Addenda to ‘Loft Management’ [First post]   [Last Post]

Over the 20+ years I’ve been operating a Loft Index I’ve used 3 different computer applications: Filemaker on a laptop, uGrokIT on a phone, and Memento Database on a phone. In the March 2025 post describing the move to the Memento Database I noted that scrolling was hesitant and that the records moved up the screen on top of the field headers. The Memento Help person had told me that ‘this happens because Memento stores photos in their original size, which can be quite large’ and that they would ‘try to add a photo compression feature in future releases’. I decided to ignore these problems for three reasons: a) they weren’t interfering with creating new entries or searching, b) the product was free to use locally, and c) I’d gone to a lot of effort transferring the data and photos into the application. I realise now, that was a mistake.

I should have seen the writing on the wall. When I wanted to add something to the Index last week, I discovered the interface was a little different (there’d obviously been an upgrade) and my loft database just locked up when I opened it. I wasn’t even able to get it to produce a csv export file of the current contents.

So, I’ve spent a couple of days moving the index to a new app. I’m now using the Collections database from Risolvi Productions for which I’ve paid a single one-off fee of £7.99. Luckily there haven’t been too many changes to my loft index over the last year so I was able to use an October 2025 export from the Memento app for the data, and a March 2025 folder of the associated photos, and to deduce what changes had occured since Oct25 from the first frozen screen of the malfunctioning Memento app. With the new database fully set up in the Collections app and all the associated photos loaded in as well, I’m glad to say it all seems to be working perfectly.

The lesson here is clear: if an app doesn’t seem to be working properly, don’t use it; and be prepared to pay a little rather than just always going for a free-to-use product. Obvious really….