Failed to Open Catalog error

[wendy kelly budd]

Hi,
I'm going to sound like a complete n00b, but why am I getting this error: Failed to Open Catalog, The default catalog could not be found. Please open or create a different catalog.
I've been using PSE6 since December. I thought I had a catalog? My concern is, if I select a new one, will it kill my exsisting one or can I have two?
Thanks,

[K:M]

Hi -
I recently had this problem when I renamed a catalog with > 50,000 images in it! Imagine the dismay when you see a message like that on such a large catalog.

I think the problem (in my case) was that the thumbnails had not been regenerated after I renamed the catalog. You can use your imagination to wonder how long it would take to generate thumbnails for 50,000+ images.

Anyway, I was able to revive my catalog by doing the following :

1) Find your catalog. If you did not change any defaults, this will probably be in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop Elements\Catalogs\

2) COPY THE CATALOG FOLDER YOU ARE HAVING TROUBLES WITH
2a) In fact, make 2 copies - leave one in the "Catalogs" folder and put the other one somewhere else
2b) Make sure you copy the entire folder and its contents

3) CLOSE PSE6 if you have it open

4) Open the folder that you COPIED

5) Double click the file catalog.psedb
- The catalog should open in PSE right away

6) Wait until the "Generating Thumbnails" status has changed / stopped

Everything should be good to go after that.

My theory here is that if you preemptively change or shutdown PSE before those thumbs are generated ... you could leave the catalog files in a weird state. It's just a theory at this point, as I haven't tried to verify that on another smaller catalog.

I hope that helps a little. Let me know if you got it working again!

K:M

[K:M]

I should also say that I noticed something a little weird as well after posting this message.

In my Catalogs/ folder, I noticed a few folder names that looked like "folder_name [Current]".

I noticed that THESE folders contained catalogs that would also produce the message "Failed to Open Catalog : The default catalog could not be found. Please open or create a different catalog."

When I changed the folder name from "folder_name [Current]" to just "folder_name" (removing the "[Current]"), everything worked and I was able to open the folder from within PSE Catalog Manager.

I don't know how the "[Current]" got on my folder name (if I inadvertently added it, or something else - bug?), but that solved the problem on the first try with catalogs giving me that error.

Hope that helps!

K:M

[wendy kelly budd]

Thank you for these suggestions; it helped! I'm on Vista, so my catalog is in C:\Users\Wendy\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\PhotoShop Elements\Catalogs OR it should be. For me, the Catalogs folder was empty. When I went to C:\Users\All Users\... there was the 'my catalogs' folder with files inside. I copied it (thank you for the suggestion) to another location for safe keeping. The last time I got the error, I noticed there was a selection for My Catalog. I selected it and was given a choice to Repair. No errors were found and opens the catalog. This is happening once for every four or so times that I open Elements. I have a theory, but need to test it.

I really appreciate your taking the time to help out with this. It's scary to almost loose a catalog!

[K:M]

Good to hear you've made some progress - sorry ... I should have mentioned I was on WinXP. I'd love to hear whether your theory works out or not. I'll be running on Vista soon enough and need to be aware of any bumps along the way.

Thanks,
K:M

[wendy kelly budd]

My theory couldn't be reproduced. I thought it might have had something to do with Flickr uploading photos when I opened PSE, but it worked this time.
I've had few problems with Vista. Got it on a new laptop back in Sept. I was careful to load only my required programs first and run the OS for a week or two. Once I was comfortable that all was well, I added one program every day or so. All went well until I loaded a program that would crash Vista every morning. I uninstalled that program, Vista ran fine. It was a free program that managed downloads, so I just found another free program was more up to date and could work with Vista.
Have fun looking for your new machine! It's fun researching the different components.

[burro]

For the first time, I also got the lost catalog message and was stymied. I uninstalled, (PSE6 on Vista), and reinstalled but no luck. The conversation between Wendy and KM got me on track and I was able to recover my catalog. Thanks for the advice and I'm glad to find Elements Village. Looks like a very useful place for PSE communications.

[Wendy]

Hi Burro ...

... and welcome to the Village :)

So glad you found the answer to your problem.

Wendy