New Desktop, Using an old catalog

[helenakaye]

Hey everyone! 

I've searched on youtube and google but I can't find what I'm looking for. I could be wording it correctly. I recently got a new desktop. I'm just now setting it up because my ole trusty laptop has become not so trusty. I'm slightly illiterate with technology so the process of setting this up has been difficult and a little annoying. I logged into Create Cloud and installed LRC. But, how do I get my old catalog (from my laptop) onto my desktop? Everything I do on my laptop is backed up to an external hard drive. I have that plugged in. What am I supposed to do from here?

[dj_paige]

Simplest thing to do: 

• Copy the photos to whatever location on whatever disk you want them to be in, keeping the folder hierarchy unchanged (DO NOT start moving things around within this folder hierarchy)
• Copy catalog file to a new subfolder of the default Pictures folder on the new computer's internal hard drive, then double-click on the catalog file to open it
• Reconnect top level folder containing your photos inside of Lightroom Classic (see Figure 4 here)

DO NOT MAKE THIS MORE COMPLICATED. DO NOT ADD IN YOUR OWN STEPS.