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LDFoster999
LDFoster999
Participating Frequently
November 16, 2012
Question

Restore catalog and reorganize folder structure for photos?

  • November 16, 2012
  • 1 reply
  • 562 views

I had Photoshop Elements 8 installed on my Win Vista desktop.  The Harddrive crashed and I built a new desktop, Win7. I have a lot of photos (~5500) and many tags and a fairly recent backup of my catalog. 

I have restored from my backup but cannot find a way to restore into a slightly different new folder structure. 

Previously I had "1AppData->Adobe->Catalogs->xxxx" where xxxx is a year. I would like to restore into a structure such as this "PhotosAdobe->Catalog->xxxx", removing the top level of the folder hierarchy.  When I restored I said to restore into the PhotosAdobe->Catalog folder and said to "restore into the same structure... hopefully to keep my folders by year.  Instead it produced "PhotosAdobe->Catalog->1AppData->Adobe->Catalogs->xxxx".

I think this happens because all the photos were not in 1 folder tree when I created the backup. Under 1AppData there were 4 subfolders with photos.... (Under 1AppData there are 4 subfolders with photos: Adobe which has most of the photos , data-home has 17 photos, data_scan has 2 photos and Quicken_reports has 1 photo).

I thought of 2 options:

1. create a new catalog and add all the files in the organization I want... but that means I have to re-tag everything I think.  Ouch.

2. Restore into the old folder structure, move or delete the 20 files that are not in the Adobe folder, create a new backup and restore in a new place..... after finding out from you how to get the folder hierarchy that I want.

Hope you can tell me how to accomplish what I need to do. 

I already bought Adobe Elements 11 but need to get all moved and backed up before upgrading.

Thanks,

Laurie

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    pwillener
    pwillener
    Legend
    November 16, 2012

    LDFoster999 wrote:

    "PhotosAdobe->Catalog->1AppData->Adobe->Catalogs->xxxx"

    To get the result you want from this situation, just move (drag-and-drop) all 'XXXX' folders down into the 'Catalog' folder.  After that you can delete '1AppData' and all its subfolders.

    Make sure you still have a backup in case something goes wrong...

    LDFoster999
    LDFoster999Author
    Participating Frequently
    November 16, 2012

    I don't understand. The last time I moved files around using Windows

    Explorer I had to reconnect all the files from within Adobe Elements 8. I

    had to touch every file I moved to reconnect it. Ouch.

    Is the tag information stored in the photo file itself? Or in some

    other seperate file that AE maintains somewhere else? If so, what is that

    other file called and where can I find it?

    Thanks.

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