Moving Picasa to a New Computer

Picasa stores edit information in the .ini files in each directory. So if you just move all your photo directories to a new computer, your Picasa edits will be preserved. Unfortunately album definitions (and apparently faces) will not be. So the right way of moving Picasa computer is to use the backup/restore feature.

The restore functionality gives you the option of restoring to the original or a new directory. I could not get the latter to work. Thankfully the former worked and was somewhat intelligent. For example, files original stored in "C:\Documents and Settings\X" (Windows XP) were restored to "C:\Users\X" (Windows 7).

If you want to rearrange folders, you're supposed to use Picasa's built-in "file move" functionality. However, it turns out that you can simply move a folder in Windows Explorer if (a) Picasa is running in the background and (b) the folder is marked as "scan always" in Picasa. Obviously you might want to test this.

I found this post in the Picasa help forums useful.