It does happen. I saw it just this past week while private tutoring someone on Picasa. I double-clicked on a thumbnail photo of a little girl, and what appeared was a photo of a boat! What the …. ?!#%*!
This can be a scary experience if you don’t know what’s going on. It appears that your pictures are missing or garbled. All that has actually happened is that Picasa’s listings of them have become corrupted. Your photos are fine. It’s like you’re trying to read a book with someone else’s eyeglasses. Nothing looks right, but the book is fine.
What I referred to above as Picasa’s ‘listings’ is actually a database, and it needs to be rebuilt. The built in method to accomplish this is to hold down the Alt, Ctrl, and Shift key as you launch Picasa. Make sure to launch Picasa from the start menu however, not from a desktop icon.
So, hold down Alt, Ctrl and Shift; Click Start and Picasa 3. Once you see the Picasa 3 logo, you can let go of Alt Ctrl Shift. It will take a minute, but you should eventually see:
Click Yes, and it will rebuild it’s internal database. When it’s done, your pictures should all be back to normal.
If you don’t want to trust this built in procedure and you’d rather do it yourself, let me tell you how. The database is actually a set of folders found within a folder called Picasa2. Yes, even in Picasa3, the database is found in a folder called Picasa2. That folder is located along with other program settings in your Windows user settings folder. Specifically, in Windows Vista it is:
C:\Users\Chris\AppData\Local\Google\Picasa2
In XP it is:
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That’s a comprehensive reply. Thank you.
I shall use the first option you gave me of using the 3 keys.
In case I have to make use of the 2nd option, later on, please tell me
how to ” The easiest way to make Picasa rebuild it’s database is to delete the current one”.
Thank you and you are very kind,
ben
How did you know this is the tip I needed? I searched for a way to do this in Picassa help and the only solution there was to uninstall Picassa and then reinstall it. I knew there was a better way! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Beth
Ben,
The actual instructions I give in this article are to rename the database folder. That is the equivalent of deleting it. It’s the Picasa2 folder that you would delete.
In method 2 you forgot to mention that you need to have “View Hidden Folders” chosen to see the folders you have listed for the Picasa2 folder.
Thank you for this! Recently I decided to reorganize all my photos on my hard drive. So I did… without reading your various advice. Afterwards, my Picasa Albums and Folders were all “horked”. You, I do things like this because I’m such an expert!
I was just getting ready to email you all for help when I stumbled across this article. My Picasa is now happily grinding away, re-scanning my hard drive and rebuilding itself.
Yay!
Chris, you are right. It was scary to do it, but I trust you and it is working. Could this also be the problem I had previously when I transferred from the flash drive back to the computer and the files were all over the place? Thank you.
I used your three key solution and found that I had to redo a lot of settings. In folder manager for one. The rebuilding of the data base brought in many unwanted folders.
I have found two other “solutions” which work for me. They may not address the real reasons Picasa messes up the links but for a quick fix, here they are.
1. Select the questionable thumbnail and go to File on the menu and then Save a copy. The copy, so far, has always reverted to the correct thumbnail and I delete the messed up one. And rename the new one if necessary.
2. A little more drastic is to go to the menu again and with a folder selected, click Pictures and then click Undo all edits. Usually it is after an edit that the mix up happens. This method has always worked so far but the down side is that it undoes ALL edits in the folder. So if you have a lot of stuff edited, choose another way.
If the ctrl-alt-shift method is done, what happens to all the face tagging? I have spent a lot of time getting my ~10,000 pictures or so all tagged with named faces. It appears to be rescanning. How can I get back my name tags?
Thanks,
Scott
Scott,
Great question, I decided to use it for this weeks Picasa Tip:
http://50.22.81.91/~chrisg/2011/01/saving-faces-when-you-re-install-picasa/
does this method work in windows 7?
Windows version has nothing to do with it. Just Picasa version. It has changed some since this article was written. Here’s the official instructions from Google. Rebuilding database.
Roy,
You’re absolutely right about ‘view hidden folders.’ Thank you! I will add it to the article.