Hello all,
Just trying to sound out whether it's possible to do this with PAD.
We have a drive that has individual project folders, and some of them contain large caches of photos. I've been seeking out the folders that have the largest (bytes) photo cache from a year or more ago, and then reducing the photos. I was able to make a targeted list using Excel Power Query.
The simplest tool I found to reduce the photo resolution is an obsolete tool, Microsoft Office Picture Manager (2010). It works a treat for selecting all photos in a given folder, and also cropping all said photos to a uniform size.
What I've been manually doing is clicking on the hyperlink in Excel which opens the photo folder in File Explorer, then selecting one photo, right-clicking, choosing "Open with" Picture Manager 2010, then when that program launches, selecting all photos in the folder (click to load all photos, then Control+A to select all), then Edit Pictures, then the Compress Pictures button, then setting the resolution, then OK, waiting for that to process, then hitting save to overwrite all the photos, then closing. Finally, back to Excel where I delete the row just completed, and on to the next hyperlink.
I've really only used PAD with web pages and gathering info, and writing to Excel. Is it possible to incorporate not only Excel but this Picture Manager program to automate this process? I saw somewhere else that it was suggested the only way to bulk-reduce photos was to use full Power Automate and run a cloud flow through another app. I'm never going to talk my boss into all that.
