Complicated Question Re: Pse 7 And Migrating Catalog

[Bluebonnet Lady]

Hi! I don't know if there's anyone who can answer this question for me, but I'll give it a shot ...

 

I recently got a new laptop and have been busily "moving in" from my old one. I dutifully transferred all my digital scrapbooking files, installed PSE7, got the styles, etc. moved (thanks to those of you who answered that question for me), and last night I decided to organize the new digiscrapping acquisitions I had made over the last couple of weeks.

 

Eons ago when I first started with PSE4, I was going to categorize photos AND the few digiscrapping supplies I had. I was only dabbling in digi, so there weren't many. I decided to make a separate catalog for digiscrapping stuff. All went well.

 

Then a few months ago I finally got serious about digiscrapping, purchased PSE7 and somehow that I can't recall, managed to migrate my digi catalog to the new version. By now I had decided not to do the photo categorizing, at least for now.

 

Fast forward to this week. My old laptop was having major issues, so my husband finally bit the bullet and bought me a new one. I have been going through the agony of moving everything around from one to the other, with all the little issues that pop up. Mostly it's been successful, but there have been moments ... And I'm not at all computer savvy, which complicates things. I managed, after some major problems, to get the PSE digi catalog transferred over, had to "convert" it, which didn't make any sense to me, but that was the only way it would work. I had enough trouble just figuring out where to copy the old version to on the new computer since it's running Windows 7 and my old laptop had XP.

 

Yesterday I finally decided to categorize my new digi stuff that was residing in my "Temporary Holding" file. Spent a couple of hours doing that. After I tag each item with designer's name, kit name and name of store/site where I got it, I always move the files to their appropriate folders -- i.e., Papers, Buttons, Tags, Templates, etc. I don't keep the items in their original sets, that's what the Organizer tags are for.

 

After a couple of hours of work, I realized there seemed to be tags missing from the catalog. So I searched for the items I knew would have those tags, and while the items exist on the hard drive in their folders, they are no longer in the catalog. I'm assuming this corruption happened when I "converted" the catalog. I could just blow it off, but I really think it's important to credit designers for the stuff I use. Some sites (like ScrapGirls) are great about how their items are named, so I can figure those out from the filenames. Other places/designers aren't so good about that, and I have tons of things with filenames like "paper1" or "green_ribbon". Those I have to use the Organizer to figure out.

 

SO, at long last here is my question:

WHAT SHOULD I DO to try to retrieve the uncorrupted version of my catalog and load it in?

Here are my thoughts:

1) Go to my Mozy backup (which is also not working very well after the move) and recover the catalog, then try to re-load it.

Problem: I don't know for sure if I'm putting the catalog in the right folder. I'd need to know where it should belong

Problem: I will lose 2 hours worth of work tagging and sorting (the stuff I did last night) if I even get the uncorrupted catalog properly loaded

I could: Go back and move all of last night's files into kit folders again, then re-categorize them if I get the catalog loaded

2) Write it all off to bad luck and just say something like: "Designer/kit/site unknown because of computer difficulties and stupidity on the scrapper's part."

 

I had the digiscrapping catalog actually stored in my old laptop's Digiscrapping main folder before trying to migrate it. I don't know if that's what's causing some of the problem with migrating (I put it in the same place on the new computer, but for some reason the Catalog Manager couldn't find it, so I had to try to figure out which folder under PSE7 it would go in ... that wasn't actually easy, and I'm still not sure I put it in the right place, although the Manager did find it then. That may be why it had to be converted ...?)

 

I don't know if anyone would have a clue what I can do here, or even if anything I've written is the least bit comprehensible. but I thought I would try ScrapGirls because there seem to be a lot of computer-savvy people here, and I have the feeling if I posted this on a Windows 7 or even PSE forum I would be out of my league on understanding what any respondents said.

 

Help!

[JenniferZ]

Are you using PSE's Organizer to tag your supplies, or are you tagging in Windows Photo Gallery, or some other program (ACDSee, Picasa)?

[Bluebonnet Lady]

Whoops, sorry I didn't make that clear! It's PSE's organizer. I have tens of thousands of elements, so that's why this is such a pain.

[BarbaraC1977]

Hello--are the tags missing from PNG files only? I would guess that's the case. PNG files can't store their own tags--the tags are stored in the database of the organizer application you're using. You could move its database file (usually a file that ends in something like ".db3," but I doubt that will solve the problem. On your new computer, your file paths are almost certainly different than on your old one, and the database files basically record: "in location c:\documents and settings\YourName\ScrappingSupplies\KitName\FileName.png, the file has these tags: ribbon1, fancy, border."

 

This is a huge frustration with all tagging programs. The only possible suggestion I have would be to attach an external hard drive on the old computer, and force its drive letter to a letter you can all use on the NEW computer, e.g. R or S that's not in use on either machine. Open the tagging program on the old computer, and move the tagged files to the EHD, from INSIDE the organizer program, so it "knows" the new location. When you're done, move the database to the new computer, along with the EHD. Make sure the EHD has the same drive letter on the new machine. Check with the manufacturer of your organizer program or its forums to see if you need to do further tweaks (they may be necessary.) With luck, the tagging program will "find" the files and tags in the same relative location, and then you can move them back to main drive if you wish.

[Bluebonnet Lady]

Sounds kinda complicated ...

 

So, I should move all my files from the old computer to an EHD? Only problem is I already moved them from the old computer to the new one, and it took 18 hours! Plus, I really want to keep them on this computer (the new laptop) so I can use it when I'm not at home. We have two EHDs, but they're homebodies, lol.

 

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you said to do ... I'm not incredibly tech/computer savvy. (I thought I was, but this whole move thing has proven me wrong!)

 

Anyway ... I have a migraine right now, so maybe that's part of my confusion ...