Exclamation mark on parent folder

Forum|Forum|3 months ago
November 18, 2025
2 replies
185 views

I have run into a problem after upgrading to the latest version of Lightroom Classic. I keep having an exclamation mark on my ultimate parent folder, but there is no exclamation mark on any of the subfolders. Hence, I can see if there are any missing photos. Everything seems to work fine but I’d like to get rid of the exclamation mark. I have tried to make a new catalog with the same photos. This works and the exclamation mark disappears but I am loosing all my collections. Is this a bug or am I missing something?

macOS

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

Read the entire thread as given by @GoldingD . This is a new feature, but as you can read in the last post of the thread, the missing photo may be obscured if there is a smart preview.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

Noel Orridge

Community Manager

Hi @stylish_experts2924! Thank you for reaching out! As suggested by our experts, please go through that thread.

While holding the Option key, click the small triangle arrow next to your top-level parent folder (the one with the exclamation mark). This forces Lightroom to expand every single subfolder recursively. Try looking for the missing folder. If you don't find it, try right-clicking the parent folder and selecting "Synchronize Folder". Uncheck "Import new photos" and just let it scan for missing/removed items.

If this doesn't fix the issue, you can try optimizing your catalog by navigating to File > Optimize Catalog.

Hope this helps!

Please use @ when mentioning my username so that I can be notified as soon as possible. Thanks!

Noel