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Question

Lightroom is not showing all the pictures in a folder

Forum|Forum|10 years ago
September 24, 2015
14 replies
73827 views

I am wanting to edit some images in a particular folder in Lightroom. When looking at the folder in File Explorer there are almost 100 image files in the particular folder. However, Lightroom only sees 22 files. I've selected the folder and tried both IMPORT and SYNCHRONIZE however nothing happens.

How do I fix this?

O

ophtalmud

Participant

hello all! thank you all for the efforts here... although I didn't find a solution for the problem. nevertheless, trying all that you sugested over and over again, I did find an odd but perfect after all solution :)) here it is, beginning with a description of the problem:

I shoot film, I "scan" films with a digital camera, I use Lightroom Classic, last version, on a 2021 Macbook Pro. I use stacks to emphasize the film rolls. I keep photos organized on years and days. On the left panel, near the folder "2025-01-18", was written "116", so I should've found 116 photos with that folder selected... only I didn't. 82 photos were shown. With NO FILTERS active whatsoever, with ALL STACKS EXPEANDED. If I selected "All photos" on the left panel, all stacks extended, I couldn't find the missing photos by filename, although in the import module said they were already imported. all files were in the right folder on the disk.

What I did?

1. I renamed one of the files Lightroom didn't show, in Finder, on the disk

2. Library > Find All Missing Photos (BANG! here it was!)

3. Right click on it, then "Go to Folder in Library"

4. Renamed the original file back to the original name in Finder

5. Returned to that folder and... all photos were there again.

Well, wow, how's that for a solution...?

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PhotoArtistClaudia

Participating Frequently

Applicable today in 2025, thanks~

Cntrl + L

S

Sas27540658rohi

Participant

Maybe too late for this response but I had the same problem and this solution worked for me:

In the Import screen, just untick the "Don't Import Suspected Duplicates" box.

Missing photos will show up .

Then you can import them as usual and they will show in the Library folder.

S

samantha_8617

Participant

I am many years in the future having this same issue. Before anyone suggests it, I did try effectively ALL other suggestions I saw in the replies (and replies to replies) in this thread. The ONLY thing that I got to work for me was to move over all my photos to a brand new folder and import again. Lightroom treated them as new photos and it worked that time. I have no idea why it didn't work the first time, I changed nothing about my importing settings, but at least I eventually got it to work. Sharing in case this is another idea that might help someone else.

D

defaultkzl07hm50vlp

Participant

Very late but i ran into the same problem and i found a quick solution, just highlight all the missing images and rename them. i typed in 1 and then clicked enter and it renamed all of the images in sequence and when i syynchronized the folder, all of my images appeared.

dj_paige

Legend

Very late but i ran into the same problem and i found a quick solution, just highlight all the missing images and rename them. i typed in 1 and then clicked enter and it renamed all of the images in sequence and when i syynchronized the folder, all of my images appeared.

By @defaultkzl07hm50vlp

In my opinion, this is not a good solution, because now you have the file twice in your catalog, with different edits and different user-provided metadata.

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gr8bob

Known Participant

For me it came down to "turn off do not import suspected duplicates". It was a file handling option located in the top right portion of Lightroom 10.3.

dj_paige

Legend

@gr8bob

This means your Lightroom Classic catalog now has two (or more) copies of each photo. This is a good recipe for confusion, and is not a good practice.

G

gr8bob

Known Participant

I think in many cases you are correct. I deleted the Lightroom folder (but not the pictures on hard disk) and reimported the whole folder. I think something got corrupted when a large import did not complete so somehow Lightroom thought pictures were duplicates when they were not.

B

bigusmacus

Participant

I'm glad to see this thread is still active since it is happening to me also and I am rather ticked off about it, being in the middle of going through all my photos (50K+) and sorting them and deleting the trash. I'm running the latest versions of Lightroom Classic, Photoshop and Bridge on Mac OS 10.14.6 on a Mac Pro with 48GB RAM, 8GB VRAM, and all SSD. In Bridge my photos are arranged by year, with subfolders named for the date imported using Nikon Transfer 2, i.e., 2019 (folder) > 190101(subfolder) and so on. I simply imported the entire drive containing those folders into Lightoom. Just now, I discover that somehow some of the folders that are 2019 subfolders are in the 2020 folder in Lightroom, not in Bridge—but still exist in the 2019 folder but are empty. I did not import using "Copy," simply Add - add photos to catalog without moving them. How they got into the 2020 folder is a mystery but like others here there is no easy way to get them back into the proper folder. Frankly, I've had so many issues with Lightroom and Photoshop lately I'm about ready to jump ship even though I have another year of my subscription left. Yeah, be kind and respectful to Adobe. Pay your money and take your chances.

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bigusmacus

Participant

To heck with it, I'm removing the 2019 and 2020 folders from Lightroom and will re-import them and see what happens, although it is a very time-consuming operation given the number of images in those 2 folders.

elie_dinur

Participating Frequently

Be aware that you will lose any editing that has been done to the images (beyond the initial default processing) when they are removed and when they are re-imported they will come in as virgins.

