Problem with Organizer catalog

[Tomasz23980612o376]

Hi, I have treied to upgrade from version 17 to the current 2022 version. Unfortunately my catalog in the old version is corrupt (it works but when I try optimize it says it is corrupt, iti simpossible to repair, also there are missing images which I cannot remove from the catalog). I can back up the catalog and import it into the new version but after import the 2022 version just crashes. It works OK without the catalog but with the "demaged" catalog it crashes at thestart or in the best case scenario opens minimized without possibility to view the window.
The catalog contains about 130 000 images so not that funny to atart over...
Hopefully someone maybe have an idea hor to repair the old catalog. There no error messages except for "catalog cannot be repaired" in the old version and "program encountered som errer and must close now" in the new version, not really helpfull. 
I cannot convert to ightroom either. Nothing happens.
Regards
Tomasz

[Greg_S.]

Hmmmmm . . .  I have a few suggestions to make but I can't guarantee that anything is going to work.

You say you are unable to remove some missing images.  That seems to be the most obvious source of the corruption.   What happens when you try to delete the missing files? And how did they become missing in the first place?

In the meantime, while you are still able to open the catalog in Elements 17, and if you have not done so yet, I recommend making sure that you have written the metadata to all of your files.  You have a very large catalog, so I recommend doing this in batches.  Perhaps select a couple of hundred files at a time, then use the Ctrl+W command.  Worst case scenario, this will make it easier to create your tag hieararchy in a new catalog.  But do not despair yet.

[Greg_S.]

And a couple of other questions:

Do you have any video files in your catalog?

Can you pinpoint when you became aware of the missing files problem?

Are there any new or unusual files that have been imported into the catalog?

How do you normally import files into the catalog?  Have you had any problems importing?

[Tomasz23980612o376]

Hi,

Thank for the inputs. There are only about 20 images/videos which are missing but impossible to reconnect as the Organizer just says "was not connectred". When trying to delete the message is just "was not able to delete" (or something like that in English). 
I don't know when the error ocurred first, I noticed it when making a back up.
But, if I write metadata to all the files, deos that mean all the tags and so will be saved in the individual files? And then I could import the images to a new catalog and the program could read the tags from the files creating all the categories? That would be a way to go maybe?

[Greg_S.]

Saving the metadata to files does give you a head-start on recreating a catalog from scratch but it is not a perfect solution,  For example any People tags will be converted to keyword tags and you will lose the face recognition information itself.  This is not a problem if you only want to search for a person's name in your catalog.  It is also not too big a deal to create People tags for all of the keyword tags with imported people names.  One other thing you should do is to save your tag hiearchy to a text file.  That file can then be imported into a new catalog before importing the files and you can map the tags to the existing hierarchy rather than them coming into a single Imported Keywords category.  See Importing and Exporting tags in this article.  Added:  And if you have to create a new catalog, you will lose any Album information (although you can export and import your Album hierarchy in the same way as the tag hierarchy can be transferred from one catalog to another).

However, before doing any of this, I suggest you contact Adobe Support and see if they can help you recover the old catalog.  If you do not get any satisfaction from Support, let me know and I may be able to escalate the problem.

And one other piece of advice - make sure you have a backup of the catalog folder before doing any further work on the catalog.

[Tomasz23980612o376]

Hi,

Thank forr for the tips so far. I will try with Adobe support first.

Also, as extr ainfo, it is now impossible to add, delete or change any tags as the program just says that the categary could not be created/changes/etc because of the damaged catalog.

Yes, I have backups, thank you.

[Tomasz23980612o376]

Hi, no luck with Adobe support it seems as I cannot come pass the bot support due to me not having any software aligable to human contact 🙂 (I only use Photoshop ELements from Adobe).

[Greg_S.]

You have Elements 2022. Support should help you converting the catalog. 

[Tomasz23980612o376]

Hi again, I have now tried to contact the Adobe support at 5 different times. 3 times I was told I was not eligable for any support and I was not able to do anything about. Twice I was told the same but after I replied that I have Element s2022 the agent told me that I was eligable and connected to me technical support. At the first time I was asked to arrange some things on my computer and contect Adobe again but my case was closed before I could do that. Second time I was chatting witrh an agent and we agreed on them calling me at a specified time. I waited 2 hours at that time but nobody called and my case was closed shortly after that. So maybe I am eligable for help but it is not easy to squeeze that help out of Adobe, me being such a small customer I guess 🙂

[Greg_S.]

Hi Tomasz.  I am very sorry that you received such bad service from Adobe Support.  I will try to see what I can do to get you some real help.  No promises.  But hang in there.