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I’m about to set up a new computer and in the process want to collect and organize my existing digital photos. Photos exist on my computer, my wife’s computer, her phone, my phone, my camera, and in various online accounts.

Any suggestions on software/services/processes to assist with this?

First, let me say that the best approach for you depends on how your brain works. For me, I think chronologically, so I store all pix that way starting with a “top” level folder called “Photos”. Below that, I have a subfolder for each year.

Within these, I organize folders by date or, for trips or multi-day events, in subfolders that cover a range of dates and another level down by date. In the date folder, subfolders are used as needed to segregate discrete locales or events. IMPORTANT: For this to work and sort properly, you have to adopt a consistent format for folder names that all start with the date in yyyy-mm-dd format. Example:

[*]This past summer we took a trip and the photos for the entire trip are in a 2014 folder named “2014-06-15 thru 2014-07-05–AL, MS, LA, FL–Vacation 2014”.

[*]One of the subfolders for that trip is “2014-06-20–CDT–Baton Rouge to New Orleans” (CDT represents a non-normal time zone for me).

[*]That folder has several subfolders for attractions we toured that day, such as “a–Louisiana State Capitol”, plus one named “Originals”. (The “a–” preceding the folder name is simply to force sorting in chronological order–“Originals” didn’t need that because it automatically sorts last without that help.)

[*]All files are stored in Originals as well as in the appropriate other folder. I never edit the Originals! When I edit files, I first examine them for 90-degree rotation as needed. I rename these files by appending “_rot” to the file names. If any other edits are needed, I append “_r1” (for the first such edit; “_r2” etc. for later edits). My primary software (Zoner–see below) accommodates batch renaming with presets to append either of these or their combination (“_rot_r1”) to the filenames for as many files as the user selects in a folder.

One overriding principle for me is chronological order by Date/Time Taken, so I always redate edited files to Time Taken. Of course, this only works for files that store that info so, if you pursue this approach with files that don’t have that (such as scanned in from film files), you have to deal with that manually. I do it with software (see below). We also use our itinerary plans to match up to our photos, so camera clock time is important as well. I often find that it was off (either by a few minutes or by some number of time-zone hours) after we return, so I use the software to correct that as well.

I like FREE software, so my personal main photo editor and manager is Zoner. I find the free version does nearly all that I need, but they do have a pro version that does more and they offer unlimited free storage on their website and lots of tutorial info as well.

However, the free Zoner version does leave a couple of gaps in what I do so I use a other software to handle:

[*]First is correcting Perspective Distortion (which I believe is covered in the paid Pro version of Zoner), for which I use the free GIMP. GIMP can actually do all of the different editing and fixing one would ever need, but I find the user interface to be more difficult than Zoner. I also use GIMP to fill in some blank areas in a photo that has had Perspective Distortion correction or Horizon correction, but which doesn’t have room to just crop out those blanks.

[*]Second is resetting the file dates/times to actual Time Taken, for which I use XnView. Note that this program provides for batch processing, allowing an entire folder to be “fixed” in one fell swoop, and it also allows setting correction amounts or actual specific times and dates.

I might add that, as time has progressed, I find myself actually editing just about every photo I take, starting with Zoner’s quick edit feature, followed by its sharpening tool and blow-out reporting. So nearly all of my photos get renamed with that _r1 appendage!

I hope you find some of this useful.

The second is to remove the “Document Template” name from the “Templates and Add-ins” dialog box. In older versions of windows this was found under “Tools, Options, Templates and Add-ins?”

A BIG THANK YOU! I had a totally different problem, but I think this may have finally fixed it.

Running Office 2000 under Windows Vista: Excel crashes usually when opening certain files; finally ran the ORK toolkit to fix it; that problem seemed to have been fixed, but the fix removed custom toolbars, menus, styles, etc., from both Excel and Word. Played heck trying to recover everything. Final problem was issues with normal.dot.

Your post caused me to look at Templates and Add-Ins and, guess what, there were two normal.dot files loaded: The one I had been “fixing”, which was under “User” in the WordStartup folder PLUS a second one I hadn’t known about under “Program Files” in the OfficeStartup folder!

