Inspiring

Question

Lightroom is not showing all the pictures in a folder

Forum|Forum|10 years ago
September 24, 2015
15 replies
74503 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?

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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 15.4.1, Photoshop 27.8, ACR 18.4, Lightroom 9.4, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.3 .

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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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MaineMan

Participating Frequently

This is common it appears. After you've done the stand Mac troubleshooting: repair permissions, restart. Simply do this:

Open Lightroom and the catalog in question. Go Under the FILE dropdown menu and chose "Optimize Catalog".

This should fix the problem.

All the Best,

Steve

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Anonymous

What seems to be the same problem in LR CC for PC appeared today but none of the suggested solutions work. Only 25 of 196 pictures are showing in a given folder. All but one appear to be star-rated, although I have no library filters selected. When I try to synchronize the folder I am told there are no pictures to import and when I try to manually import them from the Explorer folder all the pictures are greyed out, suggesting that the pics are somewhere in the catalog. So far everything seems to be the same as previous posters. HOWEVER, when I search the whole library for one of the missing photographs get a null result. I don't stack pictures, so that is not the problem. Any help would be gratefully received.

dj_paige

Legend

Lightroom thinks the photos are imported into a different folder.

Here is the search you need to do. Perform all of these steps, in order

Click on All Photographs on the left hand side of the Library Module (under the word Catalog)
Expand all stacks (Photo->Stacking->Expand All Stacks)
Turn off filters (Ctrl-L once or twice)
Perform a search in Lightroom using the Filter Bar, search for one of these files by file name

A

Anonymous

Well, that's bizarre. It may have worked, thanks very much, although if it did it did not do so for any reason I can understand. As I said in my original post, I *don't* stack pics, so expanding stacks should have made no difference. As I also said, I had turned off all filters, not that I had any active, and searched all pictures for one of the missing ones with no results. In other words, I had already done what you suggested. Anyway, I have my pics back so I'm happy.

dkhyde

Participant

Make sure you don't have any stacks. This is exactly what I was seeing with CC. OMG what a fright. I saw this thread and searched other forums but always "no good answer." I prepared myself to having to rebuild the database, trying out some exports and imports. It was going to be a mess. Then I realized ... duh ... that I had stacked photos. The photo count at the bottom just counts what is showing, not the photos stacked behind. My 13 of 21 had 8 hidden in a stack. Photo stacks can be very subtle to notice. Select all visible photos in the folder, control click (mac) to get the menu, go to stacking / expand all stacks. That worked for me. Back to 21 of 21! Hope this helps you...

flowerLaura

Participant

Dkhyde - You're my HERO!!! The count of the folder said 248 but only 171 pictures were showing. I went into my Smart Collection of "All Pictures" and the pictures were all there AND in the right folder. I had stacked them. In LR5 they used to CLEARLY show they were stacked... in CC it's not as evident. Thanks for the great solution!

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richardplondon

Community Expert

tip: you can turn on "badges" for the Filmstrip - though if the Filmstrip is very small, its height and therefore the thumbnail size may need to be increased, until these badges show. These badges include a "Stack" indicator in the form of a number in the top left of the thumbnail. This both shows you that some stacking is present, and acts as a button for collapsing / expanding the stack (if you click on the badge of the top-of-stack image) as well as for promoting some other image to "top" (if you click on the badge of that member of this stack).

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Chetna Srivastava

Participating Frequently

Hi tonymuffin,

It could be possible that those other 88 images are present in Lightroom and they are in some other folder depending the import settings that you chose.

Would suggest you to pick up the file name of any one those left over 88 images and search for that file name in Lightroom.

To do a search, choose all Photographs in Library Module and press backslash (\) to turn on the filter bar and type in the filename in the text box

This will show the image if it would be there in Lightroom Catalog.

You can right click on that image and choose Go to Folder in Library to get to that folder which contains that image.

Regards,

Chetna

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tonymuffinAuthor

Inspiring

Ok but that doesn't solve the issue. I found the picture. The same picture is listed in another folder. However, I want the 88 images that are missing from the LR folder to appear in LR in that folder. How does one fix that and why is this happening?

dj_paige

Legend

It sounds like you might have imported the photos into Lightroom using the COPY option and so Lightroom is referencing a copy in a different folder.

So, when you find the folder in Lightroom that contains the photos that Lightroom is referencing, right-click on the folder name, select Update Folder Location, and point Lightroom to the copy of the photos in the desired folder.

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