Recovering actions from CS2 when moving to CS3

I may have lost several custom actions, but perhaps you know how I can get them back.

When installing CS3 last night, I removed CS2 first. I forgot to ensure I moved all my actions, etc... to my local drive in a special folder for installing into CS3 later. I cannot find several actions I created now. Are they gone for good? These are actions I created in CS2 and not loaded from external sources, therefore, they probably were trashed with the deinstall of CS2.

Any ideas, please?

I don't have a solution for you but this certainly does provide a reminder to everyone that when about to install CS3 to make sure that you have done a proper backup of anything that is important to you.

I started to use the option in CS2 of the additional plug-ins folder that can be found in your preferences file. This way when you are installing a new version you don't have to worry about reinstalling all of these you just have to go this in your preferences in the new file and point to this folder again. It works great.

Have you tried to do a system search on *.atn for your missing files. That is about all I could think of.

If they were left in the files of CS2, they were uninstalled most likely. I also use the second folder option in CS2 as Sheldon mentioned, but I also save everything to my external HD as well.

Depending on when they were downloaded, some might be in your temp folder. Not sure though. You can always restock some of the ones you lost HERE. Thats a start at least. Hopefully you didn't have any that you paid for!

CS3 update does not overwrite CS2 files. For others updating, just leave CS2 in place. CS3 will install in its own directory and you can delete CS2 later after you've transferred files.

The temp file may be a source. I will check tonight. Thanks for all the tips. I will certainly use the secondary folder from now on.

With R_Metzel here.

Even though Adobe sells "Upgrades" they are actually full versions you get for a lower price because you own the previous version.

If you origanaly bought PS 7 and then bought the upgrades to CS, CS2 and CS3 each gets its own full install, and you can stil run any of the previous versions.

When you install the Upgrad you can transfer all you Actions, brushes, Textures ect over. Then uninstall the other versions if you want to.

With CS2 juat make sure you Transfer your Registration before you unistall if you want to have 2 seperate install on two machines. Pther wise you have to call adobe and wait for them to deactivate the previos install.

I uninstalled PS7 when I installed PSCS. My actions were still in the system folder. Go to windows explorer, c drive, program files, adobe. There may be a folder there for the other photoshop. There was for mine. Look in those folders. A lot of my stuff was not deleted. Such as styles ect. I moved them over. It may be because these were some I had downloaded from the net and were not part of the original PS files. I am not sure. Actions can be kept and loaded from any file. I keep all of mine in My Documents. It us just as easy to load them from there as anywhere else.