Need to locate and restore backed up Premiere Elements 11 project files

[GregG050953]

Hello, first time user of the forums.

I recently had a system crash that necessitated using system recovery and re-installation of Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, plus re-installation of my Adobe software, including Premiere Elements 11.

I had a really involved project I was working on in Premiere Elements before the crash.  I have plenty of files from before the crash, that were backed up as part of the system recovery process, including user-based Adobe program data, program files and program files (x86). 

Could someone(s) PLEASE help me to recover my lost project?  I have literally months of work invested in this and it will nearly kill me if I have to re-create the project from scratch.

I GREATLY appreciate any help that can be sent my way!

[Steve Grisetti]

Do you have your .prel project files? Do you know where your media files are located? (I assume you've restored them all to your hard drive.)

If so, it's pretty easy. Select File/Open in Premiere Elements and locate your .prel project file. When you open it, the program will ask you to locate the media files that were linked to the project. Browse to locate a media file. If the rest of your media files are in the same folder, they will all automatically re-link to your project.

[GregG050953]

Thanks for responding!

Unfortunately, I have zero .prel files, but I did find .pre files in my backups.  In which folder location would the .prel files have been?

[Kale Aap]

Mr Grisetti,

You wrote 'If the rest of your media files are in the same folder, they will all automatically re-link to your project'.

Currently, that's not my experience. I had a diskcrash, but a backup of all PE files and media.  So I did build the directory tree with all the media again. Just didn't remember the exact name of the directory on the top. With help of the Media Search option in Edit I can relink all the media BUT ONE by ONE. I have more than 2000 links to restore.... Can you help?

[Steve Grisetti]

The files are wherever you saved them to.

If you don't have backups of your .prel files, you don't have your old projects. Sorry.

By default these files are stored in Documents/Adobe/Premiere Elements/11.0 on Windows 10. I assume they'd be in a similar place on Windows 7.

[GregG050953]

Thanks, I was afraid of that.  They were saved to the program default location, of which I was not aware, unfortunately.

So, it appears that I will be rebuilding from scratch.  I'll be able to watch closer where the .prel files go by default and make sure that those files are part of my weekly Norton backup, along with everything else I had been saving anyway (user-based program data, program files, program files (x86).

Thanks again!