I have a problem since upgrading to Elements 2025

[MShell50]

I previously had Elements 2020 installed on my PC with the photos stored on an external hard drive due to limited storage space on the PC's hard drive. I purchased a new PC with much more storage, upgraded to Elements 2025 seemingly successfully and then tried to load the photos on the external drive into Elements 2025. Now my files in the Organizer are a mess. When I open the Organizer there is always a photo thumbnail grid (always the same one) even if I do not open one of the files. And my Albums have disappeared. My files are scattered and if I open a file often the .Orf thumbnails show a ? and if I click on them the program says they are missing and then finds the file. What should I do?

[Greg_S.]

What did you do to load the photos on the external drive into Elements 2025?

What needs to happen is that you have to CONVERT the old catalog to Elements 2025.  Where is your 2020 catalog folder stored?  If you open Elements 2020 on your old computer, go to Help>System Info . .  and it will tell you the location of the folder. 

If the catalog folder is on your external drive - great.  If it is on your old computer, you should copy the entire folder to either the external drive or the new computer.

Once the old catalog folder is located on the external drive or on the new computer, use your new computer to locate the catalog.pse18db file within the folder and double-click on it.  If you only have Elements 2025 installed on the new computer, the catalog will be automatically converted and opened in the Organizer.

Other issues that you may be describing:

• In order to open the .org raw files in the Organizer, you need to install the Camera Raw plug-in file.  You do this from the Help menu.
• Elements 2025 opens the Organizer's My Folders panel into List View.  Click the down arrow next to the My Folders heading and you can change it to Tree view.

If you have also installed Elements 2020 on the new computer, I will need to give you other instructions to convert the catalog.