Importing to Elements 2020

@ShelLuser, you can edit a reply by clicking on the elipsis More button at the bottom of the post.  Please let me know if this is not working for you, as I'm not sure whether this only applies to moderators.

"On three ocasions these imports have told me to "Reconnect". I have done this but the fix is only temporary. I was able to view the thumbnails, the expanded view was available after cancelling the reconnect message, the full screen view was unavailable."

My guess is that you may have imported the files in a different way for those ocasions. Importing from a flash drive may have been from 'Import from files or folders" like for a USB external drive, or 'from camera or card reader'. In one case, you have the option to create previews on your internal drive which give you a bigger size than a regular thumbnail. Depending on how you imported, the files are seen as either 'missing' or 'offline', which require a different solution.

First: welcome to the flock! 😉  I recently purchased Photoshop Elements myself as well (quite happy with it) but please keep my "newbie'ism" in mind, doing my best to help but.. yah.

"I am importing my photos into albums, in blocks of 100 at a time from a flash drive. On three ocasions these imports have told me to "Reconnect". I have done this but the fix is only temporary."

Why batches of 100? The first thing you want to do is get all your media imported within Organizer. See, the idea is to let Organizer 'collect' all your media files so it can build up its database after which you can use that database to actually sort out your images by creating virtual albums (for example; there are tons of other ways in which you can sort your images as well).

Now, it is possible that some images may cause problems. For example they won't show up in your Organizer, not even if you double click to open them in the viewer. There are solutions for this; one option could be to (bulk) edit them with the Editor after which they should be fixed.

Second: don't re-install software. In pretty much most cases it's completely useless. See: while you may remove the software you're usually leaving your settings intact. And in most cases (not all!) it's those settings which can cause your issues. As a rule of thumb: don't bother. If you really want to reset things then remove the settings, not the software.

"I have now deleted the offending 300 images but cannot reinstall because a message appears telling me that they are already in the catalouge."

Please bear in mind that although I have a very good idea what is going on I'm obviously not 100% sure. This won't be destructive but I cannot guarantee that it'll help. But lets see how far we can go...

• Open your Organizer and don't keep any folders selected. You should see all your imported images.
• Use the following menu option: Search => Locate all missing files (so: open the search menu and use the appropriate entry).

Now you should get an overview of all images which are in your catalog but which the Organizer cannot find on disk. Select them all and then remove the whole lot. This should fix your issues.

You should then be able to re-import them.

Hope this can help for now.