Need help-lost Catalog in Organizer

[surrenderdorothy]

I have been playing with PSE5 Organizer for about 3 weeks now, importing and tagging about 6000 elements. Today I could not find my catalog at all. Any idea where I can look for it? I did search all over but no luck. I'm really exhausted and am about ready to go back to Picasa. I understood Picasa and thought it was fairly easy. I thought since I had the Organizer now I'd try that. What is your opinion on the two??

By the way, I think it's a great idea that many people seperate their photos and scrapping elements into seperate catalogs. I've gotten so many great ideas here. Thanks!

Kris

[Westina]

Hi Dorothy - I use PSE5 Organizer too.

The default location for the catalogs is:
c:\documents and settings\all users\application data\adobe\catalog

The files ending in .psa are the catalog files.

You can check where your catalog files are stored from Organizer by selecting
-Edit
-Preferences
-Files
-Save Catalogs In ...

Hope this helps!
Tina

[surrenderdorothy]

Thanks for your response, Tina. I'm still having trouble finding them. I checked where you said but can't find anything. I saw a "catalogs" but it was empty. It makes no sense to me since I loaded about 20 pics into it since the fiasco so I do think they would at least be in there. Times like these really make me think I know nothing about computers! Thanks-

Kris

[troush]

Do you have Show Hidden Files turned on? You can't see the folders unless you do.

-Trish

[surrenderdorothy]

At the risk of sounding like a dope-where would this option be? Thanks for the help Trish!
Kris

[Westina]

Kris - here are the instructions from Microsoft's site for showing hidden files:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/hiddenfiles.mspx

[surrenderdorothy]

I tried this and I did have the box checked to show hidden files. No luck yet but I'm still trying. In the meantime I've been reading about catalogs etc. guess the bright side is that I could always populate the catalogs again in an organized manner. Any other ideas, please send them my way. Thanks so much for your responses-I've learned a lot here already.
Kris

[Westina]

Hi Kris - you might try searching across your drive for the .psa files:

-Start, Search, All Files/Folders
-All or part of a name: *.psa
-Click More Advanced Options
-These items s/b checked: System folders, Search hidden files, Search Subfolders

[surrenderdorothy]

Thank you, thank you! I did the search and found 8 files, 7 of which had "catalog" in the name (the other was PE5 Essentials?) I opened one and all my stuff came back. I'm worried this will happen again tomorrow but I'm so glad to see my stuff with the tags etc. Now I'm really confused but thanks again for solving this mystery! You really know your stuff!
Kris

[Westina]

Hi Kris - Happy to hear this worked out for you!

Now that you've located the Organizer Catalogs, you may want to back them up for safekeeping.

All the best,
Tina

[surrenderdorothy]

Thanks for all your help. I opened it today and it's all gone again. I'm just giving up and sticking with my easy Picasa for the time being while I actually start scrapping! Thanks again!
Kris