PSE 2020 - Tags

[Straney0555]

I have PSE 2020. My 512 gb hard drive almost full so I had an additional hard drive installed on my laptop. I left the PSE on my original hard drive and moved all my pictures and videos to the larger hard drive. I opened my PSE and redirected it to the D: drive. It asked if I wanted to import the tags which I did, but there are so many more that were tagged that aren't showing up.  I backed up the catalog before I moved all the pictures. How can I get the tags to come through? What did I do wrong?

[Greg_S.]

You should restore the backup catalog to the new drive.  That is the only way you can be sure to transfer all of your photos with their tags and other metadata.  It is likely that the reason you cannot see all of the tags from the old computer catalog is that the tags were not saved in the files' metadata.  Tags are only saved if you have run the command in the Organizer to save the information - keyboard shortcut Ctrl+W in Windows, or if the file has been edited and saved from the Editor, after the tag has been applied.

If you did in fact save the tag metadata to the files and imported the tags when you imported the files, then the possibility exists that People, Places and Events tags have been converted to ordinary keyword tags and they may be available under the Imported Keyword Tags category in the Tags panel.  However, you cannot simply drag an Imported Keyword Tag to the People category.  You would have to tag them with a newly created People tag.  And all face recognition information will be lost if you import your photos rather than restore a backup as I recommend.

[Straney0555]

Thank you for the quick reply Greg. I did not “save” using the Ctrl W.  Since I already moved my photos over to the new drive, am I too late and I will have to re-tag thousands of photos?

Is there any work around, like if I copied them back to the original drive and saved the metadata.

[Greg_S.]

If you have enough room on your new drive, you can restore the old backup to the new drive.  If the restore is successful, you can delete all the media files that you simply copied over to the new computer.  Where is the backup catalog (and media) stored?  On an external drive?

Added:  While you are going through this process, it would be a good idea to copy the files back to your old drive or, better yet, an external drive.

[Straney0555]

The backup catalog and all the media are stored on the new drive (and backed up on an external drive). The program is on the original OS.

I did the restore from the new drive also and only some of the tags came with.

[Straney0555]

Ok - so in addition to the previous questions.

It looks like 2 of my people tags are intact in PSE on the new drive. I am thankful I still have “Colleagues” and “Family” The one that is NOT listed is my “Friend” category. I decided I would need to re-create all my “Friends” People Tags and all the people in each of the categories.

I clicked the “Plus” on the right of People Tags to add Friends. When I looked in the Group drop down in New Person box – all the Header categories are listed in the dropdown box. Why would they not show up in the People Tags on the right side?

[Straney0555]

Please close this post. My friends catagory is listed in one of my family members catagories. Strange. Thank you for your help on this!! I'm very sorry that I led you down a rabbit hole!