Elements Organizer versions that accept renames & moves made in Windows Explore?

[JacB.Nimble]

My Elements Organizer 13 is not aware of changes made in Explorer. After changing the filename in Explorer, the thumbnail view in the Organizer still had the prior filename BUT it began searching immediately when I clicked on the thumbnail view and requested to open it in the editor. It found the image quickly under it's NEW NAME and displayed it to the new name in the editor.

Images that are DELETED in Explorer are an entirely different matter. In this case the thumbnail is still displayed in the Organizer and PSE will search through every hard drive on the PC trying to find the image. Is there any way to limit the search for missing photos to a specific drive or folder?

Do any of the more current PSE versions  have full browser capability in the organizer, that is have full awareness of renames, moves and deletes that are made in Windows Explorer?

The Organizer must have used the address of the original filename and open the contents it found, even displaying the new name of the image is in the editor window

[MichelBParis]

Your organizer has never been aware of changes made in the explorer and will never be.

It's a fundamental rule in using catalogs.

You should never move, delete or rename files outside of the organizer. That's the golden rule.

Any organization system using catalogs (even manual catalogs on paper or in a spreadsheet) store links to the real location in your drive. If you change files from the Explorer, that does not update the location in the database of the catalog. You won't have any problem if you delete, rename or move files from within the organizer: it does exactly the same operations as the explorer, and it updates the catalog, since it knows what you have decided to do.

There is a 'reconnect' feature in the organizer to scan the drive for 'missing files' you have created by using the Explorer externally, but that implies scanning all your drives. Even if you can guide that reconnecting search, it's never the best and fastest solution.

Photoshop Elements (PSE) knowledge base.

The huge advantage of catalogs managed with a database is that it's extremely fast to organize and search data within a catalog which is very small compared with the contents of all your drives. It's possible to index a quantity of data for immediate retrieval.

Remember that the organizer works the same as the Explorer to move, rename and delete files. Why would you want to do that externally which would destroy the internal organization?

In this case the thumbnail is still displayed in the Organizer

Yes, when you enter files in the catalog, a thumbnail is created and it is kept as well as the tags, exif and organization data even if the file is not found.

[JacB.Nimble]

I was unaware of the Find> All missing files.

I am aware of the PSE golden rule for older PSE versions such as 13. My question concerned current PSE versions.  I heard recently that perhaps one of the newer versions were able to sync with the Explorer data base as CS5 Bridge does. From these replies, It appears that no version of PSE is aware of Explorer actions and there is no way to limit the search for missing files in the Organizer. 

Thanks to all for the info.

[MichelBParis]

For2itus  wrote

I was unaware of the Find> All missing files.

I am aware of the PSE golden rule for older PSE versions such as 13. My question concerned current PSE versions.  I heard recently that perhaps one of the newer versions were able to sync with the Explorer data base as CS5 Bridge does. From these replies, It appears that no version of PSE is aware of Explorer actions and there is no way to limit the search for missing files in the Organizer. 

Thanks to all for the info.

The organizer lets you search and reconnect missing files. See the link to the tutorial. You can guide the search to a master folder.

On the other hand, the feature of 'Watched folders' lets you choose folders where you want the organizer to search for new files. It's a background task which scans those folders and you choose if you want to import new ones or not. You can also 'Import' from a selected folder, and the downloader will only find new files (not already in the catalog).

[Greg_S.]

Just to add a small point to Michel's explanation, you may find it worthwhile to do a Find>All missing files from the menu.  It should at least make it easier to delete files from the catalog that you have deleted in Explorer.