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Moving an album via USB link to pc

thequeenscheese

Android Expert
Nov 8, 2010
813
30
Hi I'm trying to move a specific album from my phones sd/internal to my pc (work pics) my pc doesn't see the album (copied to both internal and sd) where are the albums stored so I can extract the pictures I need?

Or is there another route to do this that I've missed?

Galaxy s20fe android 12..

TIA
 
It depends on what app you are using. For example the Samsung Gallery app on my phone has a page it calls "Albums" which are actually the different folders (and in other gallery apps appear as "folders" rather than "albums"). However Google Photos or F-Stop have "Albums" that are really "virtual albums", i.e. the images have not been moved or copied into a folder but rather tagged in some way as belonging to a particular album (probably the app has a collection of links to those images which it uses to show them together as an "album"). In this case only that app knows those images belong together, and the files themselves may be scattered through one or more actual folders.

If it's the latter your best bet might be to see whether you can create a copy of them somewhere, e.g. view the "album", select all of the images and see whether there is an option to copy them to a folder on SD. If you can do that then you can copy the folder to the PC.
 
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What file manager are you using?
I'm not Ive just plugged the phone into the pc as Ive always done with older phones and copied stuff to and from.
previously windows has always seen the phone / external sd as flash drive etc .
but now i cannot even select a picture and move to a folder as that option is not available the only options for move are move to album create album etc.

this whole process seems way to complex for what it needs to be, whats the point of folders other than quick access on the device if the pc cannot see them and make it easy to transfer from device to pc..?
also if im copying an album to sd card is it actually copying the picture files or shortcuts to the pictures?
 
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What file manager are you using?

It depends on what app you are using. For example the Samsung Gallery app on my phone has a page it calls "Albums" which are actually the different folders (and in other gallery apps appear as "folders" rather than "albums"). However Google Photos or F-Stop have "Albums" that are really "virtual albums", i.e. the images have not been moved or copied into a folder but rather tagged in some way as belonging to a particular album (probably the app has a collection of links to those images which it uses to show them together as an "album"). In this case only that app knows those images belong together, and the files themselves may be scattered through one or more actual folders.

If it's the latter your best bet might be to see whether you can create a copy of them somewhere, e.g. view the "album", select all of the images and see whether there is an option to copy them to a folder on SD. If you can do that then you can copy the folder to the PC.

It doesn't seem to give the option other than to copy to album or move to album I don't seem to have the option to select or create a folder as a destination
 
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so after some messing about creating a new album and copying from one to the other it seems for some reason the folder names work wasn't being seen by the phone or windows? Ive now copied all pics from the album work to another album (work 2) and they are seen by windows and can be copied over.
any idea why this would occur?
 
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It doesn't seem to give the option other than to copy to album or move to album I don't seem to have the option to select or create a folder as a destination
Edit: I see this post was out of date by the time I posted it...

Which gallery app is it? Or, if it's the manufacturer's built-in app, which phone?

When viewing the album is there a way of selecting the images? This might be an option in a menu (e.g. in F-Stop there's a "select all" in the 3-dot menu), or else pressing and holding a photo might start selecting (at which point you can select the rest). Having selected them you should have other options, e.g. "copy" (again, look in a 3-dot menu, since they change according to context).

How exactly you do this, and how easy they make it, will depend on the app. For example in F-Stop I can do it just as above: open an album, choose "select all" from the context menu (3 dots), then select "copy", and then either choose an existing folder or press "+" to create a new one. All pretty straightforward to anyone who is familiar with how Android apps work. On the other hand in Google Photos it requires some ingenuity to find the way: when viewing an album you can select "select" in the context menu and start selecting images (I can't see a "select all"). Having selected images you can then tap the share icon, and in "share to apps" locate a file browser (probably under "more", and from there you should be able to pick/create the folder you want to copy them to. Much more fuss, but then Google really want you to share by sending links to online albums (which tells them who you are connected to and gives information on what sort of connection you share...) and so design their app accordingly. And a different app may do it differently again.

Of course if these images are in a Google Photos album you can probably just go to Google photos from your PC's web browser and download the images from there.
 
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Edit: I see this post was out of date by the time I posted it...

Which gallery app is it? Or, if it's the manufacturer's built-in app, which phone?

When viewing the album is there a way of selecting the images? This might be an option in a menu (e.g. in F-Stop there's a "select all" in the 3-dot menu), or else pressing and holding a photo might start selecting (at which point you can select the rest). Having selected them you should have other options, e.g. "copy" (again, look in a 3-dot menu, since they change according to context).

