P: Lightroom Classic: no longer syncs completely, successfully.

[hr114]

I've had a problem getting my collections to sync for over three months now. Lr Classic used to magically sync my dozens of collections, and over 5,000 files, and did it without any hiccups for several years. Then, suddenly in late July it just stopped working. It would just hang trying to update any new items in any collection, and still does.

I have called support, opened two separate tickets, and followed everything they asked me to do, plus everything ever mentioned here at least three times, and still there's no fix. I even exported a large collection of my portfolio as DNGs, created a new Adobe account, created a new macOS account so everything would be in a clean state, and tried syncing about 1,000 of my photos from that account. LrC still got stuck with 200 photos remaining to sync. Why can't the entire sync database just be reset so we can just start from scratch?

I'm frankly at wit's end. I totally fell in love with LR Classic sync, and used it across my macOS desktop, my iPad, and even my iPhone, and it was working brilliantly. It was so magical, I built my whole workflow around it for my portfolio, my students, and even my clients. Heck, I even built my whole website with it in Adobe Portfolio! Now it's just dead in the water, and I'm stuck, and feel like Adobe doesn't even care.

If anyone has any ideas how to get this to work again, I'd sure love to hear them.

 Sincerely,

Hans Rupert

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

@Huaqing Yin 

I do not think this catalog renaming is in-play for a sync issue.  

Sync issues tend to be very specific to a user's state and conditions and, in general, and unlike other threads here at feedback.photoshop.com they are best served as a single poster per thread.  When multiple users post in a continuous thread, it tends to cause some confusion as to who is saying what about what.  That is why this thread is focused on Hans and his specific issue. It is very hit or miss whether the solution for Hans will apply to other customers.  

We want to help everyone with sync issues but it is very difficult to do fragmented across a multi-user thread.  Often, persons not fluent in the forum come in to assist and have to parse the original posters issues separate from other subsequent posts. 

What can you do to help us help you? 

For Sync Issues Only: 

Start a new thread that contains as much information about your:

• System
• Current State
• What's been tried before
• And any other information you feel is pertinent

If we can keep sync-related threads cleaner it helps us move through them more quickly.  I would recommend you and @jens_koopmann both consider doing this.  Feel free to copy and paste the information you've shared here already into your new thread-unless that information is out of date. 

That said, working through a forum introduces a time delay based upon our various time zones, schedules and work loads. (at time they do give me a day off here and there so it may take a few days for a round trip response). If faster service is necessary, I recommend contacting Adobe Customer Care for Phone/Chat support. 

If you prefer to work through the forums, I welcome you to create a new post as outlined above.

Thank you for your patience and your support of the Lightroom Classic product. 

[huaqingy55292324]

Hi, Rikk,

I fully understand that you need to focus on the issue case by case. I will start a new thread and keep following your progress here.

Thanks.

Yin

[hr114]

Hi Rikk -

Thanks again for the quick response, and thank engineering too for sifting through the sync logs so fast. Sadly, the "Rebuild sync.lrdata" did not help. Tried three separate times, even after log outs and reboots.

HOWEVER, I can say that @jens_koopman 's discovery that any photos with "Unknown Lens" as a metadata field will fail an entire sync! I just removed 256 such photos from two dozen different collections, and then synced the remaining 1,000+ photos with absolutely no problems whatsoever. For me (and Jens apparently) THIS is the exact bug.

Funniest thing? ALL these photos used to be in sync with no problem. Also funny: many of the photos are from known cameras, sometimes with built-in lenses. The iPhone 4s after all is a pretty known value.

Hope that helps engineering squash the bug. Now can I have the last 100 days of my life back and my CC subscription refunded?

[huaqingy55292324]

Hi, Hans,

Glad to hear your problem is solved. Do you have to removed the phone photos from your LR CC collections created from the day 1? Do you have to remove photos sync'd from your LR mobile?

Thanks.

[hr114]

Well, “solved” would be a stretch. LR Sync is still broken; whereas before this July, it was working perfectly.

No, I didn’t actually have to remove all the iPhone photos. In fact, over 100 of them, from iPhone 4s to 5 to SE to XR to XS synced just fine.

As a way to test my progress with things on LR Classic on the desktop, yes I did delete the photos on LR Web, and LR Mobile devices first.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Your and Jens' reports regarding the unknown lens metadata failing sync is very interesting. 

Do either @hans_rupert  or @jens_koopmann  have a file that that can share with me for testing?

[hr114]

Hi Rikk -

I'm not sure yet. All I did was filter for the metadata of "no lens profile", move those files out of the synced collections, and then turned syncing back on, and then suddenly everything worked. 

I think I'd have to add one of the suspect files at a time and see when LR Sync gets stuck. I have to say I **AM** a bit hesitant to do this because I'm afraid of having to start all over again!  😃

Give me a few days to work on this, and then I'll let you know. I'm certainly willing to help quash this bug though!

