lost album from PSE14 to PSE2018 on Windows

Report · Dec 26, 2017

Hi

I am moved from PSE 14 to PSE18 on Win 10 (not an upgrade but a full version)

Catalog has been converted properly but not the category or Album

Do you know how I can get my album back from PSE 14 to PSE 2018

Thanks for your support

bp

Report · Dec 26, 2017

berpar91 wrote
Hi
I am moved from PSE 14 to PSE18 on Win 10 (not an upgrade but a full version)
Catalog has been converted properly but not the category or Album
Do you know how I can get my album back from PSE 14 to PSE 2018
Thanks for your support
bp

If you 'convert' a catalog, all your organization is recovered, tags, categories and albums.

Did you:

- move to a new computer, in which case the only solution is to use the backup and restore method:

Move Elements Organizer catalog

- or did you install PSE18 on the same computer and use the menu 'Manage catalogs', button 'convert' of the organizer?

- or something else?

Report · Jan 12, 2018

Thanks for your help. I have no find out my mistake. It wasn't the album but the category. I forgot to hit the right button

Report · Aug 23, 2018

I have the same situation and problems as berpar91. That is, converted a PSE 12 catalog to 2018. Tags, categories, captions, events, ratings were partially preserved.

Example 1: '2018 Denmark' is attached to hundreds of photos in PSE 12. Only one photo has that tag in PSE 2018. Another tag had 1155 photos; only 80 in PSE 2018. Having fewer photos attached to the imported tags appears to have occurred on most, if not all, imported tags. In fact, many tags are attached to no photos. In total PSE 2018 has only 392 photos tagged with imported tags.

Example 2: No categories and sub-categories exist in the PSE 2018 catalog. Though the related tags do exist. PSE 12 had Cat Genealogy, subcat Grave Stones. The relationship between them was lost and neither was attached to any photos.

Example 3: No Events exist in the PSE 2018 catalog.

Example 4: No ratings exist in the PSE 2018 catalog.

Example 5: Most captions lost in the PSE 2018 catalog. However, the one photo tagged '2018 Denmark' has a caption.

I'm having a difficult time finding a succinct answer on this forum on the steps that should have been followed to import all the old catalog data into the new catalog. The conversion process is pointed to in several postings (versus a new catalog), but I'm not finding how to convert and get all tags, categories, captions, events, & ratings. Or what steps to follow to recover all this lost data.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Report · Aug 23, 2018

David7Buxton wrote
I have the same situation and problems as berpar91.

Not the same problem at all.

Rather see that discussion from today about that old problem with PSE11 and newer:

Organizer 2018 places

Report · Aug 24, 2018

Thanks MichelBParis.

The article you referred me to dealt with Places. My Place info seemed to convert correctly.

My problems, and the related examples, are with tags, captions, categories, captions, events and ratings. Do you have any advice or suggestions on how to correct those?

Report · Aug 24, 2018

The first thing I would do would be to convert the PSE12 catalog again. You can convert it several times, you just need to tick the checkbox to show already converted catalogs.

The idea is to check if the second conversion will be identical to the first one. I have not checked if that conversion overrides the previous catalog, but I don't think so. If you want to keep both for comparison, maybe rename the first conversion before attempting the second one.

I have never seen a conversion like yours; in all my experience and tests, the conversion is identical or fails.

Report · Aug 27, 2018

Wanted to share how I addressed the conversion problems. A second attempted conversion produced even worse results. Decided to try the back-up & restore method. Bottom line: appears to have resolved all the issues. As I write this Organizer is still regenerating people recognition and thumbnails, but a brief check shows much better results. Will do a more through validation over the next few days.

While things are looking good I am very disappointed with the PSE 2018 customer experience thus far. I came very close to returning the latest version and switching to a non-Adobe product. I expect a much easier and smoother upgrade process from a company the size of Adobe.

Report · Aug 27, 2018

David7Buxton wrote
Decided to try the back-up & restore method. Bottom line: appears to have resolved all the issues. As I write this Organizer is still regenerating people recognition and thumbnails, but a brief check shows much better results.

The only explanation I can see is that the backup and restore method necessarily uses the current catalog. You get the results you are describing when you convert another catalog by mistake (that may happen to everybody). There can be other explanations, but from my experience (more than one hundred conversions of various catalog versions) and from the feedback in this forum, you are the only one to report such wrong conversions. Your idea to test the backup and restore question was a smart one.

You may be skeptical about that explanation, but you could do a search in your explorer for files named 'catalog.pse14db'. It's possible you discover other catalogs on your computer.

Report · Aug 28, 2018

Michel - Thanks for your help.

Based upon my initial research on this community, I had run across what you mentioned about maybe converting the wrong catalog. No, there was only one catalog on the computer (and I just re-verified that). Plus, after our initial contact I re-ran the conversion to rule out that particular possibility and to see if the first was just a fluke.

The laptop is only a few months old, so earlier this year I moved PSE12 to it via the back-up & restore process. However, that catalog was in a custom location. The new computer has two drives. A SSD as primary (OS mostly) and a 'conventional' hard drive. Since the SSD is much smaller, used the second drive to store all photos. As a retired IT professional, I'm very confident in the problems I've reported. (And share this additional information not to be disagreeable, but so others can learn for my experience.)

Yesterday I did a very detailed, side-by-side comparison of the old PSE12 to the PSE2018 contents. Everything looks good. I verified every tag still had the same number of photos linked - they did. Similarly, verified People, Places, Events, but more of a spot check of several random selections of each. Albums, Ratings and Saved Searches also checked out as good.

We can close out this thread.