I'm so confused about free space.

Question

I have a free space page: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Wells/Heywood_handwritten_letters. My Grandmother was a hoarder so I have lots of handwritten letters written to my Grandmother or by my Grandmother. I started to type in her letters to this page. I thought if I put links onto the free space for the people that it would help. It only helps if you are on the free space page though. Then I read about having to change the pages or something. I don't understand what that's all about. Can I still keep typing in the letters and it will be ok? Is there a way that I can only type in one place but it appears on the profile to go to the free space page? I just don't want to go to all the work of typing it all in when down the road I won't be able to keep that information.

I'm not real tech savvy so please use regular language to help me understand. Thanks for any help you can give me.

PS I've tried to put the link in the ID/URL line but it says the WikiTree ID does not exist.

Comments

You can use images of the actual letters instead of doing all that typing,  two ways.

1. If you have a scanner printer, scan them into your computer docs file, then use "upload  image " on the free space page.

2. Take pictures of the letters with your cell phone, upload the pictures from the cell phone to your computer docs file then to the free space page.

If it's hard for you to do the technical ops, grab the nearest teen-ager, feed him then make him do it. 

Answer 1

Sherry, if I'm following you correctly, there are multiple questions here.  First, I don't think there's any danger of losing the information you enter (unless there's some catastrophe that wipes out all of us).  Your free-space page has a Changes log just like a profile that will let you go back and see everything that was done to it.  Second, if you want to add a link to the free-space page on the profiles of the people that are named there, the construct is [[Space:Wells/Heywood handwritten letters|text to be displayed on profile]].  The italicized part after the vertical pipe will be the green underlined text that appears on the profile you're linking from.  If you're trying to link from the free-space page back to the profile of the person named, the construct is [[WikiTree ID|name of person]].  If I have missed the boat on your question, please post again.

Comments

Thanks Dennis for all that information.

So just one more question: if I link a profile on the free space page [[Wells-11344|Sherry Wells]] nothing shows up on the profile page until I put the note on the page with [[Space:Wells/Heywood handwritten letters|text to be displayed on profile]]?? When I upload the letters, I'll mark who is mentioned on that page but I will still have to go to that profile to put the free space link? There is no automatic way that when I put the WikiID on that page that it will show on the profile? (I asked the same question several different ways so you can get the jist of what I'm saying lol)

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Thanks Janettee for your answer. I totally never thought of scanning them. Now it doesn't seem like such a huge chore. lol

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Thanks Eddie. I do have a scanner and I know how to use it but I just never thought of it so no teenager required lol

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Yes, that's right, when you add the contents in the double brackets to a page in order to create a link to a different page, all it will do is take you to the target page when you click on the link.  It won't change the content of the target page.  And yes, you have to manually add the link to each page that you want to link from.

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Thanks Dennis for your help and explaining it so nicely. I really appreciate that. 

Answer 2

I saw another researcher with lots of letters who uploaded them as photos, you might try that. I'm not sure if there is a limit to how many characters you can type in the descriptions, but you may try transcribing in the description of the photos?