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Non-existant folders

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lulu2608

New Member
Joined
Feb 6, 2018
Messages
21
Location
England
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Lightroom Version Number
LR classic 9.2.1
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
Hello,
Like many I'm having a tidy up of my LR set up. I've looked at merging catalogues, but decided to start with tidying up my current catalogue first. I'm looking at what is in there and, from Victoria's book, know that folders should replicate the folder structure on my hard drive. Why then do I have random folders that don't exist pointing to a drive that doesn't have pictures?

D is my primary disk, not C, and I definitely do not have any folders just named as a date. Can I get rid of these folders? My folder structure is all on the D drive with named folders.

thanks

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No, you certainly cannot. Lightroom shows you existing folders, so these folders do exist, despite of what you think. If you want to know where exactly they are, then right-click on one of the year folders and choose 'Show Parent Folder'. You can continue to do this till you see where these folders are.
 
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Hi Johan,
Thanks for your reply. I have looked into this and apologise for insulting Lightroom, it is Windows that's done something odd. I copy my pictures to a properly named folder structure on the D drive and I NEVER create a folder called a date. I know the C drive is normally the main drive but I partitioned the drive to hold my data separately from system files so I could only suspect a 2005 folder may have been left behind after partitioning the drive, but the latest folder is 2019 and I certainly would never have copied the files to the C drive. I obviously need to investigate this phenomenon!

Therefore I will be able to delete the folders after I do a double check that everything is also in the correct folder. ;0)
thanks
 
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Another way to find them on the hard drive is simply to right-click and choose Show in Explorer.
 
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Thanks Victoria. I've found them so I'm just confirming they are also in the correct place (ie. the place I actually put them) and deleting them from the wrong place. Windows must have had a brain fart and copied them somehow, but if my hands were involved I was unconscious! ;0)
 
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lulu2608 said:
Thanks Victoria. I've found them so I'm just confirming they are also in the correct place (ie. the place I actually put them) and deleting them from the wrong place. Windows must have had a brain fart and copied them somehow, but if my hands were involved I was unconscious! ;0)
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I'm not sure what you did, but if you just copied the folders to your D drive and deleted them from the C drive, then they will now be 'missing' in Lightroom. Here's how to solve that: Lightroom thinks my photos are missing—how do I fix it? | The Lightroom Queen
 
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No they were already in the D drive. The C drive ones were copies which is why I don't understand how they got there, so I confirmed they were all on the D drive and deleted the rogue folders. I'm fine with finding 'missing' photos thanks.
 
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How did you copy or move them to D? If you didn't do it in LR, then LR will think they are on C. In that case, you will likely loose any edits if you delete them from C even though the images remain on D. LR is basically a database that is tracking and storing information (including your edits) on files and it has to know which files (by location) it is working on.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
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DCBolton said:
How did you copy or move them to D? If you didn't do it in LR, then LR will think they are on C. In that case, you will likely loose any edits if you delete them from C even though the images remain on D. LR is basically a database that is tracking and storing information (including your edits) on files and it has to know which files (by location) it is working on.

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I didn't move them, they were already there. D was the correct drive, C was the wrong drive and a rogue copy. All is good on D, thanks, it was C I didn't expect to be there. ;0)
 
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lulu2608 said:
it is Windows that's done something odd. I copy my pictures to a properly named folder structure on the D drive and I NEVER create a folder called a date.
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I think it is Lightroom repsonsible for this. Lightroom does create date named folders on import on default. It is possible you did not notice this at the time?
 
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Oh interesting! It isn't outside the realms of possibility that LR did that and I didn't notice. My biggest issue with processing is consistency, hence ending up with a hornet's nest of half started catalogues that I've spent today sorting out. It's more than I need to worry about right now though as I've got rid of the rogue items on the C drive and the stuff on the correct D drive is good. Thanks.
 
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lulu2608 said:
No they were already in the D drive. The C drive ones were copies which is why I don't understand how they got there, so I confirmed they were all on the D drive and deleted the rogue folders. I'm fine with finding 'missing' photos thanks.
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The point is, that Lightroom knows (knew) the images as being on the C drive, and now these are deleted. It means that Lightroom has now lost the link to these images and so you’ll have to relink them. There are no ’rogue folders’ in Lightroom, only real folders.
 
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My suspicion is that sometime the other drive was offline when you came to import photos, so it copied them to the Pictures folder, and then you realized and imported them again at the right location. The photos might therefore be in the catalog twice.
 
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Or, these are folders created by the LR sync process from the LR/Cloudy ecosystem where LR is set to store them in a date oriented structure. Are these photos that originated on a mobile device or through one of the LR/Cloudy apps?
 
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