Why export captions?
Exporting captions is helpful for the times when a caption "accidentally" gets deleted or goes missing. You may have spent a lot of time captioning photos or scans (identifying everyone and describing the event). Once the caption is gone (through accidental deletion, or conflict with other photo editing programs), you'd have to recreate the caption again.
For the times you're sharing a photo and your friend doesn't know how or where to read your caption in the photo, your friend can open the exported caption text file to see the caption.
If you don't already have the button installed on your computer, see How to install customized buttons in Picasa3
How to use the ExportCaptions button
1) Select any photo in any folder which have captions.
2) Click the new button called "ExportCaptions"
a. A black DOS window will flash open as the button begins exporting captions. [If there is an error, the DOS screen will show an error message*]
b. A text file will open to show you the captions it just copied to the text file. The text file automatically is given the name "Captions.txt"
i) Check over your captions in the text file to be sure it looks OK.
A) Make any changes that you want.
B) Save the changes (File > Save)
c. Close the DOS screen and the text file.
3) To rename the "Captions.txt" file (optional):
i) Right click the picture or folder in Picasa and "locate on disk" to open Windows Explorer.
ii) Rename the "Captions.txt" file (Press F2, then type in a new file name)
*If you see any error messages which indicate the export did not work, check to see that your file and/or folder name does NOT have the & or ! symbol. Remove the & or ! symbol and click the ExportCaptions button again. This time, it should work properly.
If you click the ExportCaptions button and NO captions appear in the text file, look at the file extension.
If the file extension is ".jpeg" - remove the "e" so it says ".jpg" then try to export captions again. It should now work OK.
When removing the "e" you will see a pop up warning: "If you change a file name extension, the file might become unusable. Are you sure you want to change it?" Click "Yes"
If the file extension is .png - in Picasa click File > Save a Copy. The copy will be a .jpg extension. Delete the .png. Exporting the caption should now work.
Tips for entering captions
If your caption has hard returns, you may want to consider removing all the hard returns and using periods after each sentence. You may notice that when exporting captions with hard returns that the text seems smashed together. For example, a caption identifying a group may look like this in the "Make a Caption!" field of Picasa:
Alice holding a stick
Pete wearing a green hat
the dog we got in 1962
Photo taken in the summer of 1979
You'll see that the text got smashed together when exporting the caption and looks like this in the captions text file:
Alice holding a stickPete wearing a green hatthe dog we got in 1962Photo taken in the summer of 1979
Remove the hard returns, add periods and spaces, use capitalization, so it reads like the following in the caption (the captions text file will also read like this): Alice holding a stick. Pete wearing a green hat. The dog we got in 1962. Photo taken in the summer of 1979.
Your captions will look prettier, and your descendants will thank you! :-)
Note: You may notice that the captions text file shows duplicate captions. That is because the script is pulling captions from both IPTC and XMP. If you want to only export XMP data, read further. . .
How to edit the ExportCaptions script so it uses only XMP data
Navigate to C:\Tools\PicasaScripts
Right click PS_ButtonExportCaptions.bat and choose "Edit with Notepad" (or choose whatever text program is available).
Remove the following from the script: $IPTC:Caption-abstract$/
Click File > Save and close the file
The above modified script using only XMP data will only work on captions that were added in Picasa from about 2012. That's because in about 2012, Picasa3 began using the XMP area of pictures for its captions. Previous versions of Picasa used IPTC data for captions. For captions entered earlier than 2012, use the original script (PS_ButtonExportCaptions.bat) from the PicasaStarter website to export captions.
Alternate methods for using a bat file to export captions is explained here: https://sites.google.com/site/picasastartersite/other-tools/exportcaptions
and here: https://sites.google.com/site/picasastartersite/other-tools/exportcaptionsperdir
Thank you Pieter for the scripts!