Merging catalogs

[mccross]

Is there a way to merge two Photo Supreme catalogs? I have a large master catalog of photos from 20 years of picture taking, but find that this is cumbersome to work with on a daily basis for importing and tagging new photos. So I set up a catalog for the present year and use this for new photos. At the end of the year I would like to merge this catalog with the master catalog. I understand that if the Category structure is the same, I can simply import the new photos into the master catalog, and the embedded keywords and metadata will transfer most of the information. However some information, such as the versioning would be lost, I think. Is there a way to merge preserving all the information?

[Mike Buckley]

I can simply import the new photos into the master catalog, and the embedded keywords and metadata will transfer most of the information. However some information, such as the versioning would be lost, I think.

Nothing should be lost if your Write setting was enabled with "Write catalog data to IDImager ICS Scheme" when you wrote catalog data to the image files. Prior to importing, you should backup your master catalog. Then change your Read setting to enable "Read IDimager ICS Scheme (if availalble)". Once the files have been imported, disable that setting, as it slows down the speed because of everything being read.

[mccross]

Nothing should be lost if your Write setting was enabled with "Write catalog data to IDImager ICS Scheme" when you wrote catalog data to the image files.

Can I switch that on now and resynchronize?

[Mike Buckley]

Nothing should be lost if your Write setting was enabled with "Write catalog data to IDImager ICS Scheme" when you wrote catalog data to the image files.

Can I switch that on now and resynchronize?

Yes. I recommend that you enable it and always leave it enabled. Indeed, that is the default setting and I can't think of a reason to ever disable it. In this case when you want to synch explicitly to write to the ICS scheme, I recommend that you select all of the thumbnails and manually apply Ctrl+S.

[Mike Buckley]

It just now occurred to me that before synching to write your entire catalog to the ICS scheme, to be absolutely certain that all files are written to, you should probably disable the Write setting, "Only update out-of-synch images (uncheck to force)". Once you have completed that writing process, you could enable that setting again.