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bfraser73
Participant
May 26, 2019
Answered

From PE3 to PE2019.. Upgrade/Conversion suggestions?

  • May 26, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 508 views

So Im helping out the lady next door.. I know -nothing- of PE of any version..

Her 15+ year old XP machine finally packed it in, so Ive got her into a new computer and we're moving her from PE3 to PE2019.

The XP machine is -not- bootable without me putting a bunch of work into it.. but I do have the drive out and can dig whatever files I need off it..

I copied her 31k pictures from XP/My docs into WIn10/Photos .. dug out the PE3 catalog and ran Adobes converter on it, then loaded PE2019 and ran a convert on THAT file to bring it in.

First thing Ive found is that PE is reporting about 5000 missing files.. and its right, they dont seem to be on either the old or new drive.. but she doesnt recall deleting them and theres no sign of drive corruption.. many of them seem to be edits of originals (judging by filename numberings).. Is there anything Im not seeing here or has she possibly just deleted them?

Secondly, I dont see any Albums or Tags in the 2019 album.. should those have come over with the catalog?

Thirdly, I started to look at deleting the 'missing files' from the catalog, When I do a Find -> All Missing Files it brings up a grid of which half the items have thumbnails and are clearly not completely missing.. what option do I use to delete the missing edits from the Stack and not delete the entire stack?

What about her Creations?  Can I somehow get those over?

Any other gotchas going from something this old to a new version I should be aware of?

Gotta say, Im stunned at how Adobes left some of stuff unchanged in all these years, the Reconnect Missing Files dialog box is just awful.. unresizable small file manager windows that dont draw properly when you first load them..

Thanks very much for any help you can offer..

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer bfraser73

    Greg_S.  wrote

    You sound like you are tech savy, so I don't want to suggest the obvious, but in case you have not searched the entire drive

    Yeah, definitely tech savvy, tech geek 30+ years and casual IT support for friends/fam/work for most of that hah.. Yeah, Ive not only searched the drive, but drilled down to the location where PE says the file USED to be and none of the ones I sampled were in the place.. Just so its probably her deleting things to make space......... hah crap, as I typed that, I recall her saying she was running out of room recently and had gone on a deletion binge.

    Which converter did you use on the original catalog?  It may still be possible to recover the tags if you start a new catalog and import the images into it.  You will be given the opportunity to import available keyword tags during the the import process. 

    I used the Adobe catalog conversion tool linked in this help article.. Though, on my re-read now, I didnt point it to the directory on their old drive mounted in my cradle, I copied the single .db file out of the directory on the old drive and ran the converter on it on her new machine.. so it may have also looked for a thumbnail cache (containing album info?) and not been able to grab that..

    Probably not.  What kind of "creations" are you talking about?

    Well, given that shes nearing 80, has had no major computer experience and has never accessed (and never will) the internet.. she does a bang-up job of creating curated photo albums / scrapbooks from her world travels..

    With my complete lack of PE experience, I assumed that the books/calendars etc that she has created in PE3 were complete, unified, files.. I havent seen anything obvious like that in her rather organized directory structure.. so thought they may be in another database type structure.. or oddball legacy storage location..

    You're preaching to the choir here. 

    Right??  I first helped her out about 3 years ago on her XP machine when PE started having a fit due to hard drive corruption..  and as soon as the PE2019 interface popped up I started having friggin flashbacks haha.. 15 years difference, 3 major Windows changes and its still this awkward.

    Thanks again for all your help.

    Brett

    1 reply

    Greg_S.
    Community Expert
    Greg_S.Community Expert
    Community Expert
    May 26, 2019

    bfraser73  wrote

    First thing Ive found is that PE is reporting about 5000 missing files.. and its right, they dont seem to be on either the old or new drive.. but she doesnt recall deleting them and theres no sign of drive corruption.. many of them seem to be edits of originals (judging by filename numberings).. Is there anything Im not seeing here or has she possibly just deleted them?

    Any missing files are not in the location that they were originally imported into the catalog.  So, either they have been deleted from the computer or are not in the places you have been looking.  You sound like you are tech savy, so I don't want to suggest the obvious, but in case you have not searched the entire drive, I recommend a free utility called Everything which will do a fairly fast search of the entire drive.  Do a search for .jpg or .psd to see whether any files are coming up in other locations.  (I'm guessing that none of the images are raw photo files.)

    Secondly, I dont see any Albums or Tags in the 2019 album.. should those have come over with the catalog?

    In theory, converting a catalog from an older to newer version will bring over Albums and Tags.  However, there have been some big changes in the catalog structure, and I'm not sure about going from Elements 3 to 2019.  Which converter did you use on the original catalog?  It may still be possible to recover the tags if you start a new catalog and import the images into it.  You will be given the opportunity to import available keyword tags during the the import process.  The tags will then be put into an Imported Keyword Tags hierarchy.  The tags can then be moved to a newly constructed hierarchy.  Albums will not be transferred using this method.

