Got all kinds of duplicates even though I only imported metadata

[surfmonkey89]

Here's my situation.

I had 15'' pictures on my laptop from a recent trip I took. I exported the catalog (including the negatives), moved it over to my desktop and imported it via Import From Catalog. Everything worked fine.

Then, on my laptop, I went through all the pictures again, tagging about 5'' as picks.

I exported and imported again with Import From Catalog, with the import setting set to "Metadata and develop settings only", because I didn't want to re-import all the pictures again.

Now everything is wonky:
- every picture I marked as a pick is duplicated in my collection
- when I highlight the collection node I see the pictures side-by-side with one having marked with a white flag, but
- when I drill down to the folder level the pictures are side-by-side and there is no flag on either of them
- if I highlight a picture and go to the Edit menu, the Delete option is grayed out so I couldn't delete the duplicates if I wanted to

So my questions are:
- what did I do wrong on import?
- related to the above, why do I have duplicate pictures if I specifically said to only import metadata and develop settings?
- why do the flags sometimes disappear?
- how do I get rid of the duplicates?

I have no idea what I did wrong; this seems like a pretty straightforward scenario. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks,
paul

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Hi Paul, welcome to the forum! Sorry your thread got missed.

Did you have it set to 'create virtual copies' where there was a conflict in that import from catalog dialog, by any chance? That seems the most likely cause.

Flags are local to the folder or collection, so they can be flagged in one place but not in another. That's why they disappear depending on your current view.

Duplicates...if you still have that catalog that you imported, I'd probably (having backed up first....), delete the VC's from your current catalog, and run the import from catalog again.

 

[surfmonkey89]

It's funny that you replied to this today, because this morning I figured out that having "create virtual copies" checked was exactly the problem. Since all I'd done so far was mark my picks, I was able to fairly easily go through and identify the dupes and delete them. There are still around 1' I missed out of 2''' but I consider that close enough for now.

Too bad about the flags not going all the way down to the folders. I decided to go through all of the photos on my trip by selecting the parent node of the folder hierarchy I'd created because it was easier than clicking in a bunch of individual folders. Now all that was for naught. Now I gotta think about whether it's worth going through each folder again or just calling it a day.

Anyway, thanks for the help!

paul