Photos & Folders on External Drive, No longer in Lightroom Classic Catalog?

Question

I have pictures that were long ago, successfully imported to LR Classic and now the folder in the catalog is empty. The pictures, file structure and the subfolder naming are still correct on my external harddrive. Is it possible to import the pictures and the file structure/naming? I hate the idea of rename each subfolder!

I would love to know why this is happening? Could this be a function of storing my photos on an external drive? I cannot imagine that is the issue?

Please advise.

Thanks in advance!

Kelly

This is the structure on the G-Tech Drive:

Each year has it's own folder, it has 12 months within it, within each month there are subfolders by date and event. All of these years and subfolders were imported and reflected with my LR catalog.

However, I have noticed LR Classic to be glichy lately. For example look at the 2009 folder.

It was completely empty. No ? or missing folder indications - just empty - 0 pictures.

Yesterday I attempted to figure out a work around. My work around WAS NOT efficient. I imported the individual event -

2009 - 01Jan - 2009-01-01_New Years.....

I did this because I wanted to keep the file sturcture and naming of all of the subfolders.

I am praying that this isn't the only way to preserve all the folders and names I have previously created?

Then the bigger isue is how and why is this happening?

Message was edited by: Sahil Chawla

dj_paige · Answer

kellymobley wroteI have pictures that were long ago, successfully imported to LR Classic and now the folder in the catalog is empty. The pictures, file structure and the subfolder naming are still correct on my external harddrive. This problem is almost always a situation where you (accidentally) imported the photos into LR using COPY instead of ADD. This results in Lightroom thinking the photos are in a different folder than you think the photos are stored in. And so the folder that YOU think the photos are stored in has zero photos according to LR.First you have to find the photos in Lightroom, which will be in some different folder than the one you think they are in, and then fix the problem inside of Lightroom.To find the photos in Lightroom, you need to follow all four of these steps in order. (Note: in the past, I have told people to follow all four of these steps, and they do one or two or three of these steps but not four, and then they report that it didn't work. So do all four of these steps, nothing less)Click on All Photographs (its under Catalog on the left side of the Library Module)Turn off all filters (Ctrl-L once or twice)Expand all stacks (Photo->Stacking->Expand all stacks)Use the Filter bar in Lightroom to search for one of these photos by File Name.Let us know what the results are.IMPORTANT POINT: Importing the photos again does not fix the problem. IMPORTING IS THE WRONG THING TO DO HERE. This is so important, I am going to say this many times, in capital letters.IMPORTING IS THE WRONG THING TO DO HERE. IMPORTING IS THE WRONG THING TO DO HERE. IMPORTING IS THE WRONG THING TO DO HERE. IMPORTING IS THE WRONG THING TO DO HERE. IMPORTING IS THE WRONG THING TO DO HERE.

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