Keywording - Usage Improvement

Hi David. I see that you posted this in June 2024, so, I don't know if you've made any progress or if you've already discovered a solution to a part of your problem.

If you need to collapse eg. FORD because you've navigated deeper into your sub-keywords, hold down the ALT/OPT key while you select the keyword you want to collapse down to. The next time you expand that keyword, it will be collapsed down to that keyword ie. all the sub-keywords that WERE expanded will have been collapsed.

I hope that helps.

"There are 34,280 keywords in my Library."

You've definitely got to keep most of the hierarchy collapsed to avoid exceeding the Windows limit on number of lines displayed in the Keyword List panel!

"I could not find it searching through Help, and my laminated cheat sheets I use don't include Mouse Actions."

The keyboard shortcuts list at Lightroom Queen:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/keyboard-shortcuts/ 

partially documents Alt/Opt-click for the "disclosure triangles" in the Folders and Collections panels but not for Keywords. I maintain that document, and I've made a note to update it soon.

"The bug I feel I am dealing with where there is a random expansion of the tree occurring unpredictably on a reasonably frequent basis."

Do you have more than about 1500 keywords? If you're not sure, do Metadata > Export Keywords and open the exported file in Notepad or Excel to count the lines. If you do have that many, you're tripping over a longstanding bug:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-windows-panel-is-limited-to-1600-items-folders-keywords-etc/idi-p/12664196 

The only workaround is to keep most of the hierarchy collapsed to ensure that no more than about 1500 lines are displayed at any one time. 

If you have fewer than about 1500 keywords, you're experiencing a separate issue and should submit a different bug report. Read the first two pinned posts at the top of the Bugs section first:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic/ct-p/ct-lightroom-classic?page=1&sort=latest_replies&filter=all&lang=all&tabid=bugs 

For this problem, you might consider uploading a copy of your catalog with all the photos removed from it to Dropbox, Google Drive, or similar and including the sharing link in your report, to make it more likely Adobe might be able to reproduce the issue.

"If an option existed on the right mouse to CLOSE TREE at any of the points in the tree this would improve things greatly."

Hold down Alt / Opt when you click the triangle to the left of a keyword to close the hierarchy below it, and the next time you expand it, all the hierarchy below its child keywords will be collapsed.

Similarly, hold down Alt / Opt when you click the triangle to expand the hierarchy, and all the entire hierarchy below that keyword will be expanded.

I realised as I typed this that I had 2 points -

1 - being the idea that an option to collapse the Keyword tree underneath the point in the tree that you clicked on.

2 - The Bug I feel I am dealing with where there is a random expansion of the tree occurring unpredictably on a reasonably frequent basis.

Should I start again and create 2 items, or can you split it in 2? Many thanks for your assistance so far.

A 'bug' is not just another word for a problem with software, it is a coding error that makes the application behave in ways that were not intended by the author. So no, this is not a bug. This clearly belongs to 'Ideas', so that is why I moved it there.