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alex.starbuck
Participating Frequently
July 22, 2018
Question

Strange behavior - unable to drag and drop photos to folders in Library mode?

  • July 22, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 673 views

Hello everybody!

A weird issue occurred with my installation of Lightroom - all of a sudden, when in LIBRARY mode , I could no longer drag and drop photos from one folder into another.

Stats:

- MacBook Pro 13’,  2015

- OSX Sierra

- Lightroom 6

- catalogue on internal SSD, in home/Pictures/Lightroom

- imported photos also on internal SSD, in Pictures/temp/import

What I am trying to do:

- in Lightroom, sort my imported footage into other folders and subfolders, which were also created through Lightroom, before the import

What I tried:

- quit Lightroom, reopen the catalogue while holding Shift+Option (reset Lightroom preferences)

It seems as if though I accidentally pressed some keys and changed the default SELECT behavior because I am no longer able to click photos one by one and select more than one this way. Now, when I click, the photo gets selected (borders a bit highlighted), when I click on the next one, it gets selected and the first one deselected.

Many thanks in advance!

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    3 replies

    alex.starbuck
    Participating Frequently
    July 22, 2018

    Thanks for the replies!

    Ok, that takes care of the select part, now we just need to see why I am not able to rearrange my footage across folders anymore.

    In all of former Lightroom instances and all the catalogues, I could cust drag and drop the photos onto the folder icons in the file structure in the left pane, and the photos would be moved into that folder.

    Any ideas?

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    July 22, 2018

    What do you try exactly and what happens exactly? Sometimes people drag the images from a parent folder into a subfolder. If you do that and you have the option checked that Lightroom should show images in subfolders, then it looks like nothing has happened while in reality everything went exactly as planned.

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
    Tony_See
    Inspiring
    July 23, 2018

    While it is sometimes difficult to take a screenshot of a dragging action before you execute the drop part of the "drag and drop", it might help in this case if you provide a visual example as Johan suggested above of exactly the step involved or the result thanks.

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    July 22, 2018

    babacvitazec  wrote

    It seems as if though I accidentally pressed some keys and changed the default SELECT behavior because I am no longer able to click photos one by one and select more than one this way. Now, when I click, the photo gets selected (borders a bit highlighted), when I click on the next one, it gets selected and the first one deselected.

    That is normal behavior. You have to hold the Shift key if you want to select multiple adjacent images, or the Cmd key (not the Ctrl key, that's on a PC) if you want to select multiple images which are not next to each other.

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
    dj_paige
    Legend
    July 22, 2018

    babacvitazec  wrote

    It seems as if though I accidentally pressed some keys and changed the default SELECT behavior because I am no longer able to click photos one by one and select more than one this way. Now, when I click, the photo gets selected (borders a bit highlighted), when I click on the next one, it gets selected and the first one deselected.

    Many thanks in advance!

    You need to select one photo by clicking on it, then control-click on the next photo, and so on.

    Also, another approach if there are consecutive photos you want to select, is to click on the first photo and then shift-click on the last photo of the consecutive group of photos.