Managing Folders nightmare

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johnbranton

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I am having a nightmare time telling Lightroom 2 where folders are. My NAS has had its drive letter reassigned from M to Z but Lightroom sees this as a new drive altogether, so I am trying to relocate folders to the new drive letter. I am having to do it at 'day' folder level (2''8-'8-'3 for eg) as trying to relocate the '2''8' parent folder doesn't seem to work.
If you can understand this I congratulate you. If you can solve this very awkward interface (when dealing with folders) than you may be a hero.

I see file and folder handling as the weakest area of an amazing piece of software. I am forever fearful of accidently deleting files, and/or losing my efforts of keywording over 3',''' images.
 
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clarification- perhaps

OK I think I can explain a little more. The drive letter shift, I had to just manage. What I have now are two physical drives with the same data on them. I want Lightroom to stop using drive 'm' but use drive 'z'. Lightroom is already 'seeing' a number of folders on 'z', and this is interfering with the root level re-assign or 'update folder location' action that I think could occur if lightroom had no previous 'vision' of the 'z' drive. How can I stop getting the "The selected folder or a folder it contains is already in Lightroom' message?
 
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Can you post a screenshot of your folders panel John? It'll make it much quicker to see the best workarounds for you. And welcome to the forum!
 
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Nightmare continues part 1

The Lightroom catalogue is on the C drive (default position I think?) in Documents and Settings etc. Screen prints as follow, and you can see that I have a lot of work to do.


LR1.jpg
LR2.jpg



The contents of the PHOTOS (I) drive was copied (in windows explorer) to a new FreeNAS drive IMAGES (Z). I wish to take the PHOTOS (I) drive out of the system (a very slow NAS device) now that I have tested the FreeNAS setup and I am comfortable with it. So far I am having to folder by folder "update folder location" which is not a very efficient way to go around things. Once I've got them all recognised on the Z drive, I intend to gather all the day folders into monthly folders, a task I began on the I drive but found incredibly slow. All this would melt away into nothing if there had been a better way to manage multiple folders as we are so used to in Win Explorer, (and others.)

cheers

John
 
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Ok, my first thought would be this...

The folders you've already moved to Drive Z in LR, update back to drive I for the minute using 'Update Folder Location'.

Then close LR. In WE, rename the 2''8 folder in Drive I.

When LR reopens, it won't be able to find 2''8. Right click, Find Missing Folder, point to the right place on Drive Z.

Hey presto, you should be done.

The folder stuff in LR2 has a bit of weirdness going on right now - the new volume browser has thrown up a few things that need improving, including the relocation issues.
 
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Thanks Victoria. I am, however, in a bit of a fix having reached around the half-way point of the drive transfer.So, to do as you suggest, or to continue on re-locating individual folders presents me with about the same level of time wasting.

I did try renaming the 'I' drive to 2''8a to see what happens. Restart LR and I get the question marks...good. Find missing folder...point to 2''8 on 'Z' drive and get "The selected folder or a folder it contains is already in Lightroom".
CheckMate!!

Some individual folders have done this too and the work-around is yet to appear consistent.

John
 
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Yep

Victoria, i discovered some strange behaviour today.

My LR cat - E/drive (external 1) presents itself in the left folder panel as Free Agent driver E:

I have an identical folder structure and lrcat on 2 other external drive One Touch F: and WD Passport E:.

I went to play with LR on the back up drives to see its function, and after pointing LR to the catalogue i wanted to use for one of the drives, all the folders were still listed as Free Agent driver E: and all the images were considered offline with the question mark.

"The photo could not be used bc the original file could not be found. Would i like to locate it?"

For the other drive, no issues?

Is this LR or my new!! external drive
Now
 
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Doh!

John, those single-day folders - 2''8-'4-'7 etc - are they inside the '4-Apr folder on disc or not?
 
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Brad, how did you set up the duplicate catalogs on the other drives? Probably one for a new thread.
 
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Originally, the single day folders (2''8-'6-21) were all at the same level under '2''8', but I have moved them now into their '1-Jan, '2-Feb etc style structure. I found it quicker to relocate this way. Previously I had to relocate and THEN move folder into the month folder.

I know this is NOT the recommended method for file management but arrived here from a fear of losing my work. I still don't feel entirely comfortable with the way LR handles file management. Too long in explorer style interfaces like ACDSee I guess.

John
 
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That was exactly what I was about to suggest too John - in LR, move the files into the month parent folder on Drive I, do the same in WE for Drive Z, and then relink the months. Dragging and dropping the folders into parent months will be quicker than relocating each individual day folder.
 
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Thanks for your support, Victoria.
Do you think Adobe will do anything to improve this kind of folder management/manipulation?

Cheers

John
 
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The volume browser was a late addition - I'd expect to see it refined, which should solve problems like this.
 
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A similar problem

I found this thread after encountering a similar problem. On the attached screen grab you see about 9 files with ? in directory called Pics by Date3. They are physically located in a directory called Pics by date, the tail end of which you see just above Date3. So I tried right clicking (a mighty mouse) on Pics by date3 and selecting Pics by date, but answer comes back that this folder or subfolders already exist. I tried changing name of Date to Date2 or 4 or something. Then all of the dated subfolders already there go missing. So my solution has been to relocate each of the date folders one by one by right clicking and saying locate missing folder. So I don't see how I can group things by month without a lot of work as there are about 2'' separate date folders in "Pics by Date". Starting from scratch would have been much easier as I then could have done the renaming trick that you describe. Any other hints? It would be nice for the adobe people to make this aspect a bit less clunky. I shared john branton's concern bout accidentally deleting everything!
 
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As you've only got 9 query folder, I'd just right click and relocate those. I'd agree, there's work to be done to make it easier!
 
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Thanks - that's what I did. But it started out as a 35 query folder! I didn't think to check the forums until I only had 9 left. Sigh...

I'll have to pay more attention to these forums and do searches when I have interesting problems.
 
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