How to sort/filter catalog by Year Taken

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
August 21, 2025
2 replies
1099 views

I have 11 years of photos in my main Lightroom catalog. On my harddrive, the photos are put into folders by year taken, and then a folder for each "shoot". I am unable to find (for example) photos taken in 2024. You can see a snapwhot of my catalog. Filtering by 2024 does not work. I don't understand the order of folders displayed or how to manage it.

You can see just a snapshot of my catalog.

Windows

Conrad_C

Community Expert

One big question:

Are the folders already organized in a hierarchy by date on your drive, but that’s not how they appear in the Folders panel?

If so, then maybe what would help is right-clicking folders and choosing Show Parent. Eventually, folders with a common parent folder will appear that way in the Folders panel.

mngabeAuthor

Participating Frequently

This is a bit dificult to explain. You can see the one attachment from my Explorer view with all the RAW files. The other is my Lightroom view. There is more to view, but I am unable to "scroll" in Lightoom to see all of the catalgos.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

I see a couple things potentially going on there.

One thing is that there are many more folders listed in the Explorer window than in the Folders panel in Lightroom Classic. The Folders panel lists only folders containing cataloged (imported) images, so the question there is, is it intentional that not all of the subfolders in the …aRAW/2024 folder are imported? In other words, the Folders panel is not a file browser like Explorer or Adobe Bridge: It doesn’t show folders that haven’t been imported. If you want the “aRAW” folder in the Folders panel to show all of the same folders that are in the “aRAW” folder in Explorer, then the folders you aren’t seeing in the Folders panel need to be imported into the catalog.

The other thing is that in the screen shot of the Folders panel, the “2024 winter” folder has a question mark on it. That means the folder is not at the path location where Lightroom Classic expects it to be. The screen shot of the Explorer window shows that “2024 winter” is inside the “2024” folder, but Lightroom Classic has it not inside but at the same level as the “2024” folder. So maybe the “2024 winter” folder was moved at some point after it was cataloged. Anyway, it looks like the solution for that question mark is to right-click the “2024 winter” folder in the Folders panel, choose the command Find Missing Folder in the menu that pops up, and select that folder to show Lightroom Classic where it went.

dj_paige

Legend

The LrC Filter Bar allows you to select all photos with capture date in 2024 (or any other year). Click on Metadata, then under the Date section, click on 2024.

This has nothing to do with folders. (Your folders are displayed in alphabetical order.)

mngabeAuthor

Participating Frequently

Thank you DJ, that solves part of the problem being able to filter by year. What I wouild like in addition is to sort/filter by my individual shoots during the year (like the organization on my harddrive).

dj_paige

Legend

What I wouild like in addition is to sort/filter by my individual shoots during the year (like the organization on my harddrive).

I don't know what this means. Why can't you just select the desired folder with that individual shoot?

P.S.: I cannot see your file attachment (or anyone's file attachment). Please provide the screen capture by clicking on the "Insert Photos" icon.

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