P: (Windows) Panel is limited to 1600 items (folders, keywords, etc)

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Lightroom bug - hit a folder limit and unable to select the newly imported folder.452497 photographs across many drives in one catalog.The S drive has 214341 photos. It's the largest drive and so had many more folders than the previous drives.S:\Master Photos\ contains ~1633 folders. I know that's a lot but that is how her filing system was started. Those are the sequential numbers from 2220 - 3853 but there may be a sub folder or two or deleted folder in there so that's why the number is ~ approximate.Folders are labeled "sequential number"-"date" so 3853-20150316Adding one more folder caused Lightroom 4 to not allow the last folder to be clicked on and not show any images. The T:\ drive (offline, collapsed and below the S:\ drive) was collapsed and the label was overlaid on top of the "Collections" section label. Updated to latest version of Lightroom 5 via her new cloud account, had it rebuild the catalog and the same problem occurred.Created a sub folder S:\Master Photos\2012 and moved 15 of the folders into that folder. The 2012 folder was expanded so the list was actually one row larger and the last good folder wouldn't open. I collapsed the 2012 folder and now all the bottom folders were accessible.It appears there is an object limitation or a fixed array or something that is causing the folder list to become finite. She said a similar thing happens on her keyword list until she collapses some of the groups but I didn't check that out.

[ceesjw]

When searching through my collections with the filter bar, the program locks up after typing the first charachter, the cursor is gone and I cannot cancel the search as well. After waiting somthing like a minute or more the program comes back with the search result. To avoid this I have to type the search word very quickly.

I may have more collections than most people, but specifically then a good search facility is essential. This issue is already there is many versions. Not sure this is a bug, but it certainly is a great nuisance. 

I am on Windows. 

Cees Wouda

[Sameer K]

Hi Cees,

Thanks for reaching out. We are sorry for the trouble with Lightroom Classic. We are here to help.

Please specify the version of Lightroom Classic from Help > About Lightroom Classic, and are you working on Windows 10 or 11?

Could you please confirm the location of the catalog by going to Edit > Catalog Settings? Is it stored on an internal or external drive? How many collections does your catalog have in total? Does Lightroom Classic get stuck in any similar operation like smart collections or keywords?

If the catalog is stored on an external drive, please move it to the internal drive or desktop and try launching it from there. Please check here for more help related to Lightroom Classic Catalogs:  

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/catalog-faq-lightroom.html

We hope this helps,

Thanks!

Sameer K

[dj_paige]

I may have more collections than most people, but specifically then a good search facility is essential.

How many collections do you have?

Can you be more specific about "searching through my collections with the filter bar" as I am not aware that the filter bar can search for collections.

[Todd Shaner]

Try going to menu item File> Optimize Catalog and see if that helps.

[Todd Shaner]

DJ see below screenshot.

[ceesjw]

thanks a lot Sameer for the quick response.
To answer your questions:
- I am on Windows 10
- my catalog is on C: internal drive SSD
- rough estimate: 3000 collections
- I only experience it in collections, not in keywords
- I don't use smart collections or folder filter.

appreciate your help,
Cees

[ceesjw]

I have about 3000 collections, and growing. Extremely useful tool, even if the filter does not perform perfectly.

Cees

[ceesjw]

forgot to mention Lightroom Classic version. I am on 11.3, latest version. But this issue is not version dependent it is there already a long time.

[Todd Shaner]

Did yout try optimizing the catalog as I suggested? Better yet change the below Catalog setting. and then check the Test Integrtiy and Optimize catalog options as shown below.

[ceesjw]

Thanks voor all the tips, but they don't provide a solution. I am a long time user, and I am quite often helping other people with Lightroom, so I know most of the tips and tricks, but this one is pretty deep in the program. It has been there for many versions and accross platforms, and from what I know myself from software development, I am pretty sure the issue is in the code. I may so far be one of the few to experience it, because of my large number of collections. It is related to the way the collection filter responds to typing characters in the filter bar. And it is not limited to collections, also I found out that the folder filter enjoys more or less the same problem. Type one character and it locks up for some time, type a few characters quickly and the filter shows the results immediately. Would be very nice if the development team could look into this. 

Cees

[John R Ellis]

You're tripping over a bug in Windows LR that's existed since the very beginning, which Adobe has declined to fix: The maximum height of the contents of the Collections panel, Folders panel, Keyword List panel, and Metadata browser columns is limited to 65,535 pixels (2^16 - 1). When you have too many collections, folders, or collections to display in the panels, LR behaves very badly, silently refusing to display the lines, locking up, refusing to do drag-and-drops, etc.

The maximum lines of text that can be displayed depends on the pixel height of a line, which in turn depends on the Windows display scaling and the LR setting Preferences > Interface > Font Size.  My Windows 10 LR can currently display 3253 lines in the Collections panel.

You can ameliorate the symptoms of this bug by introducing hierarchy (collection sets, parent keywords, parent folders) and keeping most of the hierarchy collapsed. However, there can still be lockups when you use the filter boxes for those panels. The filter box will show all the matching collections/keywords/folders even if their parents were collapsed. If you type too slowly, then LR will try to display more than the maximum number of lines, and then it grinds to a halt for a long while (as you've observed).  The only workaround I know for that is to type very fast or copy and paste your filter text from another program.

