Picasa Tip: Error Emailing a Picture with Gmail

4/1/10 Note: this error has been fixed by the folks at Google.  The article is still worth a read to see how to find out what has been fixed or not, as well as how to use Web Albums to share your photos instead of emailing.

Several people this week told me they were having a problem when they tried to email a picture using Picasa’s email button and choosing ‘Gmail.’  So I tried it and, sure enough, I got the same error message:



I checked the PIcasa user forum and found that lots of people were having the same problem.  Google has acknowledged the problem.  They’ve been working on it and have now posted a notice that they’ve identified the problem and they know how to fix it.  The fix will be in the automatic Picasa updates that will be pushed out to all users starting next week (3/29/10.)  It’s always a good idea to check the Picasa ‘Known Issues’ page when you get an error so you know if it’s a problem they’re working on before you go to too much trouble trying to fix it yourself.

Meanwhile, here’s another way to share your photos.

Upload your photos to a Picasa Web Album. Once it’s there, you can view it in the Album, then click the ‘Share’ button.  You just address it like any other email, write a message and send.



Your friend who receives the email will see something like this:



They can see the thumbnail (small version) of the photo right in the email.  If they click on ‘View Photo’ that will take them to the photo on your Web Album.

I think this is a better way to share photos anyway.  What do you think?  Leave a comment.

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

 

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

• Upload Photos to the Web


•  Google Plus Sharing


• Removing Google Plus to Use Picasa Web Album


• Photo Sort Order

 

 

Have you Backed up your Pictures Lately?

I get at least one email every week from someone with a sad tale about losing their pictures.  My first question is, “When did you last back them up?”

silence …

That’s not a good sign.

Monthly Backups

My system is to burn a CD or DVD each month of all the pictures I took that month.  I buy my CD/DVDs in bulk (50 disks - $25) and they come on a spindle.  I use the empty spindles to store my backed up pictures:

Yearly Backups

Then, at the end of the year, I also burn the entire year to DVD.  That way I can put one copy – either the monthlies or the yearly, at my Mom’s house for safekeeping.



There’s just one problem with this system … you gotta remember to do it!  I just took a look at my spindle of backup disks and it ends in December … this is March!  My Bad!  In the video below, I show you exactly how I backup my January 2010 and February 2010 photos.

Continual Backups

Meanwhile, I also backup all my computer data – including pictures – on a nightly basis using Windows 7 backup utility and an External hard drive.  I also use Carbonite to backup all my files to the Internet on a continual basis (whenever they change.)

Backup vs. Archive

The monthly and yearly systems I describe above are actually ‘Archives’ because the pictures they backed up may be removed from my computer altogether.  I know that I can find a picture from August of 2004 by going to my archive of disks regardless of what computer I happen to be using and what is on it.  The ‘nightly and continual backups’ I describe above are for disaster recovery purposes, all those pictures *are* on my computer.  I’m backing them up every night just in case something should happen to my computer.

I keep 2 years worth of pictures on my computer – about 8,000 pictures, but I like having instant access to pictures from years ago.  So, I keep the rest of my pictures (about 23,000) on an external hard drive.  I have Picasa ‘watching’ that hard drive so, when I view my pictures in Picasa I see all 30,000 pictures .  But I know that only the 8,000 on my computer’s C drive are being backed up each night.  If anything should happen to my external hard drive, I always have my archive DVD disks.

Show Me How: Backup your pictures monthly with Picasa.

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

• Backup to External Hard Drive


• Move Folders of Pictures to an External Drive


• Moving Folders Among Multiple Hard Drives


• Backup your Photos to CD


• Backup Monthly to Disk (CD or DVD)


• Get one Picture from a Backup

 

 

 

Find Pictures by Date

When you have thousands of photos on your computer, it’s hard to keep track of them even with the best of tools.  I’ve had some questions lately from people who have just imported their photos and they seem to have disappeared into computer La-La Land.  This happens in Picasa because there are so many options for ways to view your library of photos.  For example maybe the particular options you have set is sorting your new folder down toward the bottom and you don’t realize it.  When it doesn’t appear at the top, you think they’re lost.

Notice the Recently Updated Album

One simple solution is to take a look at the ‘Recently Updated’ Album.  This is an automatic Album that does just that – shows the pictures that were most recently updated.  Automatic albums are displayed as a green folder icon with a star.  Other automatic albums include ‘Starred Photos’ and ‘Recently Emailed Photos.’  These exists at the top of your albums collection – and they are automatically generated just for your convenience.

Use the Date Range Filter

Another way to find photos by date is to use the Date Range Filter.  That’s the slider to the right of the filter section.  It usually is placed all the way at the left end which means, “Show me all pictures no matter how old they are.’  As you drag the slider toward the right, you will be filtering your library of photos to newer and newer ones.  In the screen shot below, notice the position of the slider and the text that indicates the date range is all pictures up to 10 days old.



The problem with this filter is that you can set a beginning for your date range (e.g. 10 days ago) but the range end is always set to today.  I can’t find a way to filter for all pictures taken in September 2007 for example.

You may be saying, “But my folders are already sorted by date.”  Well, yes, but that is Folders.  What if you have a Folder called Christmas and every year, you put your Christmas day photos in there?  That Folder will be sorted according to the date of the Folder which is usually the same as the earliest picture within the folder.

View *ALL* of your Pictures in Order by Date

An advanced trick would be to get all your pictures listed in a Search Results ‘Temporary Album. How?  By searching for .jpg - *every* photo will end in .jpg! If you sort this Album by date, every individual picture will show in order by date regardless of its folder.  Now you need to scroll thru them to find the date in question – a bit of a pain, but do-able.

I have not been able to use the Search feature to look for photos by date, if anyone else has – I’d love to hear from you.

Use Windows 7

Outside of Picasa, using Windows 7, you can view the ‘Pictures Library and view by day or month.  Pretty cool, and certainly a worthy technique if you think you’ve lost some photos but you know when they were taken.  This technique arranges them by date regardless of the folder in which they’re stored.

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

• Folders and Folder Collection


• Library View


• Using Albums for Organizing


• Using Search to Create a Temporary Album

 


Need to learn the basics?  Check out our Beginner's Guide to Picasa

Backup and Tree View

Picasa allows you to see your list of folders in either Flat view, or Tree View.  In Flat view you can sort the folders by Date OR Alphabetically.  In Tree View you can’t because it has to show your nested folder structure as you created it.  If you understand that, please read on about how it relates to Backup.  If not … here are the videos that will show you what I mean by Flat View and Tree View

• Tree Folder Structure


• Library View


• Folders and Folder Collection

When you use the Tools / Backup Pictures command, you might be distressed that the option to view in Tree or Flat View isn’t there.

Here’s the trick – get into the view you want *before* clicking on the Backup command.  The screen shots below show you the difference in looking at the backup options:

Backup with Flat View selected first	Backup with Tree View selected first
Notice how they are sorted alphabetically so BigBend is just before California Coast	In Tree View, you see that California Coast is on its own, and BigBend is inside the Texas Folder.

Everyone organizes their picture folders differently.  Just like any filing system it’s up to you how to file them.  Backup is a very important factor in how you organize, so, if you’ve nested folders for backup purposes – this is a very handy tip to be able to see your nested ‘tree’ view in the backup process.

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

• Backup to External Hard Drive


• Move Folders of Pictures to an External Drive


• Moving Folders Among Multiple Hard Drives


• Backup your Photos to CD


• Backup Monthly to Disk (CD or DVD)

Need to learn the basics?  Check out our ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa’ complete with show-me videos.