will not print in each type of printout, as well as the amount of data I want to keep with the photos (which is considerable). Patricia At 07:09 AM 7/6/01 -0400, Varick wrote: >I have never used the photo portion of my FO even though I am >really big on photos and have numerous (non-computer) albums > >Having put together those albums I realize from experience that >the best albums are the ones I planned in great detail ahead of time. > >Would any of you care to share your experience with "FO albums"? >Any helpful hints before I undertake this task? > >Floreda

Hi Floreda -- I think you are going to find that any responses you get to this question will be very foreign to you because FO doesn't use a organizeable 'photo album' format as such. Each page of FO's album is pre-organized to go with a specific individual or family. e.g. I have several dozen pictures of each of my children on their own page and they are arranged from birth to current (the photos can be easily rearranged as required). Some people like to try to put the photos in different folders to keep them separate. I tried to do that and it got to be overwhelming very quickly plus you have the problem of multiple links to deal with. Put them all in a single folder so that FO (and you) will be able to find them more easily. Photo file names can quickly become a problem as you get hundreds of photos in your system. Computers like short names and a code is probably the best method. Some people like to use personalized codes - prs010101 might be a photo of me, Paul R. Smith, taken 1 Jan 01. If you've got a bunch of PRSs, that becomes problematic. Frankly, any old code will work just fine. Start with 1 and number them as you input them into your system. Then use a simple spreadsheet to keep track. e.g. Filename Subject Date Taken Details 1 Paul R. Smith, Sr. 01 Jan 2001 New Years Party at brother Bob's house The advantage of the spreadsheet is that it is quickly sortable by any of the columns and you can add as many columns like Family Surname, City, State, Location, Function Type, etc. and the details can be as long as you like. Embed the spreadsheet in a note in FO (mine is in my own general notes but I'd like to find a more central location to put it - maybe Bruce will work something out along those lines one of these days. The Multimedia List is close but not quite.) Wouldn't it be neat if Bruce could give us a scrapbook that could be customized on the fly? e.g. I want to see all pictures taken in 1999 sorted by date or function type or a surname or etc. Just a thought. -- Happy Hunting!! -- Paul Houston, TX, USA ICQ #73314929 Researching: VA - WHITE,LIPSCOMB,HILL,JOHNSON,SAUNDERS, TALBOT,TATE,EVANS NC - SMITH, BOSWELL, RHODES, CAPEHART,MORRIS, MARSHE, BRITT,SHAW View my American Ancestry at: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~paulrsmith **************** FREE Credit Card Referral Program. Quick money AND residual, lifetime income! CHECK IT OUT !! http://smithecomservices.tripod.com ***************************************