Member Avatar for Nanci252

Acer Aspire, wearing Win7, everythings' current, etc. factory hardware - nothing remarkable. 250GB hard drive. 68 % free space still.

I have a heap (more than 35,000) photos spread all over this thing in such nasty order. Some are work related, most are one grandchild or another or family set, and I did a bad and took a batch off hubby's machine to do some repair work (and not risk ''losing'') and where I had Put hubby's (under Public pics named the folder as* his* - instead of my user name) and then a large Folder with some off dgtrs' machine during a repair - in a seperate 'folder' under Public pcs and now it appears that all of them all have batched together in the 'general' Library "Pictures'' and are gradually populating over into my user name pictures folder too ???

Is there (besides the drop down that gives you 'date, tag, name, etc" ) any easier way to sort & seperate these into Proper filing order so His are still gathered ONE folder, hers are still gathered One diff. folder, and my own stay all by them selves ???
I hate the thought of doing this all in a check 'em out, pick 'em out drag and drop !!!
Thanks in advance.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by caperjack

Dani AI

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Windows 7 libraries show a merged view of whatever physical folders are included in that library. That explains why photos copied into shared or Public folders suddenly appear mixed with the personal Pictures view. described that exact symptom; a safe first step is a full backup of the photo collection to an external drive before any bulk changes.

Practical, low-risk plan:

  • Inspect which folders feed the Pictures library: right-click the Pictures library and choose Properties to see included folders.
  • Pick a canonical on-disk layout (for example D:\Photos\Husband, D:\Photos\Daughters\Name, D:\Photos\Nanci) and create those folders.
  • Move files in batches rather than one-by-one. In the library view use Arrange/Group by Date Taken or Tags to select logical ranges (Shift+click for bulk selection). Cut (Ctrl+X) and Paste into the new target folder so files actually move on disk. To discover a file's real path, right-click a photo, open Properties and check Location. For very large moves that must preserve timestamps and attributes, robocopy is reliable; test on a small folder first:
    robocopy "C:\Users\Public\Pictures\SourceFolder" "D:\Photos\Husband" /E /COPYALL /MOVE

After files are reorganized, clean the Pictures library by removing unwanted included folders (for example Public Pictures) and adding only the new owner folders. Batch-tagging or face-tagging makes future sorting easier; tools such as Windows Photo Gallery (legacy), XnView MP, digiKam or Lightroom can assist. Duplicate detectors (run only after a backup) speed cleanup. As observed, some manual work is unavoidable, but the steps above reduce the tediousness and prevent the library from re-mixing folders.

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Member Avatar for caperjack

joing the crowd ,good luck ,i did use this one years ago but cant remember the results ,give it a good read before you decide to download and install it .
http://picasa.google.com/

edit ,i don't think it will help you ,sorry

Edited by caperjack
Member Avatar for Nanci252

thank you, but yes, had tried that a while back. yeppy, not much help for this mess. LOL

Member Avatar for caperjack

yeah i thinks its a manual job ,mine are a mess now too

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