I unchecked that one’s box in Word; closed Word; went to the OfficeStartup folder; renamed that one from “normal.dot” to “normal–read only.dot” and made it read-only; and created a subfolder there “Removed” and moved it down a level into the new subfolder (hiding it without losing it!).

It doesn’t show up in Word at all now so, fingers crossed! :rolleyes:

THANKS!!

Actually, original early adopters of Windows Live SkyDrive received 25 GB of free storage. More recently (maybe about a year ago), that was cut to I think 7 GB for new subscribers. Original subscribers were offered the option to sign in and request grandfathering, in which case they avoided the cut and retained the free 25 GB.

Additional storage is available for a fee to those at either level: It’s $10 per year for an additional 20 GB; $25 for 50 GB; and $50 for 100 GB.

My fiancee and I are each grandfathered with 25 GB: I have 24.5 GB of mostly photos on mine; she has 24.5 GB free on hers! I’ve been thinking about adding 20 GB.

JERRY

Maybe I’m missing something here, but what’s wrong with creating a couple of top level folders on the USB drive; copy all files and folders from the first partition on the drive being removed to one folder; and then copying any files and folders from the other partition to the other top level folder on the USB drive?

Then, shut down, replace the internal drive, format as needed, and reverse the copying process. You don’t need any other software or high-level thinking to do it.

PDF reDirect (Freeware) works great. It installs as a printer, so you just print to it from any application that can print. You can preview the converted file before saving it, or just save it and then view it. Get it at http://exp-systems.com/.

Have you thought about seeing whether using Internet Explorer solves the problem?

PURE FICTION – NO FACT IN SIGHT.

Alan

Amen!! [/i]

I’m not laughing–I use Office 2000.

I suggest you copy the entire file first. In Windows Explorer or equivalent, you can Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V, or you can Ctrl-drag (even within the same folder).

Next, open the new file, edit it down to just what you wish to send, and save and close it. You may choose to break external links while editing it.

Then, ZIP the new file using WinZIP or one of its free alternatives (I’ve been using jZIP for a long time), adding a password if you wish.

Finally, send the ZIPped file and, separately, communicate any password to the recipients.

I still use Office 2000, running under Vista Home Premium. I couldn’t find a way to reset anything that affected the line spacing. I didn’t find a “snap-to-grid” setting, perhaps I just missed it.

I found that I had the problem when I opened Word by clicking “Open” from the linked file here. I couldn’t fix that file by ordinary means.

However, I noticed two large contributors to the visual impact of the problem. One, of course, was that the document, as presented, included its own margin settings, which are for a much narrower text than I mostly use (0.5″ margins left and right). However, another biggie was that the linked document was set to 125% zoom . This, of course, aggravates the problem. Finally, the impact of whatever is causing the problem does appear to be screwing up what’s meant by “Single spacing”: When I pasted the text into a new document, with Arial 12 pt and single spacing, and compared that to the downloaded document, it appeared that “my” single spacing was quite close to two points of leading above the 12 point type, while the downloaded document had about three points of leading. Setting spacing in the downloading document to “Exactly 14 points” forced it to be almost indistinguishable from my 12 point document in line spacing.

However, when I opened a brand new file in Word, selected the contents of the already opened, but unmodified, “defective” file, and pasted it into the new “virgin” file, it seemed to be properly formatted. What may have resolved it, because I checked with and without doing this, was to insert a few Returns (Paragraph Marks) into the blank new document and then paste the copied text in the middle of those. I didn’t do an exhaustive test to determine whether it mattered where among them I pasted (beginning, middle, or end), or whether the number of Returns mattered. It might be that a blank document is “ripe for piracy” and inserting anything at all “locks” that out, but I didn’t pursue that further. (I have, however, noticed a similar effect when editing posts on forums that allow various styles (bold, italic, etc.). Starting a new line, jumping somewhere else to fix something, and then coming back to type in the still blank line often loses the ongoing formatting at that point, but typing even a single character locks it in.)

I thought it might have something to do with Styles, but deleting all of the input document’s styles that I could delete, and then using Style Organizer to copy my own Styles to replace them, was of no effect.

So I couldn’t diagnose it, I couldn’t fix the underlying cause it, but I could easily sidestep the problem. It would be interesting to hear if that works on other versions of Word.