---
title: Capturing Artefacts
description: "Capture is deliberately the cheapest thing in the plugin. A photograph from your phone is a complete capture. Everything else - title, type, tags, transcription, people, analysis - can be added later, or never. ## The three ways in -…"
url: "https://www.ancestorpress.com/docs/fr-capturing-artefacts/"
updated: "2026-09-22"
category: AncestorPress Family Research
---

# Capturing Artefacts

Capture is deliberately the cheapest thing in the plugin. A photograph from your phone is a complete capture. Everything else - title, type, tags, transcription, people, analysis - can be added later, or never.

## The three ways in

- **Quick capture** (Inbox tab) - the camera button. On a phone it opens the camera; choosing a photo submits the form straight away. Captures are marked as coming from mobile.
- **Upload scans and files** (Inbox tab) - one file or many: images, PDFs, documents. Each file becomes its own inbox item unless you tick **These files are ONE item**, which is what you want for the front and back of a certificate.
- **Import** - a spreadsheet of records becomes artefacts in bulk. See the "Importing a Spreadsheet" article.

## Triage: file or discard

Items wait in the inbox until you deal with them. **File** keeps the item and moves it into Artefacts, optionally with a title and type you type at the same time. **Discard** deletes the record, its person links and its files together.

Discard refuses when the item is not in the inbox, when it has already been promoted into your tree, or when a question is using it as evidence. That is deliberate: it protects anything your reasoning depends on.

## Where the files live

Captured files are ordinary WordPress uploads, kept under `uploads/ap-family-research/`. They are withheld from the REST media listing, attachment pages and the media library for anyone who cannot manage the plugin, and the capture folders carry an index file. As with any WordPress upload, someone who already has a file's direct link can still open it.

## If a file will not upload

The site's own allowed file types apply - WordPress refuses executable files such as `.php`, and the capture screen reports how many files were refused. A capture where some files were accepted and others refused is reported as "captured with errors" and keeps the ones that worked.