Solved Shortcuts folders not displaying in apps

Instead of storing my photographs on the C drive on my Windows 8 machine, I have them on a powered USB hard drive which is always attached to my PC. In the My Pictures folder in Windows (C:\users\[name]\My Pictures) I've created a shortcut to the photos folder on my USB hard drive. This works fine when I navigate to it using Explorer or any other file exploring software.

However, when I use a photo editing application such as GIMP2, click Open and navigate to the My Pictures folder on my C drive, the shortcut folder is not shown. Other image folders which are actually in that folder are shown. To see the shortcut folder I need to change what is shown from 'All images' to 'All files'. When I do this I can then see the 'My Pictures - Shortcut.lnk'but if I then try and open that folder I receive an error message saying that opening the shorcut failed: unknown file type.

Anyone know why this should be? Similar behaviour is exhibited in Photoshop Express. When I select my pictures folder, the folders that are physically in C:\users\[name]\My Pictures are shown but not my shortcut folder so there seems to be no way of accessing the photos on my USB hard drive. Another image editing app I have also ignores the My pictures shortcut folder, so I think it's a Windows thing rather than a problem with the individual apps.

I have View hidden files ticked.

Any ideas? Thanks.

You opening that link from the Start Screen? Copy it to the desktop instead. You can add the location as a library as well.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/12954-library-add-folder-windows-8-a.html

Thanks for the reply. I was using the Open command from within GIMP to go to the My Pictures folder on the C drive. In that folder I have a shortcut to the pictures folder on my USB hard drive, but GIMP (and other photo editing software) didn't show the shortcut folder to the pictures on my USB hard drive.

Thanks for the tip about libraries. I added my USB hard drive pics folder to the Pictures library and now, in every photo app apart from GIMP, I can see the photos on my USB hard drive as well as the photos in the My pictures folder on the C drive. GIMP is the only one that can't seem to navigate to the library (it simply isn't listed as an option in the drive lists) but I've instead created a bookmark to the pictures folder on the USB hard drive, so that does the job.

Thanks for the help.

A shortcut made in Windows is an "*.lnk" file, Gimp can't read it. I use an iPhone App, "File Explorer" to move files to and from my phone, it also won't recognize a shortcut to my ISO images folder. The "lnk" files can only be handled from within the Windows Filesystem, and since Gimp is a program that runs on Linux, it also can't read the "Lnk" file.