“Synchronize Folder.” Sounds safe enough, doesn’t it. And it IS safe enough… as long as you read and understand the dialog. But how many of us hit OK on dialogs without first stopping to read them? I’ll admit, I’ve done it too. If you do that with the Synchronize Folder dialog, you can get into all sorts of trouble. So, let’s take the time to read it properly…
The main purpose of Library menu > Synchronize Folder (also found in the folders right-click menu) is to update Lightroom’s catalog with changes made to the selected folder by other programs, for example, adding or deleting photos or updating the metadata.
- Import new photos searches the folder and subfolders for any new photos not currently in this catalog and imports them.
- Show import dialog before importing displays the photos in the Import dialog, to allow you to view the new photos and adjust the import options prior to import.
- Remove missing photos from the catalog checks for photos that have been moved, renamed or deleted from the folder and removes the missing photos from the catalog. If in doubt, leave this option unchecked, as you’ll lose all of the work you’ve done to the missing photos.
- Scan for metadata updates checks the metadata in the catalog against the file, to see whether you’ve edited the metadata in any other programs, such as Adobe Bridge. (For a complete discussion of XMP metadata, see pages 411-414 in our Lightroom Classic book.)
- The Show Missing Photos button searches for photos missing from the folder and creates a temporary collection in the Catalog panel. You can then decide whether to track them down and relink them, or whether to remove these photos from the catalog.
But stop! Before you press the Synchronize button, stop and think. If Remove missing photos from the catalog has a number next to it and you synchronize that folder, you may lose the work you’ve done in Lightroom. It doesn’t intelligently relink missing files. Instead, you need to cancel out of the Synchronize Folder dialog and manually relink the missing files.
Synchronize Folder is also the wrong tool to use when moving photos to a new hard drive, or moving to entirely new computer.
So when is it useful? If you’ve dropped photos into a folder using other software (including Windows Explorer/Finder), or you’ve edited a photo in an external editor (e.g. Photoshop or OnOne) and it hasn’t been automatically added to the catalog, then Synchronize Folder saves you navigating to the folder in the Import dialog.
Next time you need to use Synchronize Folder, don’t forget to stop and read the options carefully before pressing OK.
For extensive information on Lightroom Classic, see Adobe Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ.
If you have the Photography Plan, then as well as Classic you have access to the Lightroom cloud ecosystem including the mobile apps and web interface. For more information on these apps, see Adobe Lightroom – Edit on the Go.
Note: purchase of these books includes the first year’s Classic or cloud-based Premium Membership (depending on the book purchased), giving access to download the latest eBook (each time Adobe updates the software), email assistance for the applicable Lightroom version if you hit a problem, and other bonuses.
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Julia says
I have been synchronizing all my folders. It seems to go well but all the imports are duplicates of what are in my folders. Is this normal? Also, when I go back after deleting all the imports and hit synchronizing folder again more imports will show up. Is that normal? Thank you
Victoria Bampton says
Hmmmm, I think that’d need more investigation. Feel free to post on the forum (link at the top of the page) and we can help you troubleshoot.
Rachel Blakley says
So, I did what I was not supposed to do. I was trying to combine and synchronize folders, and deleted 457 photos. I cannot find them anywhere. I looked in trash, in my external hard drive. Anyway to recoup them?
Victoria Bampton says
Ouch! The Synchronize Folder dialog can only remove missing photos from the catalog, it can’t delete them from the hard drive. If that is what you used, that means the original photos were already missing from the folder. We’d be happy to help try to investigate further, but probably easiest to do so on a forum thread – see the link on the menubar.
JohnFallows162 says
I have been doing some tidying of my folders. I have been using Synchronise Folder to find missing files and gradually importing relevant ones. This has gone well until just now.
Synchronise folders initial dialog says “import new photos (18)” (show import dialog before importing is ticked)
When I click synchronise the import dialog opens but is totally blank … not the 18 images I was anticipating.
Victoria Bampton says
Try unchecking don’t import suspected duplicates in the file handling panel.
Gary says
For years I have exported my final images to my desktop, then synchronised the Desktop in LR to make those folders and images appear in LR so I can file them all into the correct folder on an archive drive. Now (after a big tidy up of my desktop and folders) when I hit Synchronise Desktop I get hundreds of folders appearing in LR that do not exist on the desktop at all. I have recently created eight folder Aliases on my Desktop, however it appears that it is sub-folders that are being added to LR (I wouldn’t mind if it was just the eight Alias folders). Any ideas? Thanks… Gary
Victoria Bampton says
The desktop is always a bit of a non-standard folder, so although I don’t know why it’s happening, it’s probably easiest to simply avoid the problem. Simplest solution would be to export to a folder on the desktop rather than the desktop itself… you could even use “add to catalog” in the export dialog to automatically add them to the catalog rather than synchronising the folder.
g says
I did read. It said synchronize, not DELETE ALL MY WORK.
I only tried to add 4 photos to an exisitng album and it went haywire.,
Paul McFarlane says
There’s not enough information for us to figure out what happened, but feel free to post on the forum and we’ll help you investigate further. The link’s on the menubar.