    Thirdly, I started to look at deleting the 'missing files' from the catalog, When I do a Find -> All Missing Files it brings up a grid of which half the items have thumbnails and are clearly not completely missing.. what option do I use to delete the missing edits from the Stack and not delete the entire stack?

    The fact that you are seeing thumbnails does not mean that the file isn't missing (or that it hasn't been deleted from the computer).  The thumbnails are found in a catalog cache and can exist even though the file is missing.  Deleting the missing edits from a stack will not delete all of the files in the stack. When you delete a missing file from the catalog, you will be given the opportunity to also delete the file from the hard drive.  In fact, I believe there is an option to delete all files in the stack which has to be affirmed, positively.  (I'm not sure about that.)  In any event, just ignore the option to delete the file from the hard drive.  Only the missing file thumbnail will be removed from the catalog.

    What about her Creations?  Can I somehow get those over?

    Probably not.  What kind of "creations" are you talking about?

    Any other gotchas going from something this old to a new version I should be aware of?

    I think you've covered the bases.  Depending on how crucial the missing images/tags are, if you can recover the old XP machine and do a backup of the catalog to recover to the new computer, that would be the best opportunity to bring over as much as possible.  However, 2019 has a number of new features that may give your friend everything she needs to work with her files.  For example, face recognition will automatically analyze people in the catalog images so that they can be tagged fairly quickly.  Also, the program provides "smart tags" which allow a user to search for common (and uncommon) words that may be found in the catalog images.

    Gotta say, Im stunned at how Adobes left some of stuff unchanged in all these years, the Reconnect Missing Files dialog box is just awful.. unresizable small file manager windows that dont draw properly when you first load them..

    You're preaching to the choir here. 

    B
    bfraser73AuthorCorrect answer
    Participant
    May 27, 2019

    Greg_S.  wrote

    You sound like you are tech savy, so I don't want to suggest the obvious, but in case you have not searched the entire drive

    Yeah, definitely tech savvy, tech geek 30+ years and casual IT support for friends/fam/work for most of that hah.. Yeah, Ive not only searched the drive, but drilled down to the location where PE says the file USED to be and none of the ones I sampled were in the place.. Just so its probably her deleting things to make space......... hah crap, as I typed that, I recall her saying she was running out of room recently and had gone on a deletion binge.

    Which converter did you use on the original catalog?  It may still be possible to recover the tags if you start a new catalog and import the images into it.  You will be given the opportunity to import available keyword tags during the the import process. 

    I used the Adobe catalog conversion tool linked in this help article.. Though, on my re-read now, I didnt point it to the directory on their old drive mounted in my cradle, I copied the single .db file out of the directory on the old drive and ran the converter on it on her new machine.. so it may have also looked for a thumbnail cache (containing album info?) and not been able to grab that..

    Probably not.  What kind of "creations" are you talking about?

    Well, given that shes nearing 80, has had no major computer experience and has never accessed (and never will) the internet.. she does a bang-up job of creating curated photo albums / scrapbooks from her world travels..

    With my complete lack of PE experience, I assumed that the books/calendars etc that she has created in PE3 were complete, unified, files.. I havent seen anything obvious like that in her rather organized directory structure.. so thought they may be in another database type structure.. or oddball legacy storage location..

    You're preaching to the choir here. 

    Right??  I first helped her out about 3 years ago on her XP machine when PE started having a fit due to hard drive corruption..  and as soon as the PE2019 interface popped up I started having friggin flashbacks haha.. 15 years difference, 3 major Windows changes and its still this awkward.

    Thanks again for all your help.

    Brett

    Greg_S.
    Community Expert
    Greg_S.Community Expert
    Community Expert
    May 27, 2019

    I used the Adobe catalog conversion tool linked in this help article.. Though, on my re-read now, I didnt point it to the directory on their old drive mounted in my cradle, I copied the single .db file out of the directory on the old drive and ran the converter on it on her new machine.. so it may have also looked for a thumbnail cache (containing album info?) and not been able to grab that..

    Yes, the catalog files consist of a lot more than the .db file, although it is so long since I used version 3, I can't tell you what the folder structure may consist of.   However, it may be worth redoing the conversion with the original catalog structure fully in place.

    As for the Creations, I just looked up an old PSE 3 book I had on my shelf, and see that there are a number of "creations" that were available.   Some could be saved as .pdf files, and I imagine that a scrapbook page could also be saved as a jpeg.  In the current scheme, creations created by the program usually contain a .pse file extension.  (There may be additional letters following the .pse extension e.g. a .psessc extension is for a slideshow creation.)  I also tried opening some very old creations on my machine and they do not appear to be compatible with more recent versions of the program.

    Hope this helps.

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