problems with photoshop batch

I started having problems with some batch/actions, going from CS6 to CC.

The first stage places something on the image, but running on an image in Bridge yields:

"The command place is not available."

It looks like it is looking for it on a hard drive that is no longer connected. 

But if I open the image and go to actions, and choose the same action it runs the macro.  Though it saves somewhere I don't know, so it is better I go stepwise and stop short of saving, saving manually instead..

Also wondering if I can copy parts of one action to another.