Move a PSE catalog and photos to Windows 11 and PSE 2026

Forum|Forum|4 months ago
January 7, 2026
3 replies
130 views

My current computer, which is running Windows 10 and Photoshop Elements 2021, cannnot be upgraded to Windows 11. I am looking at purchasing a new computer and buying the new Photoshop Elements 2026. My current catalog and all my images are on an external hard drive. Could it be as simple as just plugging in that hard drive on the new computer and pointing to the catalog or is there a "gotcha" somewhere that I am missing?

Greg_S.

Community Expert

@gailz35547364, it is not clear what your situation is. Do you simply have a backup of your catalog and photos on the external drive? Or do you use the external drive to store your media and catalog folder?

If you only have a backup stored on the external drive, you will need to restore the backup to a new location (which can also be the external drive). If the original catalog and media are stored on the external drive, all you would need to do is double-click on the database file in the catalog folder, using Elements 2026 on the Win 11 computer. I will give you more details when you clarify what you are doing. Also answer the following questions:

What version of Elements are you currently using?
Are you upgrading a Win 10 machine to Win 11? Or is it a new computer?

G

gailz35547364

The original catalog is on a Windows 10 laptop in PSE 2024. I am moving
the original catalog to a new Windows 11 laptop. (It is my understanding
that PSE 2026 does not run on Windows 10.) I did a full backup of the
catalog onto an external hard drive. I was going to try to keep the
catalog on the hard drive connected to the new computer until I was
satisfied that the new computer would be permanent and in the meantime keep
the old computer with the original catalog as temporary backup. On another
note, should I have saved the metadata to the files?

Greg_S.

Community Expert

I have almost every version of Elements, going back to version 6, working on my Win 11 computer. There is no problem with Elements 2021 working on Win 11 (although for various reasons, there are some issues getting it installed). If you decide to install Elements 2021 on your new machine, make sure you download and install the Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 package and install both the x86 and x64 files.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

Not quite that simple. The catalog will need to be converted to Elements 2026 and the external drive on the new machine will have to have the same drive letter as the old one.

If you first install Elements 2021 on the Win11 computer, you should be able to open the catalog on that machine via the File>Manage Catalogs dialog. Once the catalog has been opened, you can install Elements 2026 and look for a dialog which is available on the first launch of the Organizer, asking if you want to convert the existing catalog. If you answer yes, the program will automatically convert the catalog by creating a new catalog folder with the old name. (You may want to rename that.) The old catalog will be renamed with a numeric suffix and can still be opened in Elements 2021.

I've probably made this post more complicated than it is, but there should be no problem with what you want to do.

J

Jha28Author

Known Participant

Thank you. I thought Photoshop 2021 would not work on Windows 11. Or will it only do that one task of opening the catalog?

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