Any plugins for finding multiple missing folders?

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Allan Olesen

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I have often moved my image folders outside Lightroom due to miscellaneous shortcomings of LR's folder move functions (no moving of multiple folders in earlier LR versions, parallel moving of multiple folders instead of serial moving, errors when folders contained non-image objects, etc.).

And now the time has come to relink those folders. The relinking unfortunately have to be done manually, one folder at a time. This is quite annoying since I know that the other missing folders are placed in the same main folder. I can't even relink the main folder since both the old and new main folder contain other folders already known by Lightroom.

If I were relinking individual photos, I would have the "Find nearby missing photos" checkbox at my disposal. But there is no "Find nearby missing folders" option when I relink folders.

Has anyone written a plugin to give this functionality?

Or are there other methods which I have not discovered?
 
I don't know of anything, and I suspect the painful experience will be good for you!
 
I don't know of anything, and I suspect the painful experience will be good for you!
If you mean that it will force me to do things differently in the future: It will probably not. Not before Lightroom's internal file movement is improved.
 
If you mean that it will force me to do things differently in the future: It will probably not. Not before Lightroom's internal file movement is improved.
Allan, LR's "Internal file movement" doesn't need improving. LR uses the file operations in the Windows API. So, COPY, MOVE, RENAME or DELETE are functions from (in your OS) the Windows API and they behave the same way in LR or any other program. Perhaps a better understanding of how your operating system handles files and folders will help you better understand how those functions will behave when employed in LR.

LR only moves images and sidecar files associated with those images that are cataloged. Any other file types and images not in the catalog will get left behind. In Windows/OSX, a MOVE operation is really a COPY operation followed by a DELETE. The Windows API will not permit a DELETE operation on a folder if the folder contains files. So if LR does not know about any files not in the catalog, it will not MOVE them along with the image files that ARE in the catalog. Consequently, the folder structure will be recreated in the destination location but the original folder structure will contain files that were not moved and so Windows will not permit these non empty folder to be deleted by the move operation.

There is a solution to all of this. That is to manage image files in folders exclusive to image that are cataloged in LR. If you import initially choosing to COPY or MOVE to LR's suggested defaults, LR will create a folder structure that contains nothing but images that are in the LR catalog. In the import dialog, you also have the ADD operation which can add images to the LR catalog but leaving them in the original folders on the HDD. This choice works well ONLY IF the original folders contain only images destined for the LR catalog.
 
Allan, LR's "Internal file movement" doesn't need improving. LR uses the file operations in the Windows API. So, COPY, MOVE, RENAME or DELETE are functions from (in your OS) the Windows API and they behave the same way in LR or any other program. Perhaps a better understanding of how your operating system handles files and folders will help you better understand how those functions will behave when employed in LR.
You are right that Lightroom uses the file operations of Windows. But Adobe has succeeded in letting Lightroom call these operation in a way which is not very desirable.

When I mark multiple folders for copying or moving in Windows Explorer, they will be moved one after one.
When I mark multiple folders for moving in Lightroom, Lightroom will try to move all folders simultaneously.

The Lightroom behaviour has two negative consequences:
1. If the file operation is for some reason disrupted, I will have a mess of several half moved folders. If the same happened in Windows, I would have some fully moved folders, some not moved folders and one half moved folders - a much more desirable situation.
2. Both the destination and the source disk drive will be stressed harder because multiple files are being copied simultaneously, causing the read/write heads in the drives to move much more than necessary, trying to fulfil all requests at the same time.

LR only moves images and sidecar files associated with those images that are cataloged. Any other file types and images not in the catalog will get left behind. In Windows/OSX, a MOVE operation is really a COPY operation followed by a DELETE. The Windows API will not permit a DELETE operation on a folder if the folder contains files. So if LR does not know about any files not in the catalog, it will not MOVE them along with the image files that ARE in the catalog. Consequently, the folder structure will be recreated in the destination location but the original folder structure will contain files that were not moved and so Windows will not permit these non empty folder to be deleted by the move operation.
I have not written anything about source folders not being deleted when folders contained non-image files.

I have written about errors when folders contained non-image files - meaning that nothing happens at all. Certainly you must have heard about this well-known problem in Lightroom. It actually happened to me today, just because the folder I was trying to move contained a subfolder with photos.
 
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