P: No photos in selected folder (Mac)

[julief57036690]

I have over 60,000 images on an external hard drive.  Today when I opened Lightroom and tried to navigate to a recent image using the Navigator Panel, the folders and subfolders are all showing the numbers of photos inside the folder, but when I click on a subfolder it says "No photos in the selected Folder".  When I check the Finder they are there.  If I go to the highest level of parent folder on that external drive all 60,000 images are showing at that level and I can scroll through them.  But when I drill down to any lower level that the very highest, they are not there.  I have not done any moving of files or folders in the last several months and up until today everything was working fine.  I have not installed any new plugins or done anything out of the ordinary with Lightroom recently.  Any idea why this is happening and more importantly how I can fix it?  I've included a couple of screenshots to show what I'm talking about.

[John R Ellis]

@Abigail28583633n332 wrote, "Unfortunately this did not work for me."

What didn't work for you?  (Unfortunately, the mediocre forum platform doesn't indicate which post you're replying to.)

Many people have reported here that rolling back to LR 12.1 works around the problem. Does that work for you?

[Abigail28583633n332]

Hi
Fallout from retreating back to LTR v12.1 after the disastrous upgrade has left me with two folders on external drives that are partial duplicates. The methods that were suggested to get them back in their proper places were to update folder and check capitalization. Neither worked and now one of the orphans is saying that nasty message of “no photos in selected folder”.

In Finder all data is intact and in its correct location. Reinstalling v12.1 did fix the original issue except for creating the orphans. All very frustrating….

Hope the above explains my problem.

Sent from my iPad
Abigail Gossage
abigail@abigailgossage.ca

[julief57036690]

I had a similar problem as what Abigail is describing, where I kept getting the message "no photos in the selected folder" for all the images on my external hard drive.  I tried reverting to 12.1 and it didn't work.  The developers asked for a copy of my catalogue.  They repaired it and sent it back to me and now it runs in 12.2 with no issues.  They also mentioned they are working on a 12.3 release that should address this issue.

[MattalynnMason]

I had this same issue this morning, I searched for hours on these forums and tried everything.

The only thing that worked for me was returning to my previous version 12.1 of LR.

What the heck ADOBE!??

[MattalynnMason]

Thank you for posting this, I spent hours this morning trying to figure it out. Unfortunately, returning to the previous version was the only thing that worked for me.

How can we get adobe to fix this issue?

[John R Ellis]

@Rikk Flohr: Photography:

1. Please change the name of this thread to "No photos in selected folder (Mac)", which is the error message that people are searching for and right now many are not finding this thread.

2. Please change the name of this other thread:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/no-folders-in-selected-folder/m-p/13626...

to "Windows: No photos in selected folder".  Only one person on Windows has reported that message, but many Mac users are ending up there instead of here.

3. Please pin a post in this thread recommending users to roll back to LR 12.1.

[John R Ellis]

@MattalynnMason, are you on Mac?  If so, Adobe has acknowledged this Mac bug:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-catalog-will-open-in-12-1-but-not-12-2-folde...

Please add your constructive opinion to that bug report and be sure to click the Upvote button at the top-right and Follow at the bottom of the first post. That will make it a little more likely Adobe will prioritize the fix, and you'll be notified when the bug's status changes.

Adobe releases a new version of LR about every eight weeks. LR 12.2 was released Feb 12, so we might expect to see 12.3 released mid-April. Adobe almost never announces ahead of time when or if a particular bug will be fixed. But historically catalog bugs affecting many people generally get fixed in the next release.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

We have a bug logged for this. At this time reverting to 12.1 should restore immediate functionality until we can release an update. 

[Abigail28583633n332]

Just to add to my upgrade to 12.2 woes, I still have two orphan partial folders from external after reinstalling v12.1.  In addition I have discovered that Lightroom has removed all the Fuji film simulations.  I spoke with a friend today who has not had a problem with v12.2 until he discovered that also is having issues with theFuji film simulations.

Suggestions?

[John R Ellis]

"I have discovered that Lightroom has removed all the Fuji film simulations."

Please start a new topic for that issue.

[staciecm]

I am still having issues.  I am sycronizing all of my folders.  I have to do it one by one, but it seems to for some folders, but when I close and reopen, there are some files I need to redo.  I really hope this gets fixed soon.

[Erzebeth]

I discovered the same, all fuji simulations are gone.

[DavePinMinn]

A few days ago, in another topic that I THINK has now been folded into this one, I spoke of trying to fix a friend's catalog that had problems (most likely) due to having 2 external drives with the same name.  It had also experienced the loss of images in folders discussed here.

We ended up creating a new, clean catalog and importing all her images.  BEFORE doing this, I ran the metadata status and fixed all the inconsistencies (hopefully) in her images, so all the metadata was saved to the images.

Two new things are happening and I'm not sure EITHER is related to this problem, but....

1.  She is missing keywords and develop settings on SOME images in Lightroom. 

I had her start Bridge, which she's never used, to look at some images, and it APPEARS (I'm not sure as she was struggling badly with bridge, our link was slow and spotty due to my current location, and she was having trouble understanding that I was attempting to verify what metadata is actually IN the images, so we'll try again) that at least SOME images have different keywords in Bridge than in Lightroom.  In some cases there MAY be keywords associated with files in Bridge that Lightroom does not display.

In Lightroom, her keyword LIST appears intact, but the "Keywords" palette shows no keywords, or a subset of what may be in Bridge.  And yes, I've set it to the keywords and containing keywords (?) setting. 

