How to move a large number of folders within lightroom?

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I'm relatively new to Lightroom and have gotten myself into an organizational nightmare that I'm not sure how to get out of. I've had my current catalog running for a few months before I realized a large amount of files were being imported into subfolders rather than the root location of my external drive. I'm try to move them up a level, but I can seem to only move the folders one by one. I have a few hundred folders in my subfolder I'm trying to move, so that's not a very practical way and I'm assuming there has to be a better way (plus a good amount of folders have 1''s of photos, so each move can take some time). I currently have about 16,''' photos in my catalog (yes, I need to do some spring cleaning :-[ ) and about half are in the wrong spot.

I'd blow away my catalog file and move the files in Finder (on a mac) and start over, but I have a fair amount of photos in collections I'd like to keep.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks
 
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Only only one Move operation is permitted at a time in LR. So, if you have two or more folders at the same level, they have to be moved serially. (i.e. one at a time). Sorry, there is no 'better' way. Moving a parent folder will bring along all its children because the move is of the parent. I suppose that this restriction is implemented by LR because it has to update all its pointers for all the affected images in the database and multiple move operation might create a loss in referential integrity.
 
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[quote author=pgallett link=topic=8827.msg59323#msg59323 date=1262669278]
I'm relatively new to Lightroom and have gotten myself into an organizational nightmare that I'm not sure how to get out of. I've had my current catalog running for a few months before I realized a large amount of files were being imported into subfolders rather than the root location of my external drive. I'm try to move them up a level, but I can seem to only move the folders one by one. I have a few hundred folders in my subfolder I'm trying to move, so that's not a very practical way and I'm assuming there has to be a better way (plus a good amount of folders have 1''s of photos, so each move can take some time). I currently have about 16,''' photos in my catalog (yes, I need to do some spring cleaning :-[ ) and about half are in the wrong spot.

I'd blow away my catalog file and move the files in Finder (on a mac) and start over, but I have a fair amount of photos in collections I'd like to keep.
[/quote]

I have written many times about the inefficiency of organizing via folders. I feel that all of this moving of folders is fundamentally the wrong thing to do and an inefficient use of your time.

Instead of organizing by having folders in a certain structure, use Lightroom tools to organize. Use keywords, captions, metadata and collections to create an organization of your photos that is more powerful and flexible than anything you can come up with using folder structure.

So my advice to you is to leave your folders in whatever messy incorrect structure they are in right now. Just leave them be. Change your thought patterns. Use the most powerful tools you have available — keywords, metadata, collections; instead of using the least powerful tools you have available, folders.

Another thread on this issue, with much more detail, is here: http://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/index.php?topic=8816.'
 
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Thanks for the advice.

The main reason I wanted to retain my structure is for backup purposes (in addition to placating my OCD). If for some reason my Lightroom file becomes corrupt, a backup gets lost or other disaster, I'd hopefully still have a secondary structure to lean to (assuming my photos are backed up in a safe spot).
 
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The requirements for creating backups are different than the requirements for organizing and finding your photos.

For backups, the easiest thing to do is to move all the folders to reside under a single parent folder, and you would do this move in Lightroom. It is unnecessary, for backup purposes, to rename folders, or move from one location in the folder hierarchy to another.

Should you someday find you cannot rely on Lightroom to find your photos, the best thing you can do is to use Lightroom (now, today and in the future) to write the metadata (keywords, captions, etc.) to xmp. Then, this information is available for other applications to use, or even the operating system itself can use this information. If someday in the future, you don't have Lightroom, and you have to find that one picture of Millenium Park in Chicago (which has keywords Millenium Park and Chicago), you tell the operating system to search for files that contain the keyword Millenium Park. You do not have to search for it yourself. You do not need a folder structure that enables you to do this search. You use the tools that Lightroom gives you now to help you out in that future when Lightroom is not available.
 
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FWIW, one moving tip - create a folder in LR with nothing in it. Doesn't matter where it is as you'll delete it once you've finished moving.

Now, when you start a folder moving, quickly click that empty folder, and it'll go quicker, the reason being that LR's not having to redraw thumbnails constantly, so it can concentrate on moving them.
 
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[quote author=pgallett link=topic=8827.msg59346#msg59346 date=12627'2654]
Thanks for the advice.

