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LR 5.7 Unable to move and unable to delete photos with LR

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Photo Mark

New Member
Joined
Sep 29, 2018
Messages
2
Lightroom Experience
Beginner
Lightroom Version
5.x
Lightroom Version Number
Classic version 5.7
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.13 High Sierra
Hi everyone. This is my first post. I have been using LR 5.7 on an Apple Mac with Sierra OS for 2-3 years but still feel like a novice! I have trawled through several forums, problems statement and helpful answers but still have a problem - which is this:

The hard drive with all my photos recently died, but I had copies of almost all on a Time Machine Backup drive.

I used Lightroom import to copy them onto a new external HDD (I used copy on Import so as not to ensure I kept and did not jeopardize the backed up files.

However I cannot now move them or delete them from the new external HDD using Lightroom. Regular "Delete from disk" and even using CMD-Option-Shift-Delete leads to an error message: "The file xxx could not be moved to the Trash Folder". Marking them as rejected and then trying to delete them does not work either. I have tried copying a folder of photos to my Mac HD to work with, but LR can't move them.

My external HDD does support trash. I have already used Finder to create and delete a folder in my Pictures folder - but it didn't fix the issue.

Is there something I can do to fix this? Happy to have any suggestions! Thanks in advance
 
First of all, you should not have used Lightroom import. That imports the images as new files, so you lose all your edits and other work. What you should do is use Time Machine to restore the images to the new disk. Then rename the disk so it has exactly the same name as the old disk had. That should be enough. Lightroom will then recognize that disk and the images on it as if that was the old disk.

The reason why you can’t delete any images in Lightroom now is most likely because the way you copied them caused file permission problems. Lightroom probably does not have the proper permissions now. My suggestion would be to start again. Reformat that disk, then restore your images the way I described above.
 
First of all, you should not have used Lightroom import. That imports the images as new files, so you lose all your edits and other work. What you should do is use Time Machine to restore the images to the new disk. Then rename the disk so it has exactly the same name as the old disk had. That should be enough. Lightroom will then recognize that disk and the images on it as if that was the old disk.

The reason why you can’t delete any images in Lightroom now is most likely because the way you copied them caused file permission problems. Lightroom probably does not have the proper permissions now. My suggestion would be to start again. Reformat that disk, then restore your images the way I described above.

Thank you Johan. I will look up how to use Restore from Time Machine (which I have never had to do... )
 
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