How do I clean up grayed out files/folders/Drive Letters in folder tree?

[ronan]

My current Catalog is ten plus years of various PSE years additions/upgrades restored Catalogs from over the years of restoring and it has become a mess of a Folder tree! Grayed out Folders and previous un-used drive letters & folders and file paths from way back I can see but cannot delete or remove any of it anyway I can find. How can I remove all this old junk from my catalog folder tree and just have the present used position of my photo folders in my Catalog and nothing else..? Pauls pics folder at top and above are all my current used folders, no issues with those.

[Sepiana]

Hi ronan,

My apologies! It looks like your inquiry fell through the cracks.

I'm sending a PM to michelb. He's best qualified to address this issue; he's our in-house Organizer guru. Hang in there!

[ronan]

thanks
Quick explanation of where I am at with PSE. previously I backed up my catalog to and external drive F: PSE CAT reorganized 2022 07 18 (now its D:). I restored it there and started trying to reorganize it there. my present used photos folders are under paul_, last folder there is the one you can see is screen shot pauls pics. In the process of this my computers SSD Crashed! I bought a new computer and bought PSE 2024 fresh install. I can access my old catalog 1111 on my D external drive with no issues. I have not done the convert action to the catalog yet. Not sure about that step...? Screen shot of top of my folder tree.



My desire is to just have in my present catalog a clean folders structure of Photos: and all it's sub folders, named by download date. pauls pics is an odd folder, so its at the end. I have 60,000 + photos tagged If I could do that I would like to move it into my computers internal SSD to a custom location C: PSE 2024



I just want to clean it up before I move it into my new computer and get a fresh start.



Programdata: below pauls pics does have a delete option when highlighted now, previously didn't. Can I delete that safely...? without it effecting my tags or anything else...? I just don'y know enough.



As to the F: drive letter grayed out I guess that is my previous external drive letter on my old crashed computer. How can I get rig of that old file path being displaced? All Right clicking options are all grayed out!



The one single folder 2019 07 11 Photo Scans will not reconnect under the new D: drive letter position on new computer for some reason even if I browse and identify it for PSE...? can't figure that one out..? not a big deal as its just a few photos.



I do have one extra backup on a separate external hard drive just in case.



Any further help with how to accomplish this GOAL is greatly appreciated. This folder tree going all the way back to PSE 2007 remnants just bugs me.

[BuckSkin]

Jan 27, 2024 15:39:29 GMT ronan said:

I have 60,000 + photos tagged If I could do that I would like to move it into my computers internal SSD to a custom location C: PSE 2024

I highly recommend that anything not necessary for the Operating System not be stored within the "C:" Drive; especially things like photos and documents, music and videos and so forth; main reason being that should the Operating System crash or get corrupted, it doesn't affect everything else; plus, if you save back-ups of the Operating System with a program such as Macrium Reflect, the saved back-ups are much smaller and easier to deal with.

If you have a desktop or tower, then the only thing on the main disk/drive should be the Operating System and other things should be on other separate disks; thus, situations like you now find yourself in are much easier to sort out.

If your machine is a single disk laptop, then you can Partition the disk and keep the Operating System on a separate partition from all other things; not nearly so good a solution as separate disks but better than having everything dumped into a single partition.

[Sepiana]

Jan 27, 2024 15:39:29 GMT ronan said:

I bought a new computer and bought PSE 2024 fresh install. I can access my old catalog 1111 on my D external drive with no issues. I have not done the convert action to the catalog yet. Not sure about that step...? 

Hi ronan,

For starters, I have a small Organizer catalog, mainly for troubleshooting purposes. For my personal work I use Lightroom Classic.

I also have PSE 2024. When I first launched it, I was prompted to convert my PSE 2023 catalog. I just followed the instructions in this Adobe document; it worked without a hitch. Hope this helps!

Create and edit catalogs in Elements Organizer (Scroll down to Use (convert) a catalog of a previous version.)

[michelb]

Hi Ronan,

Just to say I had not much time to answer last week, but I have also seen your discussion in the Adobe Elements forum. I need to take the time to better understand your requirements, but my goal is to answer your questions in both forums !

[michelb]

So, looking at your questions, there are two kinds of things to explain and for which to suggest suggestions.

- Why has the folder structure become so complicated and not understandable?

- What is the ultimate goal to make things simple and logical?

That calls for many long explanations and partial solutions which will be difficult to describe in a single conversation. I'll try to find a way to start with simple and basic facts to help us define a more detailed description of what you are expecting. Then we'll try to see what should be done and especially in which order. Sorry if I am beginning with very basic facts.

The key issue here is the fundamental difference between what is the difference in how the explorer and the organizer are seeing folder trees.

