Can I move my Picasa data from one machine to another?

I have lots of photos stored on an external hard disk.

I have Picasa installed on my Windows 7 laptop and have spent a lot of time cataloging the collection, put names to faces and the like.

I now have a new machine and I want all the hard work I did on my laptop to be available when I plug my external HD in to the new machine.

Is there a magic spell I need to cast to make this happen? Or is all the data I need stored with the photos?

Stuart Hemming

Posted 2012-06-01T17:23:43.223

Reputation: 441

I should have said that this is for Windows 7. The answers that I've found here so far have all been XP related and I don't seem to have the same folder structures that these posts mention. – Stuart Hemming – 2012-06-01T17:28:50.420

Stuart, welcome to Superuser. Don't be upset by the down vote. It is not uncommon for new posters (myself included) as they are not used to how things are asked as outlined in the [faq]. At this point it just appears you are looking for us to do your work. One thing that would improve your question would be if you told us what you've tried so far, where you've searched (Google help) and what OS you are using, etc. – CharlieRB – 2012-06-01T18:10:56.403

Answers

A number of other posts tell you that the details of all your images are in the picasa.ini files so just moving the folders to the new location is all you need do.

This isn't quite try as the faces details are references to a contacts list that picasa generates in a file called contacts.xml.

In my case, all of my images were on an external HD. All I did was make sure that the drive letter used on my new machine for this HD was the same as on my old machine.

Then, with picasa closed on both machines, I copied the folders c:\users[name]\AppData\Local\Google\picasa2 and c:\users[name]\AppData\Local\Google\picasa2Albums from the old machine on to the new one and bingo!

Hope this helps someone else.

Stuart Hemming

Posted 2012-06-01T17:23:43.223

Reputation: 441

I'd've posted this earlier but I wasn't allowed to apparently. – Stuart Hemming – 2012-06-01T22:32:47.967

(Too long for a comment, so forgive me if this doesn't work.)

I guess that the Picasa metadata is stored in the C:\Users\Stuart\AppData\Local folder of your user profile. (I don't use the product, but that's where I'd look first.)

If it is there, then provided it's in a folder that doesn't appear to have a randomly generated name, you should be able to simply install Picasa on the new machine, copy over the image folders, keeping the picture directory structure intact, and then copying over the metadata folder as well, also keeping the AppData directory structure intact.

On the other hand, if it's a randomly-generated folder, you could possibly add a new photo, modify it in Picasa on the new machine, and see where the profile data is stored. Then using a tool like TotalCommander, sync the old AppData folder with the new one.

See how that works out for you.

user3463

Posted 2012-06-01T17:23:43.223

Reputation:

Yes, I found the meta data eventually. just moving the images kinda works but it loses the face data. – Stuart Hemming – 2012-06-01T22:34:46.077

Well, if you figure it out, please feel free to edit my answer or post your own. – None – 2012-06-01T22:39:54.540