Need to "un associate files in a collection"

[jonl]

I had a NAS system crash on me and that contained a lot of my images including collections.
I’ve since built another NAS system and have put the files back on it.
The issue I’m having when I select a file from a collection it is grey with an ! in the upper right hand corner of the image, I select this to locate the files, I get a message that the file is already associated with another file in the catalog.
How can I “un associate” a file so I can re-connect it the new files location.

Thanks

 

[Jim Wilde]

I suspect that when you rebuilt the new NAS system that you re-imported when you "put the files back on it", so for those files Lightroom now contains two references: one, the original, is recorded as "missing" because it references the old NAS (hence the "!" marks indicating a missing file), and it's for this missing file that Lightroom has retained all the prior work such as collection membership, keywords, develop edits, etc. The second reference will be to the imported file on the NAS, which will be the original file with no added metadata or develop work.

If that's correct, there are various ways of dealing with the issue. First we need to confirm that's the problem, to help with this can you take a screenshot of the Folders Panel which shows all the drives in the catalog and just the top-level folders on each (i.e. don't need a long list of folders, just want to see the top level as that'd be useful for recovery).

 

[jonl]

Hi Jim, what I ended up doing was to remove the folder (they were years like 2009, 2010, etc.).
Then I re imported the files and pointed the ! files to the folder and they were ok, as I only had to do 3 years worth of images it went fairly quick.

Thanks


Jon

I suspect that when you rebuilt the new NAS system that you re-imported when you "put the files back on it", so for those files Lightroom now contains two references: one, the original, is recorded as "missing" because it references the old NAS (hence the "!" marks indicating a missing file), and it's for this missing file that Lightroom has retained all the prior work such as collection membership, keywords, develop edits, etc. The second reference will be to the imported file on the NAS, which will be the original file with no added metadata or develop work.

If that's correct, there are various ways of dealing with the issue. First we need to confirm that's the problem, to help with this can you take a screenshot of the Folders Panel which shows all the drives in the catalog and just the top-level folders on each (i.e. don't need a long list of folders, just want to see the top level as that'd be useful for recovery).