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TomBrooklyn
Known Participant
November 15, 2017
Question

How Reorganize Many Uploaded Photos Into Dated Subfolders?

  • November 15, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 473 views

How can I reorganize many photos into capture-date subfolders?

I have close to 7000 photos that I have taken over the last 2 1/2 years.    Although I had been using LR for years prior to that on a desktop (from V2 to V5), that desktop is not set up now.    I only recently subscribed to LR, put it on a laptop, and started importing these photos.     Somehow, I made a mess of the imports* and over 5000 of the photos are not in date named subfolders where I want them.
I have done very little to virtually no editing, tagging, or keywording of these photos yet, so there is no concern with losing that stuff.   All I need to keep are the filenames.   All my filenames have the capture date in them, but I don't want to manually sort over 5000 photos taken on many different dates.     I must get these photos sorted into dated subfolders in order to move forward with the workflow I am comfortable with and keep me sane as I try to sort out this mess, which includes somehow having 3 versions of LR on my computer now and a different catalog in the 2015 version than the 7.1 version.    Those are the next two parts of this mess I am going to be interested in sorting out after I get photos into dated subfolders.
If I now understand the version system correctly, I should have only one of 2015 and v7.01 (I would prefer the more recent v7.01) and I can run the Cloud version on the same laptop.    Unless I'm lost again, I believe this is the forum for v7.01.

After I get this sorted in V7.01, how best get the Cloud version to reflect the new organization?

*IF IT MATTERS, ALTHOUGH IT PROBABLY DOESN'T: the import mishmosh is partly because I was not properly set up to process my photos for those 2.5 years, I am not used to working without LR, many of these photos are on an Android phone which it turns out LR does not recognize, partly because I had photos stored from different cameras and phone cameras, in some rather disorganized fashion, partly because there are multiple versions of LR which I just sort of figured out, partly because LR was running exceedingly slow for a while, and has now started crashing multiple times, perhaps partly because my laptop has only 8GB of memory and no video card; partly because I somehow imported thousands of duplicate photos (which is now fixed thanks to Teekesselchen), partly because I have somehow wound up with a Catalog numbered 2 (and I don't know why or what's in Catalog "1" yet,  etc etc.
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    2 replies

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    TomBrooklynAuthor
    Known Participant
    November 30, 2017

    Ya, after I read my own post, I realized I should just delete the old catalog and re-import the whole thing.   I was just confused at first because I was having difficulties on so many fronts at once.

    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    November 15, 2017
    I have done very little to virtually no editing, tagging, or keywording of these photos yet, so there is no concern with losing that stuff.

    In that case, start a new catalog (File->New Catalog) and Import the photos using the Move or Copy option and make sure you select the proper dated folders under Destination.

    I must get these photos sorted into dated subfolders in order to move forward with the workflow I am comfortable with and keep me sane as I try to sort out this mess,

    Honestly, I don't feel that way about my photos, I don't think dated subfolders is a requirement to good organization ... I don't think any particular folder organization is needed ... I think the organization you develop should be using Lightroom tools (specifically keywords and other metadata) and not operating system tools. In fact, I think putting effort into getting a good folder organization is a suboptimal use of your time. But, your opinions may be different, and they are your photos ...

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