I'll explore this further the next time we Zoom, but I'm bringing it up only in case this is some bizarre side effect of what's going on - though I can't believe Lightroom COULD display different keywords, but...

2. While exploring the NEW catalog, she complained that her month folders (she does year/month organization) did NOT have all the images that SHOULD be in the months.  After further exploring, I realized that approximately 43,000 images that SHOULD be in month folders were instead in her top level folder.  I suspect when they were ORIGINALLY imported, it was done incorrectly, and they weren't put in the months.  Again, I don't THINK this is part of the ongoing bug, but in case other people start reporting bizarre behavior with organization...

I currently have her finding images in the top level folder by year/month (in GENERAL, her filenames start with YYYYMM), and moving them to the correct month.  Boring but not difficult, so she should have MOST of the images cleaned up in a few days.  I say "MOST" because of the following.

She has duplicates.  Thousands of duplicates.  I don't know HOW this occurred, but I've seen it before with other catalogs, usually from users that use both Lightroom and other tools like Bridge.  I her case she uses both Luminar and ON1 in addition to Lightroom.  There are files with a "-2" at the end of the name.  And -3, and -4.  AND, there are files with "-2-2-3-2" type appendages.  From what I've seen in the past, this is evidence of duplicates, and duplicates that have been duplicated multiple times.

SOME of the images in the top level folder ARE also duplicates of those in the year/month folders, so when she moves images to the correct location, she gets the error that some images are already there.

At present, since I'm not 100% sure she doesn't have different keywords on different duplicates (see 1 above), I'm NOT having her delete these duplicates, figuring we'll address those after as many images as possible have been moved to where they belong.

Unfortunately, as near as I can tell, Lightroom doesn't have a way to isolate the duplicate images - a text search for "-2" doesn't work using "ends with" in Lightroom, and using "contains" doesn't work because she has thousands of images with "-2" in a variety of places in the filename.  There's no "base file name" for the text search and it seems that Lightroom is using the file extension as the end of the filename.

In Windows, I have tools that would easily let me find everything ending with the duplication indicators and delete them, then resynch Lightroom, but I have no idea how to do the equivalent on a Mac.

[Sunil_Bhaskaran]

We have contacted some of you offlist. Please add your comment here if you face this issue.

Thanks,
Sunil

[Erzebeth]

Today I received the message that there is an update to 12.2.1. I installed it on my Mac24 and none of the problems

are solved 'no photos in selected folder' and all the Fuji film simulations gone... So I will roll back to 12.1 again

[John R Ellis]

"there is an update to 12.2.1. I installed it on my Mac24 and none of the problems are solved 'no photos in selected folder' and all the Fuji film simulations gone..."

Right, LR 12.2.1 fixes just one bug, with syncing:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/fixed-issues.html

[mpetersonphoto]

"We have contacted some of you offlist. Please add your comment here if you face this issue.

Thanks,
Sunil"

I'm another user with this issue, just found this thread this morning.

I discovered that I had this exact issue yesterday evening. Mac Monterey OS, LRC 12.2, 158K+ photos on external drives. Same "No photos in the selected Folder" message at all levels of LRC folder hierarchy, though photos present/visible in finder. External drives showing as folders in Navigator panel (though I believe this has been the case for a while(?), possibly a long time, not sure).

I found the 12.2.1 update this morning and installed it, but it did not correct the issue. Rolled back to 12.1 and photos are again visible. External drives are still showing as folders, however. As I mentioned above, this latter issue has been the case in my install for a while, certainly prior to 12.1. I had no idea it was indicative of an issue.

I'll monitor this thread for a solution, but please let me know if I can share any other details that might help. Longtime LR user since v1.0.

Thanks,

Mark

[Erzebeth]

Ok, thank you!

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[michael_fotograf]

@Rikk Flohr: Photography 
Thank you for logging the bug.
With 12.2.1 the described behavior still exists.

[bwmore]

My LRC Folder is not responsive to anything. This error message: An internal error has occurred. ?:0: attempt to index field 'source'(a nil value).  There is no solution in the community.  

[John R Ellis]

The screenshot shows you've selected a folder with 11 photos in it but the main window is showing "No photos in selected folder". This is a known bug introduced in LR 12.2, and most people tripping over the bug work around it by rolling back to LR 12.1.

[John R Ellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with this existing bug:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-no-photos-in-selected-folder-mac/idi-p/13594...

[finsti]

My Lightroom catalogue contains over 500,000 images. I now have the problem that in Lightroom almost the entire folder structure has suddenly disappeared. The images are not missing, they are still in the catalogue (accessible via the collections), but I no longer see the corresponding folders. Also, Lightroom does not find the folder with the command "go to folder in catalogue". When importing new images, however, folders are added.
Can anyone help? Thank you very much!
I use Lightroom Classic 12.2.1

Lightroom counts 471'391 pictures in the folder "Fotos" but only shows a fraction of it in folders.

[Stephen272114160g1k]

My LrC v12-2 catalog just did the same thing to me (on MacOS Monterey). I hope this bug gets fixed promptly.

[DavePinMinn]

Yes, the system I was helping get straightened out had problems beyond 12.2, but when we got things reset, she started finding quite a few duplicates that Lightroom had managed by putting "-2" suffixes on the filenames.

I'm just glad I'm not the one going through the catalog trying to find 'em all and remove them.