I have looked, but couldn't find instructions for this. Forgive my oversight for missing previous posts on the subject.

Here's the deal. A client had a prior version of zen photo on a different server. Saved the galleries/albums folders but not the mysql data. She needs me to recreate her photo galleries on a new server using the latest version of zen photo. I've uploaded and succeflly installed the software, uploaded the old album folders into the new album directory but don't know what to do from here in order to import them into the zen photo system. All help is greatly appreciated as I truly don't want to reload all images one at a time

You do nothing more that what you did. Zenphoto discovers the albums and images from the file system.

But if your question really is "how do I get back the lost information from the database...." I guess you are out of luck. There is no magic here.

No, I understood the mysql data was lost, just didn't think the album upload was that easy because when I tried it previously I got a few timeout errors. Looks like zen photo was building the cache files then (albums totaled out at over 2gb) because everything looks good after I initiall open a new album. Thanks!

Yes, Zenphoto builds cache files if it does not find them on request (if someone views the site or backend). Depending on the server power and the images's dimensions that might take a while but only once.