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Applies to all editions of Windows Vista.

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Choose which pictures and videos are displayed in Windows Photo Gallery

Windows Photo Gallery is designed to automatically display the pictures and videos stored in the Pictures folder on your computer. You can modify the contents of Photo Gallery at any time by adding and removing folders, which is convenient if you store some of your pictures and videos in a location other than the Pictures folder on your computer. You can also add individual pictures and videos to Photo Gallery without adding the entire folder.

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Add a folder to Photo Gallery

When you add a folder to Photo Gallery, all of the pictures and videos in the folder will be displayed there. Keep in mind that you can only add one folder to Photo Gallery at a time, so you will need to repeat these steps for each folder you want to add.

  1. Open Windows Photo Gallery by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, clicking All Programs, and then clicking Windows Photo Gallery.

  2. Click the File menu, and then click Add Folder to Gallery.

  3. Click the folder that contains the pictures and videos you want to add, and then click OK.

Warning

Warning

You should avoid adding certain folders to Photo Gallery. The Local Disk folder, for example, is called the root folder because it represents your entire hard disk. Adding this folder to Photo Gallery will make it run very slowly. You should avoid adding the Windows folder and other system locations to Photo Gallery for similar reasons.

Add a single picture or video to Photo Gallery

You can add individual pictures and videos to Photo Gallery without automatically including all of the other files stored in the same folder.

  1. Open the folder that contains the picture or video you want to add to Photo Gallery.

  2. Open Windows Photo Gallery by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, clicking All Programs, and then clicking Windows Photo Gallery.

  3. Drag the picture or video from the folder to the Photo Gallery window.

    The picture or video is copied to your Pictures folder and automatically added to Photo Gallery.

Notes

Notes

  • Only pictures and videos can be added to Photo Gallery. If you try to add a different kind of file, it will be copied to the Pictures folder, but will not appear in Photo Gallery.

  • There are many types of pictures, and not all will appear in Photo Gallery. Pictures with the .gif file name extension, for example, will not appear in Photo Gallery.

Remove a folder from Photo Gallery

When you remove a folder from Photo Gallery, you do not delete it from your computer. If you remove a folder, Photo Gallery will no longer display the pictures and videos that were in that folder, though the folder will remain on your computer.

You can remove folders that you have added to Photo Gallery at any time, but you can't remove the folders that are in Photo Gallery by default. Removing a folder prevents it from being displayed in Photo Gallery. While you can remove folders from Photo Gallery, you can't remove individual pictures or videos. You can, however, delete pictures from Photo Gallery at any time. If you delete a picture it is deleted from your computer as if you deleted it from the Pictures folder.

In addition, you can't remove a subfolder without removing its top-level folder as well. In the following example, you can remove the folder called Family, which will also remove all of its subfolders. However, you can't remove only the folder called Children or Grandparents.

Picture showing subfolders in Photo GalleryYou can't remove a subfolder from Photo Gallery without removing its top-level folder

  1. Open Windows Photo Gallery by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, clicking All Programs, and then clicking Windows Photo Gallery.

  2. In the Navigation pane, right-click the folder you want to remove, and then click Remove from Gallery.

Warning

Warning

Photo Gallery is another way to view and organize your pictures and videos. It displays pictures and videos that you've stored in Pictures and in other folders on your computer. It is not a replacement for folders on your computer. As a result, you should not delete the pictures in Photo Gallery or the Pictures folder unless you actually intend to delete the pictures from your computer. If you do, they will deleted from your computer and no longer appear in either the Pictures folder or in Photo Gallery.

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