How do I clean up grayed out files/folders/Drive Letters in folder tree?

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
January 24, 2024
2 replies
413 views

My current Catalog is ten plus years of various PSE years additions/upgrades restored Catalogs from over the years of restoring and it has become a mess of a Folder tree! Grayed out Folders and previous un-used drive letters & folders and file paths from way back I can see but cannot delete or remove any of it anyway I can find. How can I remove all this old junk from my catalog folder tree and just have the present used position of my photo folders in my Catalog and nothing else..?

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Greg_S.

Community Expert

If I am interpreting your screenshots, correctly, the photos that are stored in your paul pics folder are in a very precarious location. My recommendations is as follows:

Do a full backup of your C drive to an external drive. (I'm talking about an OS backup, not an Elements backup).
In Elements, click and drag the pauls pics folder to the Users>paul_>Photos folder. (It appears that the only other catalog files currently in that folder are those in the 2019 07 11 Photo Scans folder.

I am going to ping @MichelBParis with whom you have communicated in your other thread, to see if he agrees with my assessment or has other suggestions.

Once you have moved the image files to a more normal folder structure, you can collapse all the empty folders and sub-folders in the My Folders panel, by simply clicking on the down-pointing chevron arrows:

R

ronanxyzAuthor

Known Participant

thanks for the input. Quick explanation of where I am at with PSE. previously I backed up my catalog to and external drive 😧 PSE CAT reorganizied 2022 07 18. I restored it there and started trying to reoganize it there. my present used photos folders are under paul_, last folder there is the one you can see is screen shot pauls pics. In the process of this my computers SSD Crashed! I bought a new computer and bought PSE 2024 fresh install. I can access my old catalog 1111 on my D external drive with no issues. I have not done the convert action to the catalog yet. Not sure about that step...? Screen shot of top of my folder tree.

My desire is to just have in my present catalog a clean folders structure of Photos: and all it's sub folders, named by download date. pauls pics is an odd folder, so its at the end. I have 60,000 + photos tagged If I could do that I would like to move it into my computers internal SSD to a custom location C: PSE 2024

I just want to clean it up before I move it into my new commputer and get a fresh start.

Programdata: below pauls pics does have a delete option when highlighted now, previously didn't. Can I delete that safely...? without it effecting my tags or anything else...? I just don'y know enough.

As to the F: drive letter grayed out I guess that is my previous external drive letter on om old crashed computer. How can I get rig of that old file path being displaced? All Right clicking options are all grayed out!

The one single folder 2019 07 11 Photo Scans will not reconnect under the new 😧 drive letter postion on new computer for some reason even if I browse and identify it for PSE...? can't figure that one out..? not a big deal as its just a few photos.

I do have one extra backup on a seperate external hard drive just in case.

Any further help with how to accomplish this GOAL is greatly appreciated. This folder tree going all the way bacl to PSE 2007 remanats just bugs me.

Greg_S.

Community Expert

The folder tree simply replicates your OS folder tree. If you wish to clean up the tree, you should only do so within the Organizer. You can delete empty (or unused?) folders by right-clicking on a selected folder and choosing Delete Folder from the context menu.

R

ronanxyzAuthor

Known Participant

I wish it was that easy. Everything in folder tree except my current used folders are grayed out and has no delete option I can reach. I can highlight and right click but all options are grayed out too...! This is a screen shot of folder tree below my current catalog folders. They go clear back to my 2007 PSE ...! Any ideas on how to clean this up greatly appreiated.

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