Jean-Claude Blanchard says
Please ignore my previous message. I figured out the answer!
Jean-Claude Blanchard says
Why is it that Lightroom does not show existing folders on my drive? I have a master folder of images. This master folder contains many subfolders with different categories of images. I imported in Lightroom the content of one of those subfolders. Now I would like to import the content of another subfolder. However, the subfolders are not visible in the Import Dialog. They exist in the Finder but not in Lightroom. How do I get to these subfolders? Should I use Synchronize Folder for this? I don’t really want to synchronize the folder, I want to import images in a folder that Lightroom does not give me access to.
Paul McFarlane says
Lightroom isn’t designed to act like Finder (or Bridge) – it will only know about folders you tell it about (import from).
Simply use Lightroom Import and negotiate to the folder you wish to import.
Joel says
If you use the Synchronize Folder but skip the Show Import Dialog checkbox, what options will LR use? Specifically wondering about importing suspected duplicates, generating Smart Previews, and what previews LR will generate. Thanks!
Paul McFarlane says
Synchronize follows the rules you’ve set in the Import dialog. It reads it when you attempt to sync, so if you have Don’t import suspected duplicates, Sync will look as though it will import them, but will obey the checkbox when it tries and not import suspected duplicates.
Smart Previews are built if the import box is ticked.
Marge says
I ran the synchronize on my entire library folder- it showed 24 photos that I had missing but over 24,000 that needed to import! 😱 I have no idea why it’s giving this large a number- as I scrolled through the photos many are pics that I know to be IN the catalog already! Any help with what is going on. Let me add that a few months back LR could not access my original catalog and created a second version on its on. Could it be trying to import those photos from the previous catalog- they have the same exact name but the one LR created has a -2 behind it.
Victoria Bampton says
That sounds likely, yes. It sounds like you imported photos into the new catalog with it set to Copy, so it created physical duplicates of everything. That might take a bit of untangling, so I’d suggest posting on the forum (link at the top) where it’s easier to talk through the options and share screenshots if needed.
Morri Young says
Hi Forum and Victoria
I just added 100Gb to be able to see my photos that are in LR Classic, on my phone in LR Mobile. The purpose is to use downtime (commutes, bathroom, etc) to delete photos from the Catalogue because there is a lot of rubbish in the 60,000 images, and I thought I could grab time here and there and just select and delete.
I think I have read somwhere that deleting from LR Mobile does not delete from Classic. I thought there was two-way sync. Is that right? Would this Synchronise menu help me here?
Cheers
Victoria Bampton says
Mark them as rejects on mobile Morri, and then when you get back to Classic, filter on the rejects and delete them. That’ll do the trick.
Peter Astle says
When I choose “Synchronize Folder…” I tick the boxes “Import new photos”, “Remove missing photos from catalog” and “Scan for metadata updates.”
The first two of these operations complete successfully but the last one appears not to as the metadata conflict exclamation mark still appears on photos which have been changed externally in Bridge. The only way I can get around this is to right click on a photo with a conflict and select “Metadata>Read Metadata from File” then the exclamation mark disappears immediately. This process is rather hit and miss as I can find no way of filtering out all the pictures with conflicts so I only come across them more or less by chance.
Paul McFarlane says
Peter
Filter the grid by Metadata and select Metadata Status – this will show you the ones that there are issues (differences between Lr and the external file) with.
Peter Astle says
Thank you for the tip! That helps a great deal.
Any idea why synchronizing is not updating the metadata though? (In particular changed keywords.)
Paul McFarlane says
You would need to explain in which direction you expect metadata to sync. The objective is for it to sync changes to the Folder (add / delete photos), not photos and to report metadata differences.
Peter Astle says
I was hoping/expecting that, if I edit keywords etc in Bridge, then the sychronize function would read any changes into Lightroom. Perhaps that is not what it is supposed to achieve?
Anyway as you have kindly helped me to filter out changed pictures, I now have a way around my problem.
Victoria Bampton says
If there’s a metadata conflict, then Lightroom wouldn’t read or write until you decided which was correct.
Tom Goldberg says
Synchronize Folders has found all the photos I removed from the catalog but didn’t delete from disk. I really don’t want those photos anymore but can’t find any convenient way to mass delete them. It seems I can one-at-a-time from the import dialog select “show in Finder” and then delete it in Finder. This is very painful! Is there a better way?
Paul McFarlane says
Can you identify them within Lightroom okay? Is so, select them (just the ones you want to completely get rid of) and move to a new folder. Then select them all in Lr and delete, agree to the question Delete from disk.
Tom Goldberg says
No that doesn’t work. These are photos I’ve removed from the catalog but are still in cataloged folders. They don’t show up in Lightroom unless you synchronize that folder and I don’t want them back in the catalog – once you’ve done that, there is no way to identify which ones they were. Thanks for trying!
Victoria Bampton says
If you synchronize folder and let them import, they’d be in the previous import collection so you could easily select them and delete properly. Just back up your catalog first for peace of mind.
John williams says
Not very good at computers and only got basic LR but found it great over the years but not do have concern now.
