Restore Elements catalogues

[chabetha]

I want to restore my 3 Photoshop Elements (2020) catalogues from my External Hard drive to my new iMac computer. In Elements organiser I click on file, restore, browse I find the folder in the hard drive but cannot click on the thousands of files within that folder. When I choose the folder the original dialogue box just says "browse" again. Can anyone help please?

[Greg_S.]

When you are restoring a catalog from a hard drive, the dialog is looking for a .tly file, not the thousands of media files within the catalog.  Take a look at the HelpX article here.

[chabetha]

Thank you. How do I find the tly file.  I followed the instructions in the article to which you gave a link to manually back up my organiser catalogues. I now have 3 folders on my external hard drive, one for each catalog. If I did this wrong have I lost my catalogues?

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@Greg_S. wrote:

When you are restoring a catalog from a hard drive, the dialog is looking for a .tly file, not the thousands of media files within the catalog.  Take a look at the HelpX article here.

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Thank you. 

[chabetha]

I have now found 3 "Backup.tly" folders but I can't open/acccess them because Adobe says the app needed is currently "not available in your country or region". I think this is because I could not update Adobe software on my old computer so just backed up everything manually on to an external hard drive to move to my new computer. The only way my old computer became usable was to reinstall the operating system. (Mac OS Big Sur). I do have a download file on my external hard drive saved from my old computer: 

"Photoshop Elements _2020_WWEFDJ_ESD.dmg.download" - date modified 8th October, 2020. Is it worth downloading that and trying to update  from there or is it better just to let the Adobe Elements 2020 which I downloaded onto my new computer from my Adobe Elements serial number) start organising all my photos from scratch. (This would not be the end of the world for me!) I would very much appreciate your comments.

[Greg_S.]

I know almost nothing about Macs, so I can't help you with the appropriate installation procedure for the program itself.  If your new computer has the latest OS, I don't think Elements 2020 will work with it. 

If you do in fact have a working program on your new computer, you should be able to go to File>Restore Catalog and Browse for the Backup.tly file.  It should be contained within a folder with the name of the catalog you have backed up.  Select the file and click the Open button.

A dialog will open and you will have to Browse to the drive/folder where you want the files to be restored.  You have the option to restore the original folder structure.  This will replicate the folder hierarchy from your original computer.

Hope this helps.

[chabetha]

Thank you very much indeed. This is very helpful. 

[chabetha]

I decided  to download from my Adobe serial number.  I was pleased that my keyword tags as well as star ratings, captions and notes were preserved  although I lost the albums and only have my current catalogue. I was quite prepared for all this and will have to be more careful in future! Fortunately my current album is the most important. As you said the 2020 version does not work well with Mac Monterey but I have upgraded to 2022 and this is fine. Thanks again