It's very important to understand what you did to save your catalog to an external drive.
- If you have used the 'backup' function of the PSE8 organizer, you have created a 'backup folder' on your hard disk. It's a folder containing renamed copies of all your media files. They are renamed starting with 'B00...'. That folder also contains a file named 'catalog.buc' and another one 'backup.tly'. From your new PSE21 organizer, you now have to 'restore' that backup where you want. The first step re-creates your media files folder tree and is followed by a catalog conversion which creates a new catalog in the PSE2021 format.
- If you have only created a copy of the catalog folder (the database without copies of your photo files), then its necessary to say if your photo files are still in the same computer which has both the PSE8 and the PSE2021 version. If so, from the PSE2021 organizer you only have to 'convert' the PSE8 catalog into a new one in the PSE2021 format. Nothing to import.
- If your PSE2021 is on a different computer, please describe exactly what you did.