Files skipped!

I thought I had this under control by making a new catalog. It seemed to work for awhile but now have about 3500 pics in that catalog and it has started to refuse to accept all my photos again. Coming up saying 38 media files were skpped because they are either already present in catalog or are not supported. This is interesting to me as it is a brand new catalog with NO photos in it! In the past, in order to work around this, I have been able to rename, such as a file named P1120765 to P1120765a and it seems to normally work. This is a very big hassle when it is skipping several files. If I do a search for the P1120765, it doesn't find anything, is that because it only searches in the catalog that you have opened at the time?? Is there a way to rename several photos in bulk and have it add an "a" or something on the end to get this done?? Any help is appreciated. Sorry for my lack of knowledge and trying to understand all that Michel was nice enough to try to communicate to me.

ruserious1234  wrote I see at least one other similar question but did not see an answer.

This is a common issue... and you'll always find the same answer about duplicate.

because either they already are present of not supported

Nearly always, the message means that the Organizer has found what it considers as 'duplicates' in the 'Import' process.

So, it's absolutely necessary to know what are 'duplicates' for the organizer.

1 - Let's start with database management. A good management system must be able to allow retrieving a given item in various ways without having to duplicate (copy) similar variants elsewhere on your computer (in various folder trees for instance). Duplicating is a loss of space. It's difficult to update the duplicates etc.

2 - The organizer manages catalogs of image files. If the import process finds duplicates, that is by comparing the files you are trying to input with those already in the catalog (the database). It does not care if the files are on your computer but not in your catalog.

3 - The most frequent source of duplicates is when you import from your camera or card reader and you have not deleted the files already imported in the current catalog. You expect the downloader process to be smart enough to skip those old files. There are many other duplicating situations, especially when you get the same family scans from different sources, when you create many variants of files, when your camera file naming scheme starts again after image 10 000 etc.

4 - The whole world of Elements is photography: the criteria to find duplicates is to find the same file is based mainly on two criterias: the file size in kilobytes and the 'date taken' of the image recorded by your camera. That does not fit as well with scans... but with normal photos from your camera, you are pretty sure that your images are copies. The file name is NOT a criteria. For instance, with my old Canons, the file naming started over after 10 000 shots. The organizer never considered those same name files as duplicates.

5 - Since it's about photography, an important criteria is the visual similarity between files; especially to distinguish variants in different formats or sizes. The import process just ignores that criteria because you are supposed to voluntary create variants and be able to manage them. However, you can search and group pictures in stacks from this criteria. That's useful in many situations: scans from different times or sources, stacking raw with jpeg etc.

perhaps I delete the whole file but I really don't want to delete photos to get this done

In your case, renaming is not a solution as explained above.

If you decide to delete, you should ask yourself which version to keep without losing some kind of information like tags.

If you decide to delete, remember you can delete from the catalog while leaving the file on the computer (perhaps after moving to another drive location).

With visual duplicates (from scans for instance) you might consider stacking the files, at least temporarily, instead of deleting randomly.

Tip:

To be sure that a file that the organizer considers a duplicate is really one, you can create a 'saved search' to find in your current catalog:

- a file that has the same kilobytes in size

- which is taken at the same time and date (use after and before in the search)

The duplicate will be shown in the result. Even with scans with the same date and size, you'll easily find the culprit.

Note about duplicates on your drive but not on your catalog: there are good softwares to manage them. With free ones, beware of adwares and such... You'll have to decide anyway what to do with the duplicates. That will not update your catalog anyway.