Scan to Catalog is one of many ways to add items to your Catalog. Scan to Catalog lets you add large and nested groups of photos from folders on your hard drives.
Go to Catalog> Scan to Catalog 
Destination Catalogs A list of Active Catalogs as determined in Catalog>Catalog Management is displayed here.
Select the Add checkbox to the right of the catalog name in the list to add files to that specific catalog during the Scan to Catalog operation.
Folders to Scan Select the “Add..” button towards the bottom right of the section to choose a specific folder to include in the scan.
Doing so will open up a window of the operating system’s file browser where you can navigate to and select a folder.
If you want to clear the Folders to Scan list when the scan completes, select Clear this list on successful completion
Folders to Exclude There are two options for excluding specific folders from a scan. To exclude one specific folder, select the “Add..” button to open up a window of operating system’s file browser where you can navigate to and select a folder. Once selected, the folder path will appear in the textbox underneath the Folders to Exclude heading.
To exclude more than one folder, you may enter in a folder path in the textbox to the right of the “Add Pattern…” button. Use the asterisk * character as a wildcard to match all folder names in a folder path.
Example:
All image files are stored in a main Pictures parent folder. Inside of the Pictures folder, each event photographed gets its own sub-folder. Inside each event’s sub-folder, there are two sub-folders, one named Originals and one named Edits.
To include the image files in every Edits folder in a catalog, but not include the files in the Originals folder, create a folder path pattern that tells Photo Mechanic to exclude all the Originals sub-folders in every event’s sub-folder inside of the main Pictures folder.
In the Folders to Scan section, select the “Add…” button to navigate to and select the main Pictures folder.
In the Folders to Exclude section, in the textbox to the right of the “Add Pattern…” button, enter the following pattern:
*/Originals
Finally, select the “Add Pattern…” button to add that pattern to the list above.
This pattern is relative to the folder path included in the Folders to Scan list. Photo Mechanic looks inside the Pictures folder and finds all the sub-folders of events. The asterisk character in the pattern means that Photo Mechanic will look in all of the sub-folders of events, regardless of how the sub-folders are named, and then look inside those folders for sub-folders named “Originals”. If it finds sub-folders named “Originals”, the sub-folders named “Originals” are excluded from the Scan to Catalog operation. In other words, all files and sub-folders in the Pictures folder will be included in the scan except for the sub-folders named “Originals” that are located inside of each event’s folder.
File extensions to Include or Exclude:
Make a list of file types in this textbox, separated by a semi-colon, to include or exclude during the Scan to Catalog operation.
-Exclude these extensions: All files other than the ones you list will be scanned.
-Include only these extensions: Only the file extensions you list will be scanned.
Example 1: To exclude Canon RAW files from the scan to the catalog operation, select the “Exclude these extensions” option in the dropdown menu, then in the textbox, enter in: CR2;CR3
Example 2: To only include JPEG files during the Scan to Catalog operation, select the “Include these extensions” option in the dropdown menu, then in the textbox, enter in: JPEG;JPG;JPE;JIF;JFIF;JFI
Once a scan starts, you can start browsing right away, but only indexed photos will be available in searches. The number of photos visible will automatically increase as the indexing completes.
Excluding or Including Folders from Scans
If you want to explicitly include or exclude a folder from scans, you can do so by using Browse and navigating to the folder in the Folder Path. Right-click on the folder and select Include this location when Scanning to Catalog or Exclude this location when Scanning to Catalog. These options are helpful if you want to create a new catalog that will contain or will not contain folders that exist in an existing catalog.
`