Problems with Organizer

[Zygote30]

Photoshop Elements 15 Questions

1. After making the mistake of forgetting that PSE 15 was on my computer (Windows 10) and needing more room on my (C) drive, I moved all my photos to an external drive (this was outside of the organizer).  Of course, when I later opened my catalog in the organizer, all 12,000 pictures were disconnected.  Many of my pictures had been moved several times to where the pathway to find them might be something like:

C/Users/Owner/Documents/Photoshop elements back/users/Adcock/Pictures/MP Navigator EX/Russell Adcock

I think this was so convoluted that PSE 15 could not find the pictures by itself. So, I painstakingly spent several .  weeks reconnecting the photos manually using the Browse function.  The actual files were found all over the place on my computer.  So, after finding and reconnecting them I did a backup to an external hard drive (E).   drive. Then I deleted all the picture folders from my (C) drive.  The only thing I had on the (E) external drive was my backup.  I also deleted all the thumbnails in my organizer.  This made installing the backup a Restore Backup just as if I was putting it on a new computer.

external hard drive (E).  The pathway to any folder was now much easier (E: Russell Adcock) Now to my question:

               Before doing the backup, I used the “find all missing files” function.  The result was no missing files but about 400 thumbnails were there with a white circle (with a line through it) in the upper corner of the thumbnail. I read somewhere that this means they are “hidden” files.  Is this accurate?  Also, what should I do about it?   It didn’t seem to affect the backup when I did it and I can still take one of those pictures and edit them if I need to so I’m not sure what, if anything, I need to do.

1. Another issue that presented itself is how to import photos from my iphone.  I do not understand the process for this.  I do already have my icloud photos on my windows computer.  Is there a pathway for downloading pictures from that?  I tried to copy a series of 4 pictures from my icloud on my computer and then put them in a folder on my E drive.  For some reason it only copied 1 of the pictures.  I’m assuming the pathway for pictures in folders is Import>From Files & Folders>(E)>Russell Adcock>Get Media. Then, would I need to drag the pictures from the organizer into the folders on the side, or is this necessary?

1. Another problem I’ve had is when some (many) of the photos were duplicated.  How do I avoid that? They were duplicated in the organizer before I did that latest backup.  I was able to delete the copies by hand and then after I completed the latest backup and there were no duplicates in that. 

Any tips or help you can give me would be greatly appreciated!!!

[MichelBParis]

               Before doing the backup, I used the “find all missing files” function.  The result was no missing files but about 400 thumbnails were there with a white circle (with a line through it) in the upper corner of the thumbnail. I read somewhere that this means they are “hidden” files.  Is this accurate?  Also, what should I do about it?   It didn’t seem to affect the backup when I did it and I can still take one of those pictures and edit them if I need to so I’m not sure what, if anything, I need to do.

By @Zygote30

The white circle icon with a diagonal bar is the 'non match' icon. It appears when you issue a search and that results in showing stacks or version sets in which some items don't fit with the criteria. For instance, in the same stack, some items have a different rating. It's just a warning about which items in the stack correspond to your criteria.

The icon for hidden files is different, it's an eye with a diagonal bar on the bottom left of  the thumbnail.