Accidentally deleted keyword tag from the Family Category

[pablolic]

This morning my kids accidentally deleted one of the tags in the Family Category (the one corresponding to Sofia, my third child). There were several hundreds photos tagged with the deleted tag.

I quickly remembered that some time ago I selected every photo in my catalog and used "File / Write keyword tags and properties into to photos", so I supposed that I was going to find the way to restore the keyword back, but after trying for several hours, I gave up.

I can now see the keyword Sofia in the photos when I open them in the Full Editor, and select "File / File Info...", and also created a new Sofia tag in the same Family Category, but don't know how to restore all the connections to the photos that have that keyword.

Any idea ?
Thanks a lot in advance.

Pablo

[dj_paige]

One way to recover from this is if you have a backup of your catalog from just before this tag was accidentally deleted. If so, you could restore the catalog, and your tags will return and will be assigned to all of the hundreds of photos. This could take a long time as the Restore Catalog will also restore your photos (which don't need to be restored, but hey, that's how it works)

Other than that, I think you have a long tedious manual process to fix the problem, for example:

Option two (not as easy as option 1): since you wrote the tags to the files, first find all of your photos on your hard disk with the tag Sofia — I believe you can do this in Windows Explorer by clicking on search, entering *.jpg and then enter the word to search for (which is Sofia), and let it search. (This search may be case sensitive, I don't know for sure) It will probably take a long long time. It will probably find hundreds of photos with Sofia in the file. Then you would need to delete all of these files from the organizer but not delete the photos from your hard disk, and re-import them. I believe from the search window, you could drag all of the files that were found into the Organizer window and PSE will know what you are trying to do. When you re-import them, PSE will recognize the tag in the file, and voila your tag for Sofia is restored to all photos. Probably best if you first try this Option 2 method on only one file to make sure it works.

[Karin Sue]

If Paige is correct and you can find all of your Sofia photos in windows, you might want to try the following:

In windows move all of the Sofia photos into a Sofia folder. In Organizer do a reconnect all missing files. In folder view find the Sofia folder and apply the Sofia tag. Now if you have a folder organization by date, etc. move the Sofia images back where they belong using date view, import batch view, etc.

This method would be better if you have images in creations, collections, etc. that would be broken if you removed the images and reimported.

You should probably do a catalog>recover and a reconnect before you do the move so your catalog starts out in good shape.

[Juergen D]

As far as I can remember, the keyword(s) cannot be found with Windows Search. IrfanView will find files by keywords. I'm not quite sure how to proceed once the files are located...

Juergen

[dj_paige]

As far as I can remember, the keyword(s) cannot be found with Windows Search. IrfanView will find files by keywords. I'm not quite sure how to proceed once the files are located...

Juergen

Keywords/tag can be found by Windows Search, as long as they have been written to the file. You have to enter the keyword/tag into the search field that says "Word or phrase in the file", and the file name should be *.jpg

I like Karin Sue's idea, seems better than re-importing.

[johnrellis]

Keywords/tag can be found by Windows Search, as long as they have been written to the file. You have to enter the keyword/tag into the search field that says "Word or phrase in the file", and the file name should be *.jpg.

I believe this feature only works if you have Vista or you have installed Windows Desktop Search on XP. If you have vanilla XP, I don't believe it is available (it doesn't work on my 3 XP machines). See this article about Windows Search:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Search

[ltc555]

Though I'm still pretty new I offer this...If that was the only tag that the photos had why not recreate a Sofia Tag and then Find all untagged photos using the menu item in organizer?.. again this will only work if it was the only tag if not you could search by other tags to then retag her photos...

Dennis :confused:

[pablolic]

Fist of all dj_paige, thanks a lot for your help !!

One way to recover from this is if you have a backup of your catalog from just before this tag was accidentally deleted.

Unfortunately I do not use catalog backup, because it backups image files with the catalog.

Option two (not as easy as option 1): since you wrote the tags to the files, first find all of your photos on your hard disk with the tag Sofia — I believe you can do this in Windows Explorer by clicking on search, entering *.jpg and then enter the word to search for (which is Sofia), and let it search. (This search may be case sensitive, I don't know for sure) It will probably take a long long time. It will probably find hundreds of photos with Sofia in the file.

Great idea !! Worked perfectly in my Windows Vista !

Then you would need to delete all of these files from the organizer but not delete the photos from your hard disk

How am I supposed to do this with hundred of Sofia's pictures mixed between all the other pictures? Is there an automatic way of doing this? Because if it should be done by hand, I'd rather prefer to do manual tagging directly !

[pablolic]

Fist of all Karin Sue, thanks a lot for your help !!

