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P: Hierarchy keywords are deselected

Forum|Forum|24 days ago
July 11, 2026
5 replies
85 views

In LRC, I have many hierarchical keyword structures, amongst which are locations, i.e. Country/State/City and in some cases location or street name. Since version 15.4.1, LRC deletes upper level location keywords (Country and State, or when there's a fourth level then it deletes the city too) after a photo has been synced to the cloud. The keywords still exist in the cloud. I have checked other hierarchical trees and the keywords are all syncing correctly. If I reenter the locations the save metadata to file, the keywords once again disappear.

I'm running LRC 15.4.1 on a Windows 11 Pro computer with Admin rights. Lightroom, catalog and photos are all on (separate) local nvme ssds. Plenty of space, plenty of speed.

Rikk Flohr_Photography

Greetings all,

A new update for the Adobe Photography products has been released. The August release (x.5) contains an update regarding this issue.   If you do not see the update in your Creative Cloud Application, you can refresh it by pressing [Ctrl/Cmd]+[Alt/Opt]+[ R ].   Note: It may take up to 24 hours for your update to be available in your Creative Cloud app.

Thank you for being so patient.

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org

H

Harmonious_grace1587Author

Known Participant

I am very pleasantly flabbergasted to see that my bug report actually affected change! THANK YOU!!
A teeny bit of feedback saying “we’re working on this” would have saved me hours of work, worry and searching for solutions.
On the positive, this sync situation has caused me to re-evaluate my entire keyword heirarchy and its uses in my current workflow. I am now in the process of working through my 4000 odd heirarchal keywords and cleaning up the what is set to export and the inheritance of such.
For me, flat keywords are not a match and I will continue to use them.
I have found AI generated keyword suggestions (have tried various plugins and LR Desktop AI) to be mostly useless, sometimes bordering on ludicrous.

Now, if we can get LR Desktop to stop overwriting my carefully-cultivated IPTC location metadata I will be very happy.

Rikk Flohr_Photography

The small (currently green) button above your subject line indicates the progress of a reported issue. It now says Fixed. It is the easiest way to tell the status of any bug report.

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org

H

Harmonious_grace1587Author

Known Participant

I had to leave this alone for a couple of weeks because we were on vacation but now that we're back I have spent some more time analyzing the problem.

Turns out the location keywords were just the tip of the iceberg. After very careful inspection in which I have exported the Classic keywords to a csv file and analyzed what was set to export and not export, etc in the keywords (of course I found a few inconsistencies that need correction). In the end I took one photo with a variety of keywords in a hierarchy set variously to export and not export and export containing keywords and played with syncing it.

What I discovered is that on the very first sync ALL of the keywords in a particular photo's keyword hierarchy were exported, regardless of whether or not they were set to export or if export containing keywords was set. This is fine with me, after all, this sould be a SYNC not an EXPORT so as far as I'm concerned, all of the keywords in the respective heirarchy should show up in the cloud.

Here's a sample picture as it was in LR Desktop after the 1st export and still is after several syncs (no keywords have changed):

?hash=70aee89dea2cee9c462a7a40dd6df517

Here's the same picture in Classic as it is now - I have added back the two upper level location keywords, "Bayern" und "Deutschland": This photo has not been synced since I re-added the keywords.

?hash=70aee89dea2cee9c462a7a40dd6df517

Here's what happens in Classic when I sync the photo:

?hash=70aee89dea2cee9c462a7a40dd6df517

You can see that the two upper level location keywords were zapped, only in Classic as soon as the sync took place and on the grid thumbnail the "save metadata" symbol shows up in the corner, but the keywords have disappeared before the save prompt comes.

So somehow, Lightroom Desktop is sending a message back to Classic to delete the upper keywords in a heirarchy. Ugh. I already have a bug report in to Adobe and will append it with this info.

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