The main reason I wanted to retain my structure is for backup purposes (in addition to placating my OCD). If for some reason my Lightroom file becomes corrupt, a backup gets lost or other disaster, I'd hopefully still have a secondary structure to lean to (assuming my photos are backed up in a safe spot).
[/quote]If all of your Lightroom files including a series of backups becomes corrupt and all of your a images backups get lost. You will con sider it a blessing. For then you will get the opportunity to import into a new catalog file and this time you can let the suggested default folder structure prevail. In spite of what Paige says about the uses of folders, it can come in handy. I keep two parent folders. one for current work and one for older images located on a NAS drive. Both these Highest level folders are cataloged in the single master catalog. All of my recent work are in folders date named yyyy-mm-dd under a folder named Working which is under the parent Pictures. Periodically, I move these YYYY-MM-DD named folders to an Archive folder located on a NAS. Now I could just use a date filter to choose the files, but the chosen files have to go somewhere and have to have some organization under the new parent (Archive) So it is simpler to take folders from one HD and move them to another. If the developers of LR thought the necessity of folders were as trivial as Paige suggests, there would be no need for a Folder panel in LR. But there is a Folder panel and there is a "folder" filter criteria in the Library and Smart Collection metadata filter. The point I think Paige is really trying to make. is that once you get your images imported into LT, LR does not care where they 'live' and neither will you unless you want to do something like I do and move images off a primary drive onto a secondary drive. About the only time I use the Folder panel besides when I move files to Archive is to take a look at the files in my last import as a group. I could also use one of my Smart Collections for this task since I have Smart Collectiions for "Last Day" "Last Week" "Last Month" etc. I also have variants on these Like "Last Day - No develop settings".

Serial folder moves work. While it is a bit tedious, moving folders around is not something you will be doing daily. And because LR has an excellent search capability in the form of filters and collections, it is not something that needs to be done completely at one computer session. Work on a few at a time. Start it as a LR task and do something else in LR whill the 'folder move' task is chugging away. As I mentioned earlier, It is not possible to create more that one file Move operation task at a time in LR, it is possible to update keywords on images, export develop or any number of other tasks while a large move is underway.
 
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[quote author=clee'1l link=topic=8827.msg59357#msg59357 date=12627'6796]
If all of your Lightroom files including a series of backups becomes corrupt and all of your a images backups get lost. You will con sider it a blessing. For then you will get the opportunity to import into a new catalog file and this time you can let the suggested default folder structure prevail. In spite of what Paige says about the uses of folders, it can come in handy. I keep two parent folders. one for current work and one for older images located on a NAS drive. Both these Highest level folders are cataloged in the single master catalog. All of my recent work are in folders date named yyyy-mm-dd under a folder named Working which is under the parent Pictures. Periodically, I move these YYYY-MM-DD named folders to an Archive folder located on a NAS. Now I could just use a date filter to choose the files, but the chosen files have to go somewhere and have to have some organization under the new parent (Archive) So it is simpler to take folders from one HD and move them to another. If the developers of LR thought the necessity of folders were as trivial as Paige suggests, there would be no need for a Folder panel in LR. But there is a Folder panel and there is a "folder" filter criteria in the Library and Smart Collection metadata filter. The point I think Paige is really trying to make. is that once you get your images imported into LT, LR does not care where they 'live' and neither will you unless you want to do something like I do and move images off a primary drive onto a secondary drive. About the only time I use the Folder panel besides when I move files to Archive is to take a look at the files in my last import as a group. I could also use one of my Smart Collections for this task since I have Smart Collectiions for "Last Day" "Last Week" "Last Month" etc. I also have variants on these Like "Last Day - No develop settings". [/quote]

I have never said "don't use folders". I say, consistently, don't use folders as organizing tools. I say, consistently, that folders are storage locations.

Folders are needed as storage locations, and you can configure and move your folders, as Clee has done, to meet your storage needs. You can also configure your folders to make backups easier. IMO, this is what you should be using the Folder Panel in Lightroom for. IMO, you should not be using the Folder Panel to search for, or to organize, your photos.

I continually try to persuade people to not confuse organizing with storage. These are different, and have different requirements. Organizing is done in Lightroom with Lightroom tools like keywords, metadata, collections. Storage is where you want to keep your photos, and nothing more.
 
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[quote author=dj_paige link=topic=8827.msg5936'#msg5936' date=12627'8256]
I have never said "don't use folders". I say, consistently, don't use folders as organizing tools. I say, consistently, that folders are storage locations.
[/quote]

It can read that way at times, so that's great clarification Paige.
 
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One way to move a group of folders faster is to move the parent folder. For instance, if your misplaced folders are in documents/photos/2''9/March2''9 and you want them to be in pictures/2''9 then move the March2''9 folder from the wrong 2''9 folder to the right one, and all the photos inside March2''9 will move with it.

Another way is to move the folders using your operating system (e.g. Windows Explorer or Mac Finder). Then go to the first image in each folder and click on the ! icon. Lightroom will say it can't find the file and ask if you want to locate it. Navigate to the correct folder, and select the image. Make sure the checkbox to find "nearby images" is clicked. Lightroom will find the rest of the photos in the same folder. The benefit of doing it this way is you can select the next folder and immediately start another process, you don't have to wait for Lightroom to finish "finding" all the images in the previous folder.

The downside is that it takes a lot more clicks per folder to navigate to the image file in the new directory structure. This works best if you have a very large number of files in a folder (e.g. hundreds of files per folder, such as might be the case if you are a wedding or event photographer). Moving the folders within Lightroom works better if you have a small number of images per folder where LR can finish each folder move relatively quickly so you aren't waiting and waiting before you can move the next folder.
 
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Excellent advice JC, welcome to the forum!
 
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