How exactly you do this, and how easy they make it, will depend on the app. For example in F-Stop I can do it just as above: open an album, choose "select all" from the context menu (3 dots), then select "copy", and then either choose an existing folder or press "+" to create a new one. All pretty straightforward to anyone who is familiar with how Android apps work. On the other hand in Google Photos it requires some ingenuity to find the way: when viewing an album you can select "select" in the context menu and start selecting images (I can't see a "select all"). Having selected images you can then tap the share icon, and in "share to apps" locate a file browser (probably under "more", and from there you should be able to pick/create the folder you want to copy them to. Much more fuss, but then Google really want you to share by sending links to online albums (which tells them who you are connected to and gives information on what sort of connection you share...) and so design their app accordingly. And a different app may do it differently again.

Of course if these images are in a Google Photos album you can probably just go to Google photos from your PC's web browser and download the images from there.
Galaxy s20fe, using the native apps
 
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Edit: I see this post was out of date by the time I posted it...

Which gallery app is it? Or, if it's the manufacturer's built-in app, which phone?

When viewing the album is there a way of selecting the images? This might be an option in a menu (e.g. in F-Stop there's a "select all" in the 3-dot menu), or else pressing and holding a photo might start selecting (at which point you can select the rest). Having selected them you should have other options, e.g. "copy" (again, look in a 3-dot menu, since they change according to context).

How exactly you do this, and how easy they make it, will depend on the app. For example in F-Stop I can do it just as above: open an album, choose "select all" from the context menu (3 dots), then select "copy", and then either choose an existing folder or press "+" to create a new one. All pretty straightforward to anyone who is familiar with how Android apps work. On the other hand in Google Photos it requires some ingenuity to find the way: when viewing an album you can select "select" in the context menu and start selecting images (I can't see a "select all"). Having selected images you can then tap the share icon, and in "share to apps" locate a file browser (probably under "more", and from there you should be able to pick/create the folder you want to copy them to. Much more fuss, but then Google really want you to share by sending links to online albums (which tells them who you are connected to and gives information on what sort of connection you share...) and so design their app accordingly. And a different app may do it differently again.

Of course if these images are in a Google Photos album you can probably just go to Google photos from your PC's web browser and download the images from there.
Yes select all and move to existing album or create a new one etc but no ust any old folder anymore by the looks, the album/folder I previously had called "work" seems to have bugged out for whatever reason.
That being said it's till a bit short sighted not to allow a file to be moved to wherever I want on the device I own..
 
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Yes select all and move to existing album or create a new one etc but no ust any old folder anymore by the looks, the album/folder I previously had called "work" seems to have bugged out for whatever reason.
That being said it's till a bit short sighted not to allow a file to be moved to wherever I want on the device I own..
Since I have an s21 I just tested what the Samsung Gallery app let me do. And I agree they've not thought it through:

I selected a couple of photos and then chose the option "copy to album". I chose "create" and it gave me the option to enter a folder name, but gave no visible way of choosing where that folder would go within the filesystem. It actually create it as a subfolder of DCIM, but I had to use a different app to find it!

I was able to copy photos to a folder of my choice, but only via the same "share" trick I had to use with Google photos: select photos, choose "share", find a file browser in the options to share to (involved some side-scrolling, no clue in the UI to tell you to do that) and then use that to create and select a folder where I wanted it.

Bottom line: it's possible, but they don't make it easy. This sort of thing is why I generally use third party apps for most things rather than what the manufacturer bundles - I can usually find something that does a better job (or at least one that suits me better).
 
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Since I have an s21 I just tested what the Samsung Gallery app let me do. And I agree they've not thought it through:

I selected a couple of photos and then chose the option "copy to album". I chose "create" and it gave me the option to enter a folder name, but gave no visible way of choosing where that folder would go within the filesystem. It actually create it as a subfolder of DCIM, but I had to use a different app to find it!

I was able to copy photos to a folder of my choice, but only via the same "share" trick I had to use with Google photos: select photos, choose "share", find a file browser in the options to share to (involved some side-scrolling, no clue in the UI to tell you to do that) and then use that to create and select a folder where I wanted it.

Bottom line: it's possible, but they don't make it easy. This sort of thing is why I generally use third party apps for most things rather than what the manufacturer bundles - I can usually find something that does a better job (or at least one that suits me better).
I like what you mentioned about this too, it is much more easier, screen shots and have them in a different subfolder on accident, or have them to a different folder that is visible to you, funny how my Gallery app just adds in different photographs I have snapshot and show them in my phone, but when I get super freaky and not have it all over the place, then it is a gather throughout the masses of my downloads.
 
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