What to do about disconnected files?

I have used Photoshop Elements 9. A few months ago, many of my pictures became disconnected (11,2261 of them). Around that time we had severe thunderstorms -- I wonder if I lost the pictures as a result?
Their thumbnails still appear in my organizer but with a yellow question mark in the upper left hand corner.
I have always preserved the photo files on back up disks as I went along.
I recently bought PSE 11; the program instructions say that I should convert my catalog from PSE 9 .
I am unsure how to proceed --what I should do to preserve the information about these pictures?
What is the best way to proceed without messing up the new program?
Message was edited by: [email protected]

It's important to understand that you get missing files when you move, rename or delete pictures outside of the organizer. You can't reconnect deleted pictures, for renamed ones, you would have to reconnect each file individually... So the reconnect feature is mainly useful for moved pictures, particularly when a whole folder has been moved, either voluntarily or by accident. An extreme case is when you have restored a full backup made on an external software on a new drive or master folder (changing OS for instance).
If you have to restore a number of files by searching in a your computer with tens of thousands of pictures in thousands of folders, your first task should be to able to specify the 'exact folder you want to check', otherwise the automatic global search may take many days...
So the advice is to look in the organizer at the location where the catalogs expect the files to be, and to search via the explorer/finder where the real pictures are in the computer. Then you can tell the reconnect dialog where to begin the search. In that case, the reconnection is very quick.

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