There used to be separate bug reports about this for collections, folders, and keywords, but they got dropped when the forums were migrated to a new platform last year.  There's just a bug report for the Keywords panel:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-fails-on-large-keyword-lists-windows-only/id...

But I don't think it matters, since Adobe has shown no inclination to fix it in 15 years. There's even a Help article about it:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/lightroom-doesnt-display-all-keywords.html

When Adobe implemented the Windows version of LR, rather than using a standard UI toolkit that provided infinite-sized scrollable lists, the engineers implemented their own UI controls on top of the low-level Windows facilities. They took a shortcut and didn't implement infinite-sized scrollable lists, and they've never gone back to fix that.

[ceesjw]

Thanks John, very helpful! I was not aware yet of the limition on number of lines, but the behaviour of the filter wrt typing characters is precisely what you describe. I will continue to ues it in it present form, but it would be exremely appreciated if the development team would finally address this. My assumption was that responsible software developers got away from numbers-limitations since BASIC was buried. Wrong assumption. 

Cees

[John R Ellis]

"but it would be exremely appreciated if the development team would finally address this."

If you want an Adobe employee to notice at all, you could post a new bug report in the Bugs section, following these guidelines:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/how-do-i-write-a-bug-report/idi-p/12386373

Adobe does review everything posted there. But as discussed, for this bug I think it's just spitting in the wind.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

It is related to: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-fails-on-large-keyword-lists-windows-only/id...  Probably add your comments to that existing bug thread rather than create a new thread. 

[Jim-Cincinnati]

I am not able to scroll to the bottom of my metadata label list.  I scroll about halfway down the list and am not able to scroll any further - the scroll bar at the right-hand side of the window is at the bottom of the window even though I'm only partway through the list.  I suspect there is a problem with the large number of labels I have.  My library has 47,000 photos and 2,800 unique metadata labels.  Is there a fix so that I can scroll through all my labels?

Lightroom Classic version 11.4

Windows 10 Home version 21H2

[dj_paige]

There is a limit to the number of items in a list that you can have. I believe this is a bug, but if so it hasn't been fixed. The solution is to have hierarchical keywords so that some sections of the hierarchy can be collapsed, and thus the list is shorter, and then you can see all of the un-collapsed portion.

[Jim-Cincinnati]

My issue is with labels, not keywords.  I do already have a hierarchical structure with my keywords and do not have the scrolling problem, as you detail in your post.  However, I don't see a way to create a similar hierarchical structure with labels.  If there was a way to create a hierarchical structure with labels, I believe that would solve my problem.  Thanks for taking the time to respond!

[dj_paige]

Okay, I don't know what you mean by "labels" but any list in Lightroom Classic are still constrained by this bug.

[Jim-Cincinnati]

OK, I understand, thanks.  This bug is disappointing.  "Label" is one of the columns that is available in the metadata section of the Library Filter bar.  If I add a Title to a photo, I also copy it to the Label field.  Doing this allows me to see all my titles and select them from the list of labels.  I find doing this especially helpful for maintaining and reusing common titles in a large library.

[John R Ellis]

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"If I add a Title to a photo, I also copy it to the Label field.  Doing this allows me to see all my titles and select them from the list of labels.  I find doing this especially helpful for maintaining and reusing common titles in a large library."

I don't think that was an anticipated use of the Label field, though it should work and the bug should be fixed (though it likely never will). There are two workarounds that could apply to your workflow:

- Use hierarchical keywords instead of the Label field, under the parent keyword Titles.  You'll have to use two levels of keywords to avoid the similar bug with keywords. E.g. Title > A > A Very Big Animal, Title > B > Boys And Girls, etc.

- Use the Any Filter plugin's Filter command instead of the Label column in the Metadata browser.   You can configure the maximum number of values to display in a column to be much larger, though it might be easier if you set the maximum to, say, 100, and then use two columns to browse hierarchically through your list.  The screenshot below shows this for the Caption field (since I have hundreds of unique captions), but it would work the same for Label:

[John R Ellis]

@Rikk Flohr: Photography, please consider merging this thread with the the much older bug thread "Fails on large keyword lists":

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-fails-on-large-keyword-lists-windows-only/id...

and changing the thread's name to "Fails on large lists of keywords, collections, folders, Metadata browser columns", since it's the same underlying bug.

[John R Ellis]

@Rikk Flohr: Photography, please consider merging this thread with the the much older bug thread "Fails on large keyword lists":

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-fails-on-large-keyword-lists-windows-only/id...

and changing the thread's name to "Fails on large lists of keywords, collections, folders, Metadata browser columns", since it's the same underlying bug.

[M 15B9]

The folders are all there. I can find the photos inside and when right click and select 'Go to Folder in the Library' it switches to that folder, but the folder isn't shown in the panel.

I can't scroll more than what is shown on the attached screenshot despite the fact there are more than a hundred additional folders below what's visible.

I have reset Lightroom settings, but it didn't help.

Please help,

M

[Rob_Cullen]

IIRC There is a 'line' limit to the number of pixel lines that the UI can display in the Folder panel (1600?) (also applies in the Keyword panel).

You may find that if you create a more compact heirarchial folder structure (in the LrC panel) you will gain access to all folders.

[GoldingD]

Is that itty bitty screenshot the left side Panel all you see? 

No Collections Panel below the Folder panel

No Published Services below that?

Just Import and Export?

And what about above the Folders panel?