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pedzsan
pedzsan
Inspiring
December 22, 2025
Question

Exclamation point because of "writing metadata"

  • December 22, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 247 views

In my grid view, many of my images have an exclamatiom point.  When I click it, I get a dialog box that says that there was "an unknown error while writing metadata to this photo".  I believe this happened long ago.  The image is a raw Canon CR3 file.  There is no sidecar in the directory.  I believe this happened when I disconnected the NAS that the raw file is on.  I never asked for the metadata to be written out nor do I have the option set to automatically write out the metadata.  But... all that is in the past.

 

The dialog box gives me three options: Retry the export, Import Settings from Disk, and Cancel.  What I'd like to do is just forget it -- basically reset the error flag but there I don't have that option.  But I'm hoping, maybe there is a way to reset it that is not obvious.

 

My second backup hope is there is a way to select just the images with this error and hit update and walk away as it toils about creating the sidecars (which I will likely just erase).

1 reply

dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
December 22, 2025

In my past experience, this happened mostly to photos that are being shared in the Adobe Cloud via Lightroom Classic. That was a few years ago. But you don't say what software you are using ... are you talking about Lightroom Classic? What version NUMBER of LrC are you using (we need the version NUMBER and not words like "up-to-date" or "current")?

 

In any event, I ignored it and came back later and then I was able to save metadata. 

 

I don't know if what happened a few years ago is what is happening now.

pedzsan
pedzsanAuthor
Inspiring
December 22, 2025

LrC 15.1

Noel Orridge
Community Manager
Noel OrridgeCommunity Manager
Community Manager
December 22, 2025

Hi @pedzsan! Thank you for sharing the details about your issue. Even though automatic writing is turned off, a manual trigger (maybe a stray Cmd+S) or a background process likely failed when the NAS was disconnected, leaving those files flagged as "Metadata Status: Error."

 

Here's what you can do to remove this:

 

Filter out the affected images:

-Go to the Library Module and select All Photographs in the Catalog panel.

-Press the \ key to show the Filter Bar at the top.

-Click on Metadata.

-Click the header of any column, like Date > Develop > Metadata Status.

-Select "Conflict detected" or "Changed on Disk from the list. Now, only the problematic images are visible.

 

If the edits in your Lightroom Catalog are the ones you want to keep, do this:

-Ensure your NAS is connected.

-Select all filtered images (Cmd + A).

-Go to Metadata > Save Metadata to File.

-LrC will attempt to write the XMP data. Because these are CR3 files, it will create those sidecar .xmp files you mentioned.

-Once the progress bar finishes, the exclamation points will vanish.

 

If you don't care about the metadata on the files and just want the error gone without creating sidecars, you can tell Lightroom to "Read" the metadata from the raw files instead.

-Select all filtered images.

-Go to Metadata > Read Metadata from File.

-This instructs Lightroom to "Ignore what is in my catalog and use whatever is on the disk." If you have made color or star rating changes in Lightroom that haven't been saved to disk yet, you will lose those edits. If these are unedited RAWs, this is the cleanest way to reset the flag without creating sidecars.

 

Hope this helps! 

Noel
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