move catalog to a laptop with existing PSE 2020 prg installed.

[Grace Muskokan]

I am preparing to leave home for my winter place. I use a desktop here but a laptop when I travel. I have the program installed on both. I thought I had moved the Catalog to an EHD last winter but I see now that the catalog is different on the laptop from that on the desktop.

I have completed a Full Backup that includes buc and tly files as well as BOOO files. I reconnected, optimized and repaired before making the Backup.

#1 Can I somehow update the Catalog on the laptop to conform to the newer version  in the saved Backup?

#2 Do I need to reinstall PSE 2020 on the laptop in order to do a Restore using my Backup?

#3 At present my catalog is shown as below but I wanted to have it only on the EHD so that I could switch from desktop to laptop seamlessly. Is this possible?

I hope I have explained the goal I am trying to achieve, to have my catalog on an EHD that can be used by both devices.

Elements Organizer 18.0.0.0
Core Version: 18.0 (20201207.m.154403)
Language Version: 18.0 (20201207.m.154403)

Current Catalog:
Catalog Name: My Catalog
Catalog Location: C:\Users\Owner\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Elements Organizer\Catalogs\My Catalog\
Catalog Size: 75.7MB
Catalog Cache Size: 856.8MB

System:
Operating System Name: Windows 10
Operating System Version: 10.0
System Architecture: Intel CPU Family:6 Model:5 Stepping:3 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2
Built-in Memory: 7.8GB
Free Memory: 530.1MB

[Greg_S.]

Is this happening to all of the photos in the catalog?

There are two things I see in your screenshot:

• The two grey thumbnails are missing files in the catalog.  This means that they have been moved outside of the catalog into which they were imported or else have been deleted (by you).
• The photos have a  -1 suffix in their names. Generally, this means that they are copies of files that are in the same folder, although there could be other reasons.

If it is only these two photos that are missing, I suggest you search your computer for where these files are actually stored.  If it is your entire catalog, then something else has gone wrong.

When you say that the catalog worked when you first moved the E drive to your laptop, do you mean that you could see all of the photos in the catalog on your laptop.  Did you make sure you have the correct catalog open on your laptop.   Or could it possibly be a prior catalog that had the folder mess you were trying to clean up?

[Greg_S. · Accepted solution]

@Grace Muskokan said:  I am confused by the fact that photos I added to the catalog on the desktop do not appear on the laptop catalog. So it seems I have the same catalog open but it is keeping a different version according to the device I use to import photos?

No.  Given the information you have provided, I suspect that you are using two different catalogs.  Go to Help>System Info . . .  It may take a little while to display the dialog, but at the top, you will see the location of your currently open catalog.  Do the same on both computers and see if there is any difference in either the name or location of the catalog on each machine.

[Grace Muskokan]

thanks you were right about the different catalogs. It does take longer for the photos to load from the E drive but the catalog does load.

Next problem, when I import photos on one device they are greyed out when I open on the second device.I then have to reconnect them in order for the image to appear. The info is there showing the location but the photos are not there till I connect them. They do not appear in the catalog structure either.

I'm thinking I have to have my whole Photo Backup By Year folder moved from the #8 EHD to the E drive.

[Greg_S.]

Grace, you haven't given me enough information to figure out what the current situation is.  You say that I was correct about the different catalogs.  But you haven't told me what you have done to correct that problem.  Please show me a screenshot of the Help>System Info dialogs for both computers.  All I need is the top few lines showing the Current Catalog and the full path of the catalog.

Next, please show me the File>Manage Catalogs dialog on each machine.  Make sure that the E drive is connected to the computer when you take the screenshots.

[Grace Muskokan]

Hi Greg,

I think I have figured out the problem while following your instructions.

When I switch from destop to laptop, making sure E is the only drive connected,, the photos that I imported to the desktop are greyed out. But when I connect the EHD #8 with my complete Photo Backup by Year folder on it, the photos are connected and show up.

