Adobe Elements Organizer 2023: Long wait times for loading of catalogue

[jan.p.heumann]

My Adobe Elements Organizer 2023 (Version 21.0) requires about 1 minute to load a catalogue with about 35.000 images. During the loading of the catalogue the CPU, RAM, and SSDs are lightly loaded (below 40%) according to the Windows 11 task manager. After the loading of the catalogue has been completed the Organizer is responsive and wait times are low. 

How can I reduce the times to load the catalogue?

[Greg_S.]

Is this a new catalog?  Has the problem only just started?  Have you recently imported a large number of files?

What are the specs of your computer.

[MichelBParis]

Is this a new catalog?  Has the problem only just started?  Have you recently imported a large number of files?

What are the specs of your computer.

By @Greg_S.

Additionally, what are your preferences for performance? It is recommended to keep the 70% memory allocation for Elements, not more.

What organizer users don't realize is that the organizer can't display the full hierarchy of the folder tree without checking both the hierarchy of folders recorded from the data in the current catalog AND the full hierarchy of all your files kept in your OS (explorer/Finder). You are presented with a combination of both views, and the full OS view may have been changed outside of the catalog since last session.

Anyway, I would not be surprised by loading times of 20 to 30 seconds.

The specs of your hardware will be very important, especially your RAM size.

[jan.p.heumann]

Thanks for your quick feedback.

I have been using this catalogue over 10 years with varying versions of Adobe Elements Organizer and it has been growing over time, especially in the past three years. As my previous Laptop maxxed out on CPU load and HDD utlization, when using this catalog I, upgraded my hardware. With my new hardware (CPU: 13th Gen Intel Core i7-13700 2.10 GHz,  RAM: 16 GB DDR5; Storage: 2TB SSD) the performance improved noticable, but I still have the mentioned long load times even though the hardware utilization is moderate.

[Greg_S.]

Something is not right.  You have very powerful specs - better than mine - yet my catalog with over 250k media items loads in about 6-7 seconds from when I click my taskbar shortcut icon.

IIRC, a similar problem happened several versions ago when I was using Acronis True Image software.  Elements needed to be placed in its trusted software list.  (I think @MichelBParis also had the same issue.)  Other possibilities could be anti-virus software.  Do you have anything like this that may be interfering with the program?

Another possibility is Autocreations working behind the scenes.  Try turning off all Media Analysis and Auto-creations in the Edit>Preferences dialog and see if it makes a difference.

One final trouble-shooting suggestion - do you have a wi-fi printer.  Some users of Elements 2021 or 2022 had problems with the program opening if they had a wi-fi printer set as the default. 

And do you have any issues opening the Editor?

[jan.p.heumann]

Thanks for your suggestions. I have no issues opening the Editor.

I performed the following tests.

1. Set my Norton 360 to  "Silent Mode" and restarted Adobe Organizer --> No change in load time

2. Turned off Media Analysis and restarted Adobe Organizer --> No change in load time

3. Set me default printer to "MS Print to PDF" and restarted Adobe Organizer --> No change in load time

Would it be worthwhile to separate pictures and videos in my catalague into separate catalogues, by doublicating the catalogue and deleting respective entries?

[Greg_S.]

I don't see the separation of video and photos helping.  You may want to try contacting Adobe Support.  With your permission, they can take control of your computer and may have some tools to see what the problem is.

[Greg_S.]

A couple of other things to try:

• Go to File>Manage Catalogs and see if a Repair and Optimize of the catalog helps.
• See if there are any missing files in your catalog.  (Find>All missing files)
• And perhaps the first thing to try is to create a new empty catalog and see how long it takes to load.  That may at least tell us whether the problem is catalog-specific.

[jan.p.heumann · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your further suggestions.

After removing and re-installing the software, repairing and optimizing the catalogue with no change in load time, I noticed that the "Find>All missing files" sometimes stalls at about 88% for about a minute. Afterwards the "peparing files" window with 159 files pops up shortly, after which the message "There are no missing files to reconnect" appears. So it seems, as if there are some missing files, but I have no chance to reconnect or delete these entries. Any idea, how I can identify these missing files?

[Greg_S.]

This may be tedious, but scroll through the grid looking for a small yellow question mark icon in the top left of a thumbnail.

If you actually find one, it suggests that the Find>All Missing Files search failed for some reason.

[jan.p.heumann]

Thanks for your feedback.

Scanning through the folders I found one folder with images, which were marked "offline" and were linked to a network drive, which did not exist anymore. After removing these images from the catalogue, the load time reduced to about two seconds.

Do you have any idea, why "Find>All Missing Files" did not mark these "offline" images?

Now the Adobe Organizer works great again. So thanks for all your help and suggestions.