Help! All of my tags in Windows Photo Gallery have disappeared!

[Scrapper007]

I spent two hours last night tagging my digi supplies in WPG. I just opened up the gallery and all of my tags are gone on individual items, although the list of keywords (or tag words) are still listed over on the left of my screen. Anyone know how to get them back??? TIA!

[kristijoy]

I did something similar a few months ago:

I was running out of disk space...so I decided to start cleaning up and archiving some things on an external drive. I did a bunch of moving around, renaming directories. Free up space...YEAH!

But...what I didn't realize is that the 'tags' that Photo Gallery creates for each file are different. If they are JPEGS then the TAG is stored in the file itself. So if you move it or rename the tag doesn't change. That's what I thought it did for everything. But PNG files are different!! PNG files don't support adding tags to the files themselves so Photo Gallery creates it's own database. Problem is...if you move it, rename it the tag info can get lost because it doesn't think the file exists anymore and it thinks you have a new one.

SO...by the time was all done I lost ALL of the tag information on all my elements. I thought it just needed to scan the folders and rebuild the database by looking at the files (that's what it does for JPEGS). But the PNG files don't know anything about tags.

Perhaps this was your issue? I had to Re-do everything!

[Scrapper007]

Thanks Kristi. Honestly, I don't know what's going on lol I am afraid to retag everything -- maybe I will just retag a few things and see if they are still there tomorrow!

Thanks for your reply!!

[jannylynn]

Read this thread for help on recovery or backing-up tags.

I wish this program wasn't so wonky. And I don't understand why it works for me and not other's?

I'm sorry you lost all that tagging work.

[jannylynn]

Originally Posted by Scrapper007

I spent two hours last night tagging my digi supplies in WPG. I just opened up the gallery and all of my tags are gone on individual items, although the list of keywords (or tag words) are still listed over on the left of my screen. Anyone know how to get them back??? TIA!

A couple questions (I'm hoping I can help):

When you click on a tag on the left side, what do you see? Is it just a white screen? Or do you see grey boxes?

Is the file still loaded into the gallery under "all pictures and videos"?

[Scrapper007]

Hi Janny,
Thanks so much for trying to help me.

Under "tags" on the left side of the screen is a list of tag words, such as "birthday" and "arrows", for example. Some tag words I did not create, such as "bubblegum" (have no idea where that came from...not me..lol)!

Anyway, when I click on some of the tags, pictures of elements and/or papers from some digital kits come up...but not all. For example, when I click on "Christmas", approx. 100 items show up -- well, I know that I have well over 300 items in that category.

Some tags I click on and nothing shows up...just a blank screen to the right.

I am so sick about losing all of that tag work. It seems like WPG would be a great program to use -- if I could only get it to work!!

[jessica31876]

Did you try to message that user I told you about?

[Scrapper007]

I will do that...thanks Jessica!!

[jannylynn]

The bubblegum tag may have come from a designer who tagged something along the way. Usually the tags stick really well. I have a couple files that I can't remove the tags from someone else, they just keep coming back.

My thoughts are that it isn't holding on to all your .png tags. Try taggin one or two .png files tonight before you shut down and see if they are there in the morning. These are usually alphas or element files.

Just curious, Are you tagging items from an internal or external? Are you trying to access the data from another computer? For example networking to your desktop through a laptop.