Premiere Elements 13 project opened in Premiere Elements 2021 - can't find Project Assets

[hmshotspur19]

Hi all:

This is my first post.  I have used Premiere Elements 13 on and off for many years and after my faithful Alienware 17 R2 gave up the ghost recently, I decided to upgrade to Premiere Elements 2021 on my new ASUS TUF computer. I had all my most recent PE 13 projects self-contained on an external hard drive. Now when I open a PE 13 project (.prel) file from thst same external hard drive, it can't find any of the media.  Ok I figured I'm prepared to lead PE 2021 to the trough.  However, even though I find the first of many images it is looking for it still requires me to find each of the images in that particular folder.  In other words it doesn't "learn" to look for subsequent images in that folder!

Do I need to change the external disk drive's volume label (e.g. D:\ to H:\ ) so that it matches the previous label it had on my old AW computer? Seems like this shouldn't be necessary if I find the first asset of  the group of assets that require relinking.

Any guidance would be most welcome.

Steve D.

[Steve Grisetti]

Premiere Elements has never been fully backward compatible. You often can not open a project created in an older version in a newer version of the program.

You're trying to leap many generations of the program if you're opening a version 13 project in version 2021. It's just not going to work. In fact, doing so may well have corrupted your old project.

[hmshotspur19]

Thanks, Steve for responding with a cautionary heads up. I made a copy of the project and then loaded it up into PE 2021.

After changing the Drive Label on my external drive back to the original label I had on my previous laptop  (I: as it turns out), everything seems to be working fine.  I did a "file save as" to create a new project file within PE 2021, and then created a media output file (MP4 format) and the resulting video output works just fine.  Maybe my original project creation in PE 13 was not overly complex and therefore didn't result in any crashes or corruptions of files, but in any event I will stay alert to the possibility in the future.  In the mean time, I am happy that it seems to be working (for now).

[Ann Bens · Accepted solution]

Do I need to change the external disk drive's volume label (e.g. D:\ to H:\ ) so that it matches the previous label

That will certainly help.

[hmshotspur19]

Yep.  That did it.  So apparently Premiere Elements project files store the Project Asset filenames in full including the Disk Volume label.  Somehow that seems a bit strange to me but in any event it is now working! Thanks, Ann.