The Explorer offers a way to "store" your digital files (programs, data, photos...) in a hierarchical folder trees structure. That structure includes pre-defined "system" groups like programs, users, pictures, documents... and you are free to create your own personal structure (for instance by dates) within or outside the pre-defined Windows folders. The goal is to make you think the files are stored in various spaces of a filing cabinet. 

The Organizer is working mainly with a CATALOG. I have been working in logistics, so I am very familiar with the way items are stored in warehouses. Some very simple warehouses work with dedicated spaces for each item category, most use catalogs in the form of big databases. The management is not defined by the location of different items. The catalog records which alley, level and individual storing place. Similar references are NOT stored together, but apparently randomly (handling optimization). The catalog in the organizer is just like the booklet catalog you get for a museum. It offers lists of data about each art piece, location, author, description... A catalog could be a simple spreadsheet, a paper notebook... For instance you might have a notebook to write where and how your wine botlles are kept in your cellar.

The Explorer and each catalog have to work together.

The catalogs are built around a different and totally free hierarchical logical structure:  for instance Years > months > days >author...

The catalogs must also understand and work with the Explorer hierarchy. Each photo registered in the catalog with the path used in the explorer to access and manage the item. As the organizer is built to offer many additional services to the Explorer, it is necessary for the catalog to be able to display the folder structure of the Explorer and to access the features available in the explorer: move, rename, delete among others.

Nearly all the management available in the Explorer is replicated in the organizer. It works by sending orders to the OS to apply its own orders.

I'll make a stop here to emphasize that the display of folders in the organizer is meant to display only the registered files in the catalog.

The folders and files shown in the tree view of the organizer will display empty files only if the empty folders have empty subfolders or if you use the option to display all folders under a given folder.

For clarity, I'll continue in another post, bear with me and don't hesitate to repeat detailed questions.

[michelb]

Step #2

Your goal may be to have a clean and logical folder view

or to have a logical categories and keywords structure covering all your managed photos with all the tools to find them from many criteria and to group them. Many users, especially with very big catalogs, are happy to manage that way without bothering with a clean looking explorer folders tree.

Or you may expect both, which I perfectly understand.

Obviously, you want to keep all useful available organization data in your drives, old catalogs and backup folders. If you want both ways at the same time (folder tree and catalog), that will be harder and longer. My own advice would be to start with retrieving the available data in your different sources, drive locations and backups. I don't use automatic tagging myself, but Greg_S in the other forum does. That means that if you succeed in grouping all the relevant folders, you can import in bulk in a new catalog, and let the organizer retrieve the tags already written to the photo files themselves and add the automatic tagging, including face recognition and geotagging. Not a clean result for folders, but it will be possible to start a second process to clean up the global structure later from the organizer, which will be a long task.

Otherwise, it seems logical to start with first retrieving each backup, writing catalog tags to the files themselves to retrieve most of the past organization.

You will have both the folders tree mess and different catalogs to merge, which is not easy to do. That seems to be feasible in your case.

By the way, since working with catalogs can be done without altering the files themselves, it would be quite possible to use both above solutions without losing anything. A global bulk import and automatic tagging, and the job of restoring and updating catalogs before merging and cleaning the catalogs and folders.

Now, I suppose that the next step in the current discussion will be to cover more detailes issues:

- how to clean up the folder tree from the organizer

- how to restore backups and where, how to merge the result

- what's the reason of the way explorer and organizer work

- How to 'merge' restores

- and so on.

 

[ronan]

Thanks so much for your time and help. You helped me in the past get this started then it stalled out for a few years as life got busy. Myself being from a mechanic background I am used to simplicity equaling reliability. My folder tree just looks to me like a disaster waiting to happen, but I am 60,000 plus photos into a heavily tagged and organized Catalog and just worried about keeping it all together. Every time I upgrade every few years I cringe at the chance of something going wrong. I am coping so far.

On another note I have another question. I posted it on Abobe discussion with no answers. listed under: convert issue 2024.
I have PSE 2024 installed fresh on a new computer. I have/had my previous catalog backed up then restored on an external hard drive, all done on a previous version of PSE (on a different computer). I have not converted it yet in PSE 2024, it seems to function as is right now with 2024.

when I do go to convert which I thought I had to do? (see screen shots) when I pick it out from the list nothing much happens. A empty convert catalogs dialog box pops up. if I click find more catalogs box I go to a windows explorer file type window. If I find and highlight and click my catalog 1111 there I go back to an empty convert catalog dialog box, but now it shows, show previous converted catalogs option check box! If I click that box my Catalog 1111 pops up, but with a converted date from way way before I even installed PSE 2024 on my new computer and started using my external Drive PSE previous catalog on it....? My old PSE was 2018 I believe...? (that computer crashed) Question is I thought each years version of PSE required a catalog convert when upgrading to a newer version. My catalog name is still the same as it was before with PSE 2018. Can you tell me what is happening here...? I am confused..? Why does it say it's converted? Is it an issue I should be worried about?
thanks in advance