In windows move all of the Sofia photos into a Sofia folder. In Organizer do a reconnect all missing files. In folder view find the Sofia folder and apply the Sofia tag.

Great idea !! That will re-link all Sofia's photos !!
but they will end in a separate disk folder.....

Now if you have a folder organization by date, etc. move the Sofia images back where they belong using date view, import batch view, etc.

I tried to manually move back the photos using File-Move, it worked perfectly, but is also a manual process, and actually it's harder than to re-tag all the photos manually !
Moving photos back to its original location is hard to me because I store photos in date folders, one folder per month, and then one folder per day inside each month. (during some years when I used PSE 4 to manage downoads, I have one folder per downoad batch), and I'd like to keep Sofia's photos where they are now. So, in order to move then back I'd have to know where they belong, and move them manually.


Any further idea ? We are almost there !!!!

[Juergen D]

Great idea !! That will re-link all Sofia's photos !!
but they will end in a separate disk folder.....
If you look at the Folder View and check Details, the dates will show under the thumbnails and they will be in order by date. Set the preferences to Show Oldest First.
You can now highlight all pictures of the same date and move them grouped that way.

Juergen

[Karin Sue]

I thought in folder view they were always in file name order?

Anyway, since they now have a Sofia tag, you can select the Sofia tag and view by date. Then select batches of the same date to move to the correct folder. Import Batch view may also be a good option to try to get your Sofia photos in the proper groups.

[Juergen D]

I thought in folder view they were always in file name order?
You are right. Sorry.

Juergen

[pablolic]

Hi all. Thank you all for your help. I combined your ideas and added some of my own, and finally solved the problem. Here is the solution I used:


0- Requirements.
- This solution only works if the disconnected photos and videos have the TAG physically written in the file. This is achieved by selecting all elements in Thumbnail view and executing "File / Write keyword tags and properties into to photos".
- You will need Windows Vista to be able to use Windows Search to find the files with the desired tag (otherwise you may use another utility for this task).
- I also used the WinRAR compression utility, although it is not essential.
- To work perfectly, this solution requires that all the image files involved have different filenames, because they are going to be copied to the same folder, and otherwise some of them will not be correctly processed. Maybe you can find a workaround if your images have repeated filenames in different folders.
- You'll need enough free disk space to store 1 additional copy of each of the image files involved.
- You'll have to start this process with no missing files in your PSE catalog. To check this, open PSE, do a File / Reconnect / All missing files, and it should tell you that "There are no missing files".


Step 1-
Do a Windows Search in Vista, selecting "Images", the desired path, and typing the keyword. After pressing the Search button and waiting, Windows will show the list of the files that have that keyword tag in the results panel. Select all the files, then right-click, add to WinRAR archive.

Step 2-
In WinRAR, type a path and name for the .RAR file ( check that you have enough free space, for example c:\retag.rar, ), select "No compression" in the Compression Method combo, check "Delete files after compression" and "Verify compressed files", and *VERY IMPORTANT* in the Folders tab select "Store absolute path INCLUDING drive letter", and then execute. When WinRAR finish, you'll have a very large archive with all the images, and the original files will be deleted.

Step 3-
Create an empty temporary folder in a drive where you have sufficient free space to allocate all the images. Name it "Retag"

Step 4-
In WinRAR, extract all the files by selecting the second icon at the top of the screen, then select the Retag target folder, and in the Advanced tab select "Do not extract paths". Execute. When WinRAR finish, you'll have all the images in the Retag folder. (if you have duplicate filenames, you'll see warnings in this step, select "Do NOT Overwrite all". These images will not be re-linked, but you'll not loose them)

Step 5-
Open Photoshop Elements, execute File / Reconnect / All missing files. After a moment, PSE will detect that all the files have been moved to the new Retag folder, and will reconnect them.

Step 6-
In PSE, create again the keyword tag that was deleted. Then change to Folder View, browse to the Retag folder, select all the images in that folder, and apply the keyword tag to all of them. Then close PSE.

Step 7-
Open the Retag folder in Windows, and delete it with all the files.

Step 8-
Open the RAR archive you created in step 2 (c:\retag.rar), and extract all files to their original locations, by selecting the option "Extract to absolute paths" in the Advanced tab. Execute. After WinRAR finish, you'll have all your images back in their original locations. Check if they have been restored correctly to their original folders, and then you can close WinRAR and delete de .rar archive.

Step 9-
Open PSE again, do another File / Reconnect / All missing files. Wait until PSE finish. After that you'll have all your files reconnected to their original keyword tags and the one accidentally deleted. :)

Regards,
pablolic