So I guess the next step is how do I move that EHD folder onto my E drive so that it is accessible to the laptop when I travel?

Or do I just need to take it with me?

[Grace Muskokan]

I replied on the laptop. Here are the screenshots from the desktop

[Greg_S.]

The screenshots in your first recent post do not appear to be from your laptop, and there are no posts attached to your second post which is supposedly from your desktop. 

So, here's what appears to me.  Whichever computer is displayed in your screenshots is using a catalog that is stored on the D drive of that computer.  You need to have both computers using the catalog that is on your E drive which should be the drive letter assigned to the shared EHD.

If I am right about the D drive being on your desktop, then the easiest way to fix this would be:

• attach the shared drive to the desktop
• browse to the catalog.pse18db file on the E drive using Windows File Explorer
• double-click on the file.

The catalog shared on the E drive should then open in the desktop's Organizer.   Presumably that catalog will not have the files that you recently imported to that computer and you will need to import them again into that catalog.  If you have followed my previous directions, those files should be stored on your shared E drive.

Since I can only see one set of screenshots, I can only comment about the computer from which they were taken.  It's possible that the other computer needs to be fixed in the same way. 

Both computers need to be using the same catalog stored on the shared drive.

All new photos need to be stored on the shared drive.

[Grace Muskokan]

OK I think I have the catalog opened correctly in E drive on both. However, when I go to choose catalog file under the Catalog folder there are 3 different ones with heading catalog.pse18db. I always use the first one in this list.

All new photos need to be stored on the shared drive.

My new files are stored on a separate EHD. If I copy that folder to the E drive won't all the photos that have already been imported be then disconnected?  I do not know if it is OK to copy the folder from EHD #8 with my PHotoBackupByYear to thje E drive.

I can cope with taking that external EHD #8 with me if that is the solution. 

I have edited my ealier post to include the desktop screenshots of the Manage catalog and System INfo shots.

[Greg_S.]

I have looked at your desktop screenshots, and the desktop catalog is set up properly.  So is your D drive on your laptop the

#8 EHD or another internal drive?

@Grace Muskokan said:  OK I think I have the catalog opened correctly in E drive on both. However, when I go to choose catalog file under the Catalog folder there are 3 different ones with heading catalog.pse18db. I always use the first one in this list.

Yes that is the correct one to use.  You have hidden file extensions in Windows Explorer.  But look at the type of file and it should correlate with the correct file extension:

@Grace Muskokan said:  My new files are stored on a separate EHD. If I copy that folder to the E drive won't all the photos that have already been imported be then disconnected? 

Why do you want to keep the files on two hard drives and make things difficult for yourself?  The whole original idea was to put all of your photo files on your E drive so that they can be shared.  You also needed to keep the catalog folder on the shared drive so that it could be used by both computers.  The catalog folder is relatively small.  So storage should not be an issue.  The secondary hard drive should be used to backup the photos on the shared drive.

@Grace Muskokan said:  I do not know if it is OK to copy the folder from EHD #8 with my PHotoBackupByYear to thje E drive.

It's unclear to me what will happen if you copy the folder on EHD  #8 to your E drive.  Yes, it is likely that they will be disconnected.  But I don't know if you have actually imported those files to the E drive catalog, or not.  At this point, I think the best approach would be to copy the folder to the E Drive, then try to import the files into the catalog.  If you get a message that the files are already in the catalog, then it will be necessary to find them in the grid and reconnect them to the new location on the E Drive.   If the files are actually imported, you may find that you have duplicates within the Organizer because they are in different folders.  If that is the case, you can delete the disconnected copies.

@Grace Muskokan said:  I can cope with taking that external EHD #8 with me if that is the solution. 

As I have already said, that is not the ideal solution.  You should use the second EHD only to backup the files on the shared drive.

[Grace Muskokan]

It worked as soon as I copied the photos to the E drive where my catalog is

Thanks, I know you likely told me all this before but I think I got it now.