Went from Microsoft to Apple and photos ars not sorted correctly by caputer date- then yesterday click on a photo go into develop and told file missing.
Plus when you going to input photos go a new wording Building standard Previews.
What os going on – can i select all and get my data into capture order or what getting so frustrating.
Pauline van der Spuy says
I need to syncronize folders after using certain external plugins as they do not automtucslly appear in lightroom but the sync takes forever ..please help
Victoria Bampton says
How big’s the folder you’re trying to synchronize? If you know which file you need to import, you could just go via the import dialog, which would probably be quicker as it wouldn’t be trying to look for missing photos and changed metadata too. Or which plug-in are you using – you might be able to use an External Editor Presets instead.
Dave says
Does synchronise actually import the images and if so, which import preferences does it use?
I have 3 different ones setup depending on what I am importing.
Thanks,
Victoria Bampton says
It does, if you select the import new photos checkbox. There’s another checkbox to show the import dialog, so you can see the settings it’ll use. It always imports with the ADD setting, which narrows the options considerably.
Ronald says
I have just added with Windows Explorer several hundred pictures in folders / directories which already exist in LIGHTROOM.
When I click synchronize folder, LIGHTROOM does recognize the pictures as it gives the option:
“import new photos (112)”
Then I click “synchronize”
it only takes a second and then the message “no photos or videos found” despite the fact that it DID find 112 pictures at first.
Does anybody know the cause for this or a solution?
The last thing I want to do, is to remove the folders and completely (new & old pictures) import them.
But if that does the trick I would do it.
Cannot imaging that it would be necessary.
Thanks in advance
Victoria Bampton says
Check the checkbox to show the import dialog before importing, so you try toggling the “don’t import suspected duplicates” checkbox. Those 112 are most likely duplicates of photos already in the catalog. The initial sync count counts everything, but when you actually hit synchronize, it takes into account your last-used import dialog checkbox setting. Don’t remove and reimport, as you’ll lose the work you’ve done on them.
Ana Margarida Santos says
Thanks for the post. In my case, I read it too late…and I syncronized folder and lost my edits…
Can I revert this? If yes, how?
Thanks in advance.
Victoria Bampton says
As long as you have a backup of your catalog from before you did it, then yes, you can restore your last backup.
To restore a whole backup catalog: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/disaster-strikes-corrupted-catalog/
Or just specific photos: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/partial-restore-backup-catalog/
Ana Margarida Santos says
It worked! Thank you so much!
Your article explains really well how to do it. Now I need to investigate a bit more how to use “sync folders” properly.
Question: Can I delete the “corrupted catalog”?
Victoria Bampton says
Yes, you can. If it was me, I’d zip it up and move it to the backups folder, just in case you missed something.
Hugh Warren says
I’ve just cleared some space on my computer by moving a few months work onto an external HD (just as I have before with no probs) BUT Lr is only half recognising my folder structure. I’ve used Finder to move the files into subfolders (eg for RAW files, saved jpgs of 2 or 3 different sorts) under folders of month taken, and all under a mother folder of 2016, then done the locate thing in Lr. Everything looks good in Finder, and when I hover my mouse over a thumbnail in Lr it shows the correct path, BUT in the Folders panel under Navigator only the smallest subfolders show up. SO all the pics are there, but in dozens of unstructured subfolders that look like they have the same rank as 2015, 2014, 2013 etc,
which makes navigation a pain and means I can’t move the odd straggler in Lr, but have to use finder as that’s the only place I can usefully see the folder structure. Any ideas?
Victoria Bampton says
You probably need to show the folder hierarchy https://www.lightroomqueen.com/articles-page/long-list-folders-can-change-show-folder-hierarchy/ but if that doesn’t do the trick, post a screenshot on the forum and we’ll help you fix it.
Hugh Warren says
Beautiful work!
One click and back to normal, thanks. So easy when you know how.
Seppo Olkinuora says
There was a mistake in my email address. Sorry.
Seppo Olkinuora says
Hi,
I have a strange problem. The synchronize program thinks that the photos are not imported and in order to get rid of those photos in sync process I finally decided to import them. Now it made a new folder with the same photos. The photo names are same. My question is that how I get rid of false photos in sync process? It claims this falsely with several folders.
Victoria Bampton says
At a guess, I’d say there’s a change in capitalization somewhere in the path – not necessarily the filename but one of its parent folders. It’s difficult to say for sure without seeing it, but if you post screenshots and a description at http://www.lightroomforums.net, we should be able to help you solve it.
Simon says
aargh- how I wish lightroom was designed for non-nerds!
😮
I do wish it was assumed that the user will do the daftest thing given the option… a warning would be helpful: “are you really sure you want to ditch all that work you did on the following files….”
😉
LR (which nonetheless I think is wonderful!) and other programs assume too much of the user, e.g. assuming we will actually read and ponder dialogs when we want to ”synchronise’ that folder.. I just want to press the button not RTFM everytime
😀
Seriously though THANKS for that tip Lightroom Queen!
Bisous
XXX
Victoria Bampton says
You’re welcome Simon. It’s a good reminder to read dialogs before we agree to them too… I’m sure that’s how most viruses and malware get installed too!