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Upgraded phone not seeing photos

J

JLeslie

Well-Known Member
I recently upgraded from an old Pixel to a Pixel 8 Pro. The process went smoothly but I've run into an issue. When I view the pictures on the phone by using the Photos app, I see all of the pictures that got migrated from my old phone as well as the pictures I've taken with the new phone.

However, when I have the phone connected to my PC (file transfer mode selected) and am trying to upload a photo to FB for example, I can see only the pictures I've taken with the new phone. The migrated pictures are nowhere to be found.

I didn't have this problem when I upgraded the last 2 times (either Pixel to Pixel or Nexus to Pixel) so I'm stumped as to how to fix this problem. Any ideas?

Jonathan
 
Are you using Chrome? If so, on the left hand side of your photo screen you should see "Archived". That's where I'm guessing the photos are.
 
AugieTN said:
Are you using Chrome? If so, on the left hand side of your photo screen you should see "Archived". That's where I'm guessing the photos are.
Click to expand...
It doesn't matter if I use Chrome or Edge. When I'm in USB Connection File Transfer mode, I open File Explorer, then Internal shared storage. I've looked through every folder and subfolder in there and don't see a folder labeled Archived nor the migrated pics. But while still connected to the PC I can open the Photos app and see them all. This makes no sense.
 
The reason I mentioned Chrome is because if I sign into Google on Chrome I can go to the Google Photo app on the right hand side with my PC not using a USB connection (see attached) and see all the photo and the Archived folder just like it is on your phone. Then I can click and download the photos.

I hope that helps

chrome.png
 
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^^^^^THIS^^^^^^
if you were to switch the phone to airplane mode, you will not find your old photos. as long as your phone is connect to the net either by wifi or cellular, it will show your photos that are stored in the cloud. you can download those photos to your phone if you wish.
 
Dannydet said:
Your photos app on your new device is only showing all of your photos in the cloud, and that's why you can't find them on the phone.
Just open a browser on your PC and go to photos.google.com
Click to expand...
That is news to me. I never heard of that before.
 
ocnbrze said:
^^^^^THIS^^^^^^
if you were to switch the phone to airplane mode, you will not find your old photos. as long as your phone is connect to the net either by wifi or cellular, it will show your photos that are stored in the cloud. you can download those photos to your phone if you wish.
Click to expand...
I put it in airplane mode as you suggested but the results were mixed. I had all photos going back through 2014 but starting in December 2013, some of the photos were there but many had just a rectangle (with a tiny cloud icon at the bottom) where the photo would be.

A couple of months ago I turned off the google backup of my photos as my free Google account is almost maxed out for space. However, I've had a OneDrive account through my family 365 subscription so all photos are backed up there. Because of that I don't see a point in paying another service provider for what would amount to a redundant backup.

So I don't know if the photos don't all show up because they didn't copy down from the Google cloud or the Microsoft cloud or both. It is odd though that even though most photos older than 2014 don't show up in airplane mode, some of them do.

How do I download the rest of the pre-2014 photos that are in the Google cloud?
ocnbrze said:
^^^^^THIS^^^^^^
if you were to switch the phone to airplane mode, you will not find your old photos. as long as your phone is connect to the net either by wifi or cellular, it will show your photos that are stored in the cloud. you can download those photos to your phone if you wish.
Click to expand...
Here's another oddity that happened just after I posted my last reply.

While in network mode so all photos show, I scrolled to the very earliest photos. I then turned on airplane mode and scrolled back up. Every photo was there! So I am just stumped as to what is going on here. Like I said at the beginning, I've done other phone upgrades but never had this happen. All photos were present in the Photos app and I could access them all when picking out a photo to upload to social media.
 
If you look for the 3 dots in the top right corner of each picture you can select download. Not sure how to do a batch of pictures though. I only know how to do it one by one.

Question, why do you want the photos on your phone? You can still view them as long as your connected to the net... either by wifi or cellular.
 
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ocnbrze said:
If you look for the 3 dots in the top right corner of each picture you can select download. Not sure how to do a batch of pictures though. I only know how to do it one by one.

Question, why do you want the photos on your phone? You can still view them as long as your connected to the net... either by wifi or cellular.
Click to expand...
The reason this thread started is because I used to be able to connect my phone to my PC, put it in File Transfer mode, and then log into Facebook, etc. and upload photos. But since I upgraded my phone, the only photos that I can access are the ones I've taken on the new phone. This is not the first time I've upgraded a phone but always before I could still access the photos as they transferred from old to new during the setup of the new phone. But not this time. I'd really rather have the photos on the phone.
 
ok so after playing around on my z fold 4 i learned that you can highlight a bunch of old photos on Google Photos. once they are "checked" select share and then select Facebook. you can then add it to either "your news feed" or "your story".
 
Yep and that's about all you can do now.
Your other option is to get on your PC, login to photos.google.com,
Click on all of your photos, and choose download, onto the PC.
Then you can add them to Facebook from there.
 
ocnbrze said:
ok so after playing around on my z fold 4 i learned that you can highlight a bunch of old photos on Google Photos. once they are "checked" select share and then select Facebook. you can then add it to either "your news feed" or "your story".
Click to expand...
Kind of a backhand way of doing it but that would work. Thanks.
 
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