application to hide and unhide files in folders

Hi. Our genealogy society has hundreds of folders with jpeg images of sacramental records like baptisms. To the public, we are only allowed to show records that are 70 years old or older. That means we have to copy over a new year's worth of records for all the books every January. So we have two sets of folders: one that contains all the images and one that cuts off currently at records prior to 1952.

What we would like to do is hide records after 1951 in a single folder and then unhide just the 1952 records when January comes around. I have looked at a couple applications but so far they are too complicated for us to use. Also hide and unhide using the Windows attribute command seems very laborious for so many folders.

Any suggestions? Thank you! Windows 10 version 10.0.19042

Thank you for your response. The issue is not with the folders but with the individual files in the folders. For example, suppose we have a public accessible folder of jpeg images with baptisms from 1925-1965. We can only show to the public the baptisms from 1925 through 1951 at this time because of the 70 year rule. So all the baptism images after 1951 have been deleted. But in January 2022, we have to copy over (from our master folder) any baptisms from 1952 into the public folder for searching.

I don't see how permissions or group rules would help - unless I am missing something. The complete set of public folders and master folders are kept on external storage and only the public folders are read-only for searching.

The copying of a year's worth of records is not that bad but to allow our volunteers to do that work at home means that we have to copy both the public folders and the master folders for each church (well of over 350) to external hard drives. That takes literally weeks of computer time because size the folder are so large. Most contain at least 100-200 jpeg images.

Thanks, again, for you ideas.

Thanks, again. I did download and try Wise File Hider and it works but it keeps a history of all the hidden files. So to restore one year's worth of baptisms for probably 300 baptism books you have to open Wise File Hider, fine the particular book in the history and then find the hidden files that correspond to the year you are working on.

Plus this yearly updating is done by 4 volunteers from their homes so they would not have the software and history of the hidden files that Wise maintains. It's a mess! But I appreciate your help.

I did have a thought. Can I super impose a mask on a jpeg image that is removeable? In other words, could I add a "black mask" to the images beyond 1951 (using MS Paint, for example) and then remove the mask on those images that are for 1952? I'll look into that. Thanks, again, for you helpful and quick responses.

Great idea. Unfortunately, our file names look like this SSPP bp p 4-5 for Saints Peter & Paul baptism pages 4-5. No one ever thought about adding years because some images may cover multiple years especially in a church that had minor activity. One marriage image could have entries that span 4-5 years. I want to check out Photoshop and the adding and removing of layers. Maybe we could layer over all the future years and then remove the layer as we move into a new year.

Thanks. The copying over of the next year's records is not a big burden. The issue is copying both the public version and the master version of the sacramental book to an external drive so that our 4 volunteers can do the copying from home. That takes weeks and weeks. For example, our public Roman Catholic sacramental books take up 509 GB with 215,271 files in 2,724 folders. The master collection is at least twice as large - well over a terabyte. Then we have the Polish National Catholic and various Protestant church books. All get the same treatment. I have asked a couple of Photoshop experts about masking records beyond 1952 with a layer that can be removed as needed. We'll see what they have to say. Thanks!