[berliner_ffm]

@Rikk  Here is one file including the sidecar as an example.

All files failing to upload have the same camera, same file-format (ORF) and same lens (manual Laowa 7.5mm).

Example File

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Thank you for the file. I have a Lightroom Classic Catalog with 37000 images synced - no errors

I have added this single image to the catalog and set it to sync.  Image does not sync.

Clearing the image from Synced Collection and All Synced Photos allows Sync to proceed normally and completes.

I will log a bug with the Classic team and include the image you sent.  Thanks for sticking with this and providing the test file. 

[berliner_ffm]

Well it is a good start, that you could reproduce the behaviour.

Let's hope now there will be a fix for this soon.

[hr114]

Rikk –

Thanks for your patience. I went through the 1,200 or so files in my current portfolio that were synced from LR Classic to the cloud, pulled out the ones that had the metadata "Unknown Lens" and then added them back to the sync one at a time until I found the problem files. I've included those files, their XMP sidecar data, and a screenshot of the shots themselves.

A few things to note: Firstly, all the shots that will not sync (and do clog the sync pipeline, preventing any other files from syncing) were taken with the same camera (Canon D60) and same lens, a Sigma 600mm f/8 mirror that apparently doesn't report any data via EXIF. Secondly, all of these shots have been successfully synced in the past (until about July this year) Lastly, one of the files –the one with the huge silver tank and steam– does indeed still sync, despite having the same "Unknown Lens" metadata criteria (and the fact that it was taken in January 2004 in Iceland just like all the other files) At first I thought it might be that because unlike the other files, I had processed it with Photoshop, and maybe some of the offending metadata got stripped. But when I uploaded the original raw file, it synced just fine too.

Weird.

https://www.dropbox.com/preview/Lightroom/Guh/LRClassicUnknownLens–FilesFailtoSync.zip?role=personal

Let me know if this helps please. Jens & I both look forward to a speedy solution.

– Hans

[hr114]

@jens_koopmann Hey Jens, I just wanted to offer my sincere thanks again for identifying the recent problems with LR sync. I actually managed to finally narrow it down to a series of shots I had taken from 1999-2004 with a Sigma 600mm f/8 mirror lens that does not report its EXIF data. All of these images had been successfully synced before, so it's all really weird. Strangely though, (as nothing seems to be normal with this bug) one single image of the bunch does still sync! Weird.

Thanks again, fellow LR sync sufferer!

😃

– Hans

[ragrawal]

Hi,

I am not able to access the above shared link. Can you please re share the files. Thanks.

[berliner_ffm]

@ragrawal  Did you mean my link or HansRuperts?

Mine is still up til end of December.

[ragrawal]

I am able to access the file which you shared.

Not able to access the dropbox link shared by Hans.

[hr114]

@ragrawal Sorry about that – let me go check the link.

[hr114]

@ragrawal @jens_koopmann 

I am able to get to the file (once done dismissing the "sign up now for Dropbox" dialog) on Chrome and Firefox, without any special credentials or logins. Jens, would you be able to confirm, please?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mi0b8qsj796nhud/LRClassicUnknownLens%E2%80%93FilesFailtoSync.zip?dl=0

[ragrawal]

Able to access now. Thanks.

[Antoine HLMN]

I think you can merge with this bug:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/conversations/lightroom-classic/lightroom-classic-100-not-syncing/5fa...

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Lightroom Classic 10.1.1 was released on Monday 01/11/21 and contains a fix for this issue. Please down the update as soon as it is available in your Creative Cloud App. Thank you for your patience. 

[berliner_ffm]

Hi Rikk, I already downloaded the fix and checked it with all my stuck files and so far everything syncs fine again so far. Thanks for your support!

[PhotoCitizen]

At the risk of "hijacking" this thread, my sync problems -- on a Windows 10 PC -- have also been solved with the latest update. Yippee!

[hofendisasd]

I'm on 10.1.1 and have the same problem as reported above. Windows 10, fully updated. Lightroom Classic, fully updated. Syncing goes nowhere. I will continue my workaround of simply plugging my iPhone into my computer and downloading and uploading into Lightroom manually. <sigh> If there's a cautionary tale of why I will 'never' migrate to the Lightroom cloud version, this is it.

[ragrawal]

Hi, Can you share the diagnostic logs with me.

[braisb55518709]

I still have the same problem with the latest update... I have 20,000+ images, had the problem before (fixed by renaming sync.lrdata) and now I've tried everything posted here with no success... last week it all worked fine, but today I imported some more photos and it's been stuck syncing for over 5 hours... I thought if I removed these new files from the sync collection it would go back to normal but everything seems to be stuck.