Tags didn’t import

[DebBeee]

I had to recover 10's of thousand of files from a faulty drive. I lost all my previous catalogs. BUT the photo files I recovered still have the tags embedded in them. (I can see the tags associated with each file in WIN 10 file explorer.) After recovering and reorganizing 24,000* of the photos and upgrading to PSE-2024, I imported the photos. (* About 1/3 of what I have.) All went well EXCEPT the tags embedded in the files did not import. I have read what I could find at Adobe including community posts and can't find a fix.QUESTION: Is there is a way to import the tags after importing the photos? I've tried REPAIR CATALOG which didn't change anything. 

[Greg_S.]

I don't think this can be done after the files have been imported. 

And I don't know whether this will work, but try writing the metadata to the files.  Select the files and use Ctrl+W to perform the operation.  Then import these files into a new catalog.  You should try this first with a small sample of files.  Hopefully, when you import these files into the new catalog, you will be given the choice to import the tags.  However, any People, Places or Events tags that you have created will be imported as keyword tags and will be placed in the Imported keyword tags category.    It is a fairly easy job to create a new hierarchy with the imported tags.   And if you have any backup catalogs, you can save that hierarchy as a text file which can then be imported into a new catalog.  If you are able to do this, the imported files will be placed automatically into the correct keyword tag or can be mapped to the hierarchy.

I'm assuming that you have not backed up your catalogs.  If you have a backup from an old catalog, you should simply convert it into an Elements 2024 catalog.

If you were able to recover the photos, why can't you recover the catalog?