Comments on: Lightroom thinks my photos are missing – how do I ﬁx it?

By: John

John — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:16:28 +0000

These tips saved me – THANK YOU!!!!!!!

By: plum tree studio

plum tree studio — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:36:30 +0000

Is there a way to do this for every folder in a catalog? We just moved our 2009 weddings to the back up drive in the basement, now LR is showing up with question marks. Do we have to manually find each missing folder (we have thousands of missing folders). Or is there a way to have lightroom find the new location? [Are they all a long flat list of folders, or are they in a hierarchy? If they're a long flat list, you're stuck with doing them one by one, or moving them back to where LR thinks they should be and setting it up as a hierarchy instead. Once they're in a hierarchy (i.e. all the folders listed below a parent folder) then you could just relink the parent folder and all below would update automatically. - VB]

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:37:50 +0000

Is there a quick way to find all of the “unlinked” files and just delete them from LR? I have some remnant thumbnails of photos long archived and removed but still show up in LR that I’d like to clean up. Thanks!
[Assuming you're on LR2, right click on a parent folder and choose Synchronize - but don't press OK. Press the Show Missing Photos button and it'll show all the missing ones so you can remove them or relink them. - VB]

By: Amonte Littlejohn

Amonte Littlejohn — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:02:30 +0000

Thanx, again…back to my crystal ball!

By: Victoria Bampton

Victoria Bampton — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:54:17 +0000

Brilliant Amonte, I’m so pleased you got it working.

As far as LR3 goes, I’m not in a position to say I’m afraid. What I can tell you, is LR1 was released February 07, LR2 beta was April 08, and LR2 final was July 08. You can make what you will of those dates!!

By: Amonte Littlejohn

Amonte Littlejohn — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:50:46 +0000

First, I have to apologize for taking so long to respond. My response is a big fat THANK YOU! Your last bit of advice pulled my LR catalog back to life so I could find my pictures files. I am so glad i found your blog site and have put the address into my bookmarks.
Additionally, if you can say, would it be worth my while to upgrade to LR2 or wait for LR3, if it’s coming soon.
Thanx Again.

By: Simonne

Simonne — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 05:40:04 +0000

I followed the above instructions for locating my missing files and all nearby missing files, and it worked great. Except on one of the folders I accidentally chose the wrong folder, so now the (completely different) pictures in that folder replaced the “missing” ones. Is there a way to undo that last locate or to re-associate that group of pictures with the correct ones?

[Did the files have the same names then? If so, you could try right clicking on that folder, and choosing Update Folder Location and pointing to the correct location. If that doesn't do it, you could trick LR - close it, and move that folder in Explorer/Finder, so that it shows up as missing when you reopen LR, and link it back with the correct folder. - VB]

By: Mike Cliff

Mike Cliff — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:16:41 +0000

I was having problems with drive letters in Windows Vista (don’t know if it is the same in XP) while using Lightroom 2.5. My external drive had been G but I changed the USB port and the drive came up as H so Lightroom counted the files as being offline. I am often swapping them in and out, so seeing them offline half the time was getting annoying.

I clicked on the bar for the G drive which was offline and greyed out. This dropped down the folder structure and the first line under the bar said (G:). I right clicked on that line and got a menu option that said ‘Update Folder Location…’. I then navigated to Computer and found the H drive. I clicked on the H drive icon and clicked OK. It then took about 2 secs for all the folders containing over 5000 raw files to be shown as available.

I have even tried to change it back to G and then back to H using the same method and it gave predictable results. This seems easier than changing the system drive letters in Windows. I know I had loads of hassle when my external iTunes library turned up on the wrong drive letter, so I’m glad Lightroom is flexible enough to have the drive letters redirected.

I can’t tell you if any earlier versions do this as I’m new to Lightroom.

I also found the Adobe TV video http://tv.adobe.com/watch/the-complete-picture-with-julieanne-kost/episode-12/ very helpful as it explained good ways to work with catalogs in a more modular way.

By: Amonte Littlejohn

Amonte Littlejohn — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:21:42 +0000

I’m still using LR 1.41 . My OS is Windows 98. After collapsing some of my folders into braoder categories of subjects to neaten my desktop, LR could not find any of the folders nor files. The Library and develop modules look as thought no files had every been processed: no filenames , no folder or collection names. It occured to me that maybe LR could not find the new locations. So, I pulled all the subfoders out of their new folders, back to the My Pictures desktop. LR still shows no trace of the photos previously imported. I probably need to mention I import into my computer using an HP dowloader, then use LR to import photos for processing.
So far all the advice i’ve read concerns files for which the folder name or picture name is still visible (with ?). Nothing shows up in my catalog, folder, or filename areas. My original files are intact in My Pictures.
How do I link the previously imported and processed pictures and folder under these circumstances? Or where can I go for info.

[If there's nothing showing in LR, it may be that you moved the catalog too, and it's just created a new default catalog. Search your computer for *.lrcat files and you may find your original catalog - in which case, double click to open, and then relink the files as listed above. If that doesn't do the trick, drop by http://www.lightroomforums.net and we can chat more easily. - VB]

By: Boaz

Boaz — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 19:28:35 +0000

I am having a similar problem but haven’t been able to solve it using your explanation:
My external had drive changed letters, so lightroom thinks some of the photos are on “F:” while they are actually on “G”. When I try to relink the photos I get the error message in lightroom: “The selected folder, or a folder it contains is already in lightroom”. The photos are still there on G, but when I scroll down the contents of G I cannot see these folders in lightroom. Any ideas? thank!

[Boaz, tough to say without seeing screenshots of the folders panel. Drop by http://www.lightroomforums.net and post it there, and we can chat in more detail. - VB]