How do I arrange thousands of photos from PC folders

You can start a new Photos Library and just grab a folder containing sub-folders and drag it to the Photos icon. Then click on "Keep Folder Organization," and all your folders will be there. No non-image files, though.

Unfortunately, you'll have an extra layer of folders. It's a little weird. You'll want to test this with a few folders to see how it work for you.

Photos.app is not up to that kind of task.

I'd use some 3rd party tool like GraphicConverter, Adobe Bridge, Mylio, exiftool etc to adjust all needed image (and movie and other docs...) metadata after careful planning (metadata dates, file dates, filenames, locations, keywords, captions, archives, backups, cloud sharing & collaboration from relatives etc...).

IngerSwe wrote:

I want to keep them in a similar way as they were in my PC folder in an album/folder within Photos.

How are the sorted in the folder? By name, number, or ?

Do the folder names have significant?

If sorted by name then I would use an app like Name Mangler to add the folder's name with an hyphen in front of the file names:

The folder name was Easter. The file names were created with Name Mangler also.

In Photos>Settings, be sure this is checked:

This is the default. Every picture will be copied to the Photos Library, and metadata is stored in Photos' database. Because file names are sometimes the same, Photos gives each a unique identifier, and from then on you really have to use Photos to manage the images. It's called a Managed Library.

Un-checking "Copy" produces what's called a Referenced Library, and Photos does not do well with that.

These folders also contain Word, Excel and Pdf files. I certainly not want them to be organized according to the date they were taken. I want to keep them in a similar way as they were in my PC folder in an album/folder within Photos

You can't because Photos will not import those Word and Excel files. You can keep them like so in the Finder.

IngerSwe wrote:

it's too difficult to look at the photos in Preview.

There is something called Quicklook. In the finder, click on a picture, and hit spacebar. You get a more or less screen sized view of the picture. This works for any "normal" file like word, excel, pdf, etc.

Or(it just occurred to me) do you stay Preview to mean Quicklook? "Preview" is a Mac app for dealing with pdfs and pictures. I'm sorry if I'm confused...

Getting words straight: If you double-click on a picture it opens in the app Preview. If you click and hit spacebar, you get a "Quicklook" that does not open a separate app. It's so you can quickly examine files without having to start a new app for each one.

Being an American, I only do one language. Well, two, if you include Texan.

Hello!

Congratulations on your first Mac! Try uploading the folders as they are on iCloud Drive from your PC and then import the folder into Albums in Photos.

Have a great day!