Photoshop Elements 15 - Copying files that have been disconnected

kays23028861 said:

The problem is that the original location of the photo is no longer available since the crash of the external drive. The photos are still showing in the catalogue, but I can't do anything with them because Elements starts looking for the original location to reconnect. If I can figure out how to copy or send them to another location, I can them import them again.

What you are seeing in the catalog are only small thumbnails of your photos.  Your actual photo files are not stored in the catalogue.  So, unless you were able to save the files that originally existed on your external drive that crashed, there is nothing to import back into the catalogue.  Depending on the nature of the crash, it may be possible to revive the files from your external drive using specialized software.  Alternatively, do you have any backups of your catalog or of the files that were stored on your external drive? 

One other workaround is to open the catalog and see if you can open a missing files thumbnail at full screen view by double clicking on it. You can then take a screenshot of the photo which can then be imported into the catalog.  However, the resolution of the image will not be as good as the original photo file.

If you have the missing photos elsewhere, what works is:

- copying the files back in the original location (which you can find in the properties panel for the missing files)

- or reconnecting while using the option in the reconnect dialog to browse to the new location. You don't wait for the default global search and use the dialog to show the folder to begin the search.

Warning: the files must have the same date_taken and file size in kB.

There has been situations when simply importing again those files did work, even if that it's not supported in principle.