I have SOMEHOW duplicated my entire MEDIA collection

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Hello, I have duplicated my entire media collection of 7,000 items. I now have over 14,000, with two of every item EXCEPT for ones I have added in recent weeks.

I don’t know how or when I did this. Many of the original 7,000 are not yet used, so I can’t just list the unused ones.

I had the idea of deleting all the ones from 7,000 to 14,000 apart from recent additions, but when I sort them on MEDIA REF (Ixxxxx) they are not in true numerical sequence.

I had started deleting them manually in batches of 20, but it is going to take too long. I am a longtime GRAMPS user, but I know very little about the internal workings. How should I fix this problem, please?

Martin

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By “not yet used” do you mean that the records are not linked with a person, event, etc? To be clear, if you edit the media record the References Tab is empty?

If this is true, you can create a custom filter General filters >> Media objects with a reference count of <count> with the values equal to 0

The resulting list would be safe to delete. But to be safe, make sure you have a backup before the batch delete.

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5.2 has a quicker delete, in seconds. But it does not allow for an undo option.

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Dave, it looks like you have saved me yet again. Thank you. One question before I try this on 5.1.6.

(Yes, By “not yet used” I mean that the records are not linked with a person, event, etc. If I edit the media record the References Tab is empty.

If I do as you suggest, I assume that I will be deleting some media items NOT YET USED. After doing that, do I just use the “Tools - Utilities - Media Manager - Add images not included in database” option to add Media items again?

I haven’t been very diligent in USING media items yet, so the bottom right corner shows 13,254 in the list I generated (as you described above) out of 13,774. So I would be deleting 13,774 MINUS 13,254 items? I would then add them, about 6,500 items again, using Media Manager. Is that correct?

I wish I knew what I did to accidentally add them a second time.

Martin

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Wouldn’t it be easier, and faster, to use the Remove unused objects tool? It works in its own window, so there’s no refreshing of the media view, and you don’t need to create a filter for that either.

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Deleting the Gramps record for media records that are not being used by a Person, Family, Event, etc does not affect the raw media file on your hard drive. I have many media files I brought home from the library’s ancestry account that I have not yet added to Gramps. When needed I can easily add them.

I thought about how you maybe came about to have these duplicated records. Did you ever drag-n-drop the media files on your hard drive to either the Media view or to a Gallery Tab.

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It has been a while since I used the Remove Unused Objects tool so unsure of the speed. As I clean my database I use the filter I described (references = 0) to first clean events, then the Citations and finally the Notes.

Another alternative is to create a Gramps XML export of all people and events but set the References filter to exclude objects not used by anything else. The problem with that method, at least for myself, I know I have objects in the database that I created but not yet used. These would be excluded from the export.

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Enno, are you suggesting that I do that and then just use the “Tools - Utilities - Media Manager - Add images not included in database” option to add Media items again?

Martin

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Dave, no, I’ve never used drag and drop. The only possible thing that I did, which I have done many times before without a problem, is to use the ‘Replace substrings in the path’ option.

Martin

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Yes. I use it a lot, but I need to add that I never used it on that many objects.

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Dave and Enno, thanks for your help. I think all is well now, and I’ve learned a lot in the process.

Martin

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