Hi Vera, Sorry for the lengthy delay in replying to your email requesting information on a program for "us greenhorns". You just wouldn't believe how nutso my life has been lately!! Anyway..........I'm thinking of just using Microsoft Excel for my photo-sorting problems. I don't think the actual picture could be entered into Excel but I already have scanned and saved them onto a disk and I have printed out many of them and put them into the various "family books" that I am making, so re-entering the actual photo is redundant. This of course is all for the genealogy nuts out there - and I don't know if you qualify for that particular club!!? Then I would enter into Microsoft Excel each photo by descriptions e.g. Male or Female, Description of Subject (sitting, standing, holding a book, weird hat etc.), Photographer, City (that the photo was taken in) etc. It is my understanding that you can "sort" in this program so I could call up all photos with ladies with hats or all photos taken by the photographer White of Vancouver. Now.......the big problem..........I COULD BE WRONG!! I haven't had time to play with Excel and lord knows I haven't had time to read the directions for the program ( that, of course, is the last resort anyway.....right??). So..........that's it!!! Not much help huh?? I'm a green horn too so if you get it figured out before I do.......let me know!!! Thanks! Carol Coquitlam, B.C.

Carol, Another nice feature of Excel is that you can transfer all the data into Access at a later date if you get so many photos you feel you need a more professional program for searching and sorting. ----- Original Message ----- From: "h2owgn" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 12:45 PM Subject: Re: [SP] Digital Photo Albums Helen

Before using Excel for sorting photos or family events, check out the range of dates that can be sorted. Sorting by year only might be okay. Some genealogy programs allow scrapbooks to be rearranged by drop & drag but that is not as convenient as "sort by date" genealogy scrapbooks (years from 100 AD to about 4000 AD for historical items or science fiction.) Also consider the cost of the software. MS Office with Excel (& Access in Office Pro) used to be supplied with "office" computers assembled mostly for working with text. New computers advertised to customers interested in working with pictures and video might have a simple word processor but no longer come with MS Works and it didn't open Excel files. An upgrade to Office is very expensive if the old version doesn't work on a Windows XP computer or isn't included. My only family file in Excel was a list of land transactions so it was easily printed while the program was available. yyyy-mm-ddTopic.jpg will allow a set of images to be listed in logical order for a slide show. I keep Windows sub-folders to about 50 images just like Grandpa planned his 1950's trays of colored slides by topics and time periods. Excel or other image organization programs do not print family tree box charts showing relationships. Each researcher will need to decide if it is worth the extra work to keep a separate program for photo details. My own choice is one genealogy file for each branch with about 250 pictures available. Convenient backup of single files of 50 mb or less with inserted pictures is more important to me than keeping all names in one database or searching through all photos. Elizabeth ----- Original Message ----- From: "h2owgn" > Anyway..........I'm thinking of just using Microsoft Excel for my > photo-sorting problems. I don't think the actual picture could be entered > into Excel but I already have scanned and saved them onto a disk and I have > printed out many of them and put them into the various "family books" that I > am making, so re-entering the actual photo is redundant.