17 Replies Latest reply: Oct 5, 2006 3:51 AM by (Colin_Walls) RSS

    Reconnect in sub folders.

    athegn Community Member
      In order to maintain my windows file structure, I store images by year then month then day, I moved a year's worth of images from one hard disk to another to free up space on the main hard disk.

      Now I wish to reconnect these images using PSE3 organizer. How can I get the reconnect to look at sub folders within a main folder?

      When I tried it seems that I have to find each individual file; very slow with nearly 2000 files. Is the correct?
        • 1. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
          Community Member
          What you should have done is use Organizer to move the images - it would then have updated the catalog. As it is, the best way to fix the problem would be to edit th ecatalog with MS Access. Do you have that available?
          • 2. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
            athegn Community Member
            Did not see how I could have used Organizer to move the files and retain my Windows folder structure. I used Organizer to move the first year and all images are now in one folder; just selected that years files then used Move command to a new folder for that year. Sub folders were not created by Organizer as I had hoped.

            Yes I have Access; will use that to edit catalog.
            • 3. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
              Community Member
              You woul dhave needed to move one folder's worth of images at a time - drag&drop in folder view is a bit easier than the Move command.

              Take a look with Access. If it's not obvious what to do, come back and I'll endeavour to help more.
              • 4. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
                OnTheRoad41 Community Member
                I have a similar problem (moving files with windows explorer) and now explorer shows that I have directories with pics in them that PSE4 will not import. It says they already exist in the catalog but they don't show up. I have access but haven't a clue what to do. If I try to open the catalog (My Catalog-1.psa) it doesn't show up in Access. I am not a user of Microsoft Access, I just have it on my computer.

                Thanks for any help.

                Pam Ryan
                • 5. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
                  Community Member
                  Pam

                  I would suggest that you make a copy of your catalog and then open it with Access by right-clicking and choosing MS Access. Making the change is fairly simple - you really don't need to know anything about Access [I don't!]. Just do a Replace on the start of the image pathnames.
                  • 6. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
                    Community Member
                    Pam
                    One thing to check also is if the pictures somehow got the Hidden Tag applied. Open Organizer and click this tag and see if the pictures show up. If they do, you can remove the tag. This happened to someone else in a previous post.
                    • 7. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
                      athegn Community Member
                      Thank you for your help.

                      Using Access was able to reconnect under my new drive.
                      • 8. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
                        OnTheRoad41 Community Member
                        OK, now I am really confused. I can SEE my pictures in WinExplorer but they do NOT show up in a catalog. I created a new catalog, tried importing all my pictures (all in one directory with sub directories on an external drive). First it imported about 13,000 of 17,000 (same number as before when I couldn't "see" them in the original catalog) and second, although it was a newly created catalog, it gave me the box that says the pictures already exist in the catalog.

                        What am I missing here?

                        There are no pictures with the hidden tag.
                        • 9. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
                          Community Member
                          Pam

                          Are there duplicate pictures? If so, the attempt to import one the second time would give this reult.
                          • 10. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
                            Barb__O Community Member
                            >although it was a newly created catalog, it gave me the box that says the pictures already exist in the catalog.

                            The usual reason for this is that you have duplicates of some photos across your hard drive folders. You have the same photo in multiple different folders. PSE imports the first occurence of this photo that it encounters and then gives you a warning message and does not import the duplicates.
                            • 11. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
                              OnTheRoad41 Community Member
                              I guess I had double problems, all of my doing. I did have a lot of duplicates (which I knew, but didn't know the extent of the duplications). I have cleaned out the duplicates (that took a while even with software to find the dupes), re-imported and re-connected and all seems well.

                              I REALLY need a plan for storing my pictures! Anybody have any suggestions?

                              Thanks for everyone's help and suggestions.

                              Pam
                              • 12. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
                                Community Member
                                > I REALLY need a plan for storing my pictures! Anybody have any suggestions?

                                In theory, when using Org it just doesn't matter how your images are stored. However, there are lots of reasons not to have just one folder. My approach, FWIW, is to have a folder for each year, which contains sub-folders for each month, in which I store the images. I import from my camera into Org having it set up to store into a folder called UNFILED. Then I drag them [in Folder view] into the right place.
                                • 13. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
                                  Karin Sue Community Member
                                  I have broad categories set up. (Family, Organization, Work) within each category I have year folders which contain month folders.

                                  In the month folders are the photos and sometimes event subfolders. I name my month folders with a digital prefix 01-12. (08August2006)

                                  Major trips and events get their own month level folder with the appropriate month prefix. (08FamilyReunion2006). Within these are usually folders named by the photographer from whom I got the included batch of photos.

                                  I tend to import with windows into the correct folders, then "Get from files and folders"
                                  • 14. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
                                    Please could Colin Walls help?

                                    Re copying the catalog from one drive to another.

                                    I am not familiar with Microsoft Access although it is on my PC.

                                    When I right-click on catalog.psa and open it in MSAccess, I first get a Security Warning saying This file may not be safe... I assume this to be the usual Microsoft paranoia and click on Open. I then get a dialog with a list on the left hand side starting with Tables at the top (opened by default), with Queries, Forms, etc. below. Under Tables there are three Create Table entries and 12 Tables. The Tables are:

                                    FaceRectTable
                                    FolderIconTable
                                    FolderTable has some entries which begin C:\Documents and Settings\....
                                    IdTable
                                    ImageLongCaptionTable has what seem to be my Notes
                                    ImageTable has all entries with two columns with C:\Documents and Settings\...
                                    MediaProjectTable
                                    MediaProxyPathTable
                                    MediaShortCaptionTable has what seem to be my Captions
                                    MediaVsFeatureTable
                                    PageTable
                                    VsFeatureSetTable has one entry with two columns, the second of which reads C:\album\.espionIndices\itemData.mk4 (No apostrophes in the Table)

                                    Can I make global changes (From C:\Documents and Settings\... to D:\Documents and Settings\...) to all these Tables or do I have to do them one at a a time? What about the entry in the last Table? I have searched high and low and dont have a folder C:\album. Are all my Captions and Notes transferred cleanly by changing C:\ to D:\?

                                    This all seems quite complicated. I must be missing something, I suspect.

                                    Thanks for any help.
                                    • 15. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
                                      Community Member
                                      There is only one table that has loads of data in it, including pathnames - can't remember which one, but I think it's ImageTable. Just do the global replace there and you'll be fine.

                                      I trust you are working on a copy of your catalog file.

                                      An alternate approach is to back a backup of the whole catalog, then restore to the new drive.

                                      If you have PSE 4, you can just drag and drop the folders ...
                                      • 16. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
                                        Community Member
                                        Sorry to post again just to push this up the list but I would appreciate an answer from someone who knows about the catalog file.
                                        • 17. Re: Reconnect in sub folders.
                                          Community Member
                                          What aspect of my answer was inadequate?

                                          I am not an Access expert and have no more in-depth knowledge of the catalog structure [Adobe don't publish it]. But, I have effected such edits several times with success. Just try it.