J

Jim Crabs

Participating Frequently

I am experiencing the same problems as tonymuffin and Jim_Air. I too have had several thousand images shown in the Catalogue up until a few days ago. However, at the moment I have all the separate folders in Lr still shown, but Lr tells me there are no images in these folders. Do I have to import them all again? If so can I do it by say folder or some higher system?

Fortunately all the folders and images are still shown on my D Drive and a separate copy on my G Drive.

Please can someone tell me what needs to be done?

Thanks

jhcrabs

dj_paige

Legend

"However, at the moment I have all the separate folders in Lr still shown, but Lr tells me there are no images in these folders."

It says 0 to the right of the folder name? What happens if you click on the folder anyway, do the photos appear?

If that doesn't work, what happens if you search for one of the vanished photos by file name, by following ALL FOUR of these steps:

1. In the Lightroom Library Module, on the left, under Catalog, click on All Photographs
2. Turn off all filters (Ctrl-L once or twice)
3. Turn off all stacking (Photo->Stacking->Expand All Stacks)
4. Search for at least one of these photos by file name using the Lightroom Filter Bar

Do you find the photo then?

J

Jim Crabs

Participating Frequently

Thanks for your prompt response.
I have tried the 4 steps you have suggested, although I have "Expanded All
Stacking" not turned it "off", without any success. I get a message "No
photo matched the filter".

When I open Lr and click on All Photos in Catalogue, it shows that there
are 27,584 photos there and in the preview screen all 27,584 photographs
are shown. I can scroll down to the bottom.
However, when I look in the Folders on the left hand side, all the Folders
I have created are there, but there is a zero where I would expect to see
how many photos there are in each Folder.
If I try to open a Folder I get a message on screen " No photos in selected
Folder".

I think Lr is currently trying to access Cat 2. I can't be sure but I
think it might have been Cat 1 before. However, if I try to Relanch Cat1
(the 0ld) and click on Upgrade the older Catalogue I then get a warning
that "This operation cannot be undone....Etc, etc.
Because of the warning I have NOT asked to upgrade Cat1.
I hope this makes some sort of sense and you can advise what needs to be
done to get back to where it was a few days ago.
BTW, whilst I was in the middle of typing this message everything crashed
and used Task Master to shut down Google Chrome which was running at 27% of
CPU.

Jim_jhcrabs

S

SGM

Participant

I have a similar situation where I have two folders 5/12/12 one in 2012 and 1 in 2013. When I try to move the ones from 2013 to the folder in 2012 it says they are already there and it won't allow me to. They are not showing however, nor can I move them in any other way- there are also a bunch in my hard drive lightroom folder for that date that are in neither 5/12/12 folder that are not showing via Lightroom

P

peedeegee

Participant

I can see that this thread is quite old but some of the replies are recent so clearly it is an ongoing problem.

I am a new LightRoom user and I had exactly the same issue. Here is how I solved it. It may not be the same for everyone that has had the problem, but here goes.

After viewing all the suggestions above, I was confident that I had not created copies, or was stacking pics. I could also see that the LightRoom folder was pointing at exactly the same folder in explorer. In one instance I had five files in LightRoom but over a hundred in the explorer folder.

I right-clicked on the offending folder in the LightRoom and then clicked synchronise. Interestingly, I noticed that this option was greyed out on any folder where there was not a discrepancy (between Lightroom and Explorer). I selected the option "show import dialog before importing". (this is important otherwise LightRoom will carry out the process but fail to import the pictures without telling you why it did not!). Next step, there were no files shown to import until I unticked the option "prevent importing duplicates" (or similar wording). Lo and behold, the missing files were suddenly displayed, and then successfully imported.

In another folder but with only 14 photos in explorer and just one missing file in LightRoom, I was able to carefully check the details of this supposed duplicate which was being excluded. The file name was not even similar to any of the other 14. Neither was the file size or date and time. So I am mystified as to why LightRoom thought this was a duplicate.

Please let me know if this solution works for any others of you with this problem.

Rob_Cullen

Community Expert

The file name was not even similar to any of the other 14.

Lightroom is looking at EVERY PHOTO IN YOUR CATALOG to determine if a file may be a "duplicate", and not just the "other" files in this one folder.

Lr does not 'like' having more that one entry in the Catalog for identical files, no matter where they might be in your system.

It is possible that the file reported as a "Duplicate" is stored in another folder and already exists in the Catalog. This situation often occurs if files in a hard-drive folder are imported with the [Copy] option, thus creating two copies of the file on the hard-drive.

Your "offending folder..." with greyed out previews might also suggest the same situation.

Take note of a greyed-out file in the "Explorer" window that you are trying to synchronize, then do a search of the Lightroom catalog. You may find the photo is already living somewhere else in your computer.

Unticking the 'Prevent duplicates' option simply 'fools' Lr into allowing you to import the same photo twice.

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.0, Photoshop 27.0, ACR 18.0, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0 .

R

racheln9405972

Participating Frequently

I was having the same problem. What I found out was that in my File Manager (Mac), that I had duplicate file names for 2 different events. So the most recent event was showing in Lightroom, but the previous one with the same file name was not. What I'm not sure I understand is that the ones showing up were .NEF and the ones not showing were .JPG. What I did was just add an "a"after the number on the ones that were not showing, then I was able to synchronize the folder and everything is now showing up.

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