Utilities Menu > Transfer Pictures from CMD Data File

If you have used pictures before CMD 2008.3, you will need to use this utility to make pictures visible in 2008.3 and later.

Prior to 2008.3, pictures were stored as a part of the data files themselves, but starting in 2008.3, pictures are stored in a separate folder on your hard disk, and are no longer a part of the actual data files.

Primarily this change has been made because embedding pictures in the data files that held other information swelled their size significantly enough in some cases that normal backup and restore operations were impeded or didn't work at all.

This utility provides the means to remove pictures already stored in your CMD data files and place them in the folder you have defined to hold the pictures. That means that you do not lose any pictures already in CMD (unless there is an error or bad data in the actual picture file itself).

We recommend using this feature in two steps:

•Click the Transfer Pictures button. This starts the actual transfer process. Note that you must first have defined a path for your pictures. If you have not done so yet, leave this dialog, go to File | Configuration | Configuration Update and define the pictures path there first. We strongly suggest that you use CMD Pictures as your picture folder name, and that it be placed directly off the root folder on your C: drive. That will make it easy for you to always find the pictures when you need them, and it will make it easy for you to save them there.

Once you have clicked the Transfer Pictures button, CMD will copy any pictures in either the family or individuals data files and place them in your pictures folder. Each picture transferred will be named based on the information in the Family Name field with a .jpg extension. There is an overall limit of 40 characters for this field, so it's possible some family names will be truncated to allow for space for the .jpg extension.

•Click the Recover the Space from Data Files Where Pictures Used to be button. We suggest that you do not click this item right after you have transferred the pictures. Rather, we suggest that you either print a pictorial directory or Offices Rap Sheets (in the case of individuals with pictures), or spot check some families and individuals pictures using the Enter/Modify/Delete Names dialog to make sure that your pictures transferred over correctly and that they appear to belong to the correct individuals or families. Once satisfied that the pictures did indeed transfer correctly, return to this dialog and click this button.

Note that it is important to eventually run this Recover item. Otherwise, your data files will remain too large to be correctly backed up and restored!

Once you have done this Recover step, you'll notice a dramatic decrease in the size of your data backup files.