Genealogy File and Folder Organization System for Mac, Part 6

Subjects of your genealogy research are often found in records of places. Censuses, city directories, and such are about all the people in a place, not just your person of interest. Because of this I recommend storing copies of these records within the places folders when using my recommended genealogy file and folder organization system for Mac. That doesn’t mean the references to your family aren’t important. You want to be able to quickly find records in which your subjects appear and with this system you can.

Mac OS X has a powerful feature called Finder aliases which make it possible for files and folders to appear to be in multiple places while only really being in one. This has two major benefits.

1. Minimize space required to store the files by having only one copy
2. Keeping files about a subject in one place while having them appear in other places that make sense

You will use aliases often when you organize your genealogy files and folders using this system so I’m going to show you how. There are a couple ways you’ll use them and we’re going to take them one at a time to keep it simple. In this video I show you how using Mac Finder aliases apply to files that refer to a person of interest in a place of interest, saving time and drive space. The basic procedure is:

1. Open the folder containing the record of the place of interest
2. Select the file for the place of interest
3. Create an alias (File|Make Alias or command-L)
4. Move the alias to the folder of the person of interest
5. Remove “alias” from the end of the alias name (optional)
6. Repeat for each person of interest in the place of interest

Let me show you how simple it is. Watch the video and follow along with one of your place records.

Next article in the series: Genealogy File and Folder Organization System for Mac, Part 7, Place-Name Changes Through History.