Importing Reference Only And Maintaining That Link When Transfering Database To Different Drive/system

[BlackHole]

Hello Everyone!

I have a question regarding referenced items within a database.

First some background on what I'm currently doing. I work in the entertainment industry and use filemaker to track information on video clips and the people, places and things within them.

The ultimate database for me would include containers to play back quick time video clips, containers to view PDFs, as well as containers to store JPEGs. I'm well aware that File Maker is able to do all of this. The MAJOR problem for me is that I need to "deliver" my databases on a portable hard drive after I complete them. The delivered database needs to have all the associated files along with it. Filemaker will only store JPEGs. It can only "reference" PDF's and QuickTime files.

I discovered this reference only snafu early on when I started seeing errors in my records saying that the files were missing. I quickly realized this was due to my moving, renaming, and adding folders, which effectively changes the referenced file path. The problem for me with referencing files is that the folders I keep these referenced items in continue to evolve throughout my organizational process. It's difficult to put a file in one spot, and say that I'll never add/remove folders or rename those folders. This creates invalid file paths to the referenced files. To work around this I've ended up changing everything I want to put in the database into JPEG. For instance I export JPEGs from PDFs and I also extract JPEGs from QuickTime video files to reference video content. This ultimately ends up with me having a massive database file anywhere from 2GB to 8GB. There are some advantages of displaying referenced PDFs and QTs within filemaker, such as getting to show all pages of a pdf within one container and being able to play the video clip within a container.

In the long run, I'd like to not be inserting JPEGs because the database starts to get really large and it is a lot of work for me to extract JPEGs from PDFs and QTs that I already have. I would also like to take advantage of the display capabilities when referencing PDFs and QTs. My major concern is that even if I refrain from modifying any folder info locally to maintain the file path, that those file paths will ultimately become invalid when I "deliver/transfer" the database and it's corresponding storage folders to a different drive for delivery to my clients.

How do I maintain the references properly so that when I deliver a database file and the folders containing the referenced files they are correctly displayed? If the referenced files do not display within the database once the files are moved it will be an absolute NIGHTMARE!

One more question. If I have draw relationships between tables in different databases, and then move both of those databases to a new system/drive, will those relationships be maintained correctly or will they be invalid because the file path of the database files themselves has changed?

Any insight would be appreciated!

Thanks!

[Ron Cates]

You can store those files in your database. When you insert a file be sure the checkbox for store as refernce only at the bottom of the dialog is unchecked.

I believe if the databases reside in the same folder they will be fine as long as you keep them in the same foder together. I don't use seperate files so I could be wrong.