Import destination folder by date - can it be changed?

[prbimages]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom Classic version: 7.3

Operating System

1. Windows 10

When importing, I like to use a date-based folder hierarchy. The import dialog has various folder-naming options available, one of which is very close to, but not exactly the same as, what I would like to use. Is there any way to change them, or to add new ones? Specifically, I want to change the option YYYY/YYYY-MM/YYYY-MM-DD to YYYY/YYYYMM/YYYYMMDD. Is it possible?

 

[johnbeardy]

You used to be able to do something by hacking the translation file. Can't recall how , and each Lr update would reset it.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Mark wrote a tip on it many years ago. The details have changed (update here for keyboard shortcuts) but the principles are still the same.

 

[prbimages]

Brilliant! Thanks John and Victoria.

For the record here's what I did (using Lightroom Classic 7.3 on Windows 10). Go to the directory:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Lightroom Classic CC\Resources\en

This directory will be empty, initially. Create a file named:

TranslatedStrings_Lr_en_US.txt

In that new file, create the following line:

"$$$/AgImportDialog/ShootArrangement_9/Template=%Y/%Y%m/%Y%m%d"

In my case, I have removed all the hyphens from the original template. Save the file, and (re)start Lightroom.

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For reference, you will need to look at similarly-named files in the Resources directories for other languages. For example, the French file is in the directory "fr" and the file there is named TranslatedStrings_Lr_fr_FR.txt. These files are over 13,000 lines long, so you will need to search for the strings and templates you need. In my situation, a search for "ShootArrangement" will find all the templates for creating directories on import. I only wanted to change a single one, but you could change others as well if you wanted. I note that you can also change the naming convention used for storing images downloaded from CC - to find those templates, search for "DateFolderFormat".