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.

[dj_paige]

There is no limitation imposed by Lightroom. What you are seeing is (probably) a limitation in Windows, which can be overcome by using hierarchical keywords in Lightroom.

[Renee48]

I'm not familiar with Hierarchical keywords.  Do you have an example?

[dj_paige]

Google finds at least 5 tutorials.

[Renee48]

thanks

[ViatheLens]

I do believe there is a limit, but it's very large.  If I recall correctly, it's 999 words.  That many words, however, would be difficult to access as you would need to scroll a lot!  The thing to do with key words is to have categories.  For example, a major category could be Transportation and underneath that you could have airplanes, trains, automobiles, and so on.  Another major category could be Animals and under that you could have Wild and Domestic and under each of those you could have the name of an animal, dog or cat or cow, and so on.  You can buy keyword lists or make your own.  You can drag and drop keywords as needed in order to create the hierarchy that you want.

[John R Ellis]

LR on Windows has always limited the number of keywords displayed in the Keyword List panel to about 1500. See this bug report:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/bug-that-causes-collections-and-publish-servi...

Adobe has acknowledged the bug but marked the internal bug report as "deferred", meaning they explicitly decided to not take any action on it (they can always change their mind).

There are similar limitations on folders and collections:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/bug-that-causes-collections-and-publish-servi...

This is most certainly not due to a limitation of Windows. (After all, grid view in Library isn't limited to 150 rows, and Windows File Explorer can certainly display a list of more than 1500 files.) Rather, Adobe engineers took a shortcut way back when they first implemented the LR user interface.  See here for technical details:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/bug-that-causes-collections-and-publish-servi...

[Use the reply button under the first post to ensure replies sort properly.]

[rgs731]

Dear Adobe

I have a keyword in my list that has, probably because of an unintended error I have made, developed a list of several hundred child words. Since this word is used to build a smart collection, I have to clean up this list of associated child words to get the smart collection to function correctly.

But I am on a PC and my keyword list is several hundred words long so, because of the keyword bug you have neglected to address since version 1, the child words that need to be moved to the main list will not move. No drag and drop for me. So now I have to go, word by word, through my main keyword list (and probably this child list as well) and delete all of the seldom used and alternate version words until I get the number of words low enough for the drag and drop to work so I can move the child words to the main list. 

Thanks so much for not addressing this problem. I am really looking forward to sorting this out word by word. Not really. PLEASE!! FIX THIS PROBLEM!! Thanks.

[Jim 185]

Richard:

Not a perfect solution, but an option to deal with the problem (I am not going to debate if it is an Adobe issue of a Windows issue) is to group all your keywords starting with "A" in one keyword group, all your "B" words in a group etc. That reduces the  (prime) keyword numbers to a more manageable length  and you can then open up one group and do the cleaning up with that one group.

Just a thought that might help your situation or not.

[rgs731]

Well that would be good - if I could copy, paste, drag, drop. or manage the list in any way that would let me do that. But I can't. And if I do that (after I have managed to clean this up enough to get it to function), won't all those child words potentially foul up my smart collections just as my current problem does?

[Jim 185]

When I did it, I dragged/dropped successfully (in groups of 20-30)

Sorry can't help you with the second question re your smart collections as I don't use them.

[John R Ellis]

"won't all those child words [A, B, C, ...] potentially foul up my smart collections just as my current problem does?"

No, not unless you have a "real" keyword that's a single letter.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I have a similar problem, an abbreviated keyword list, but with a twist.
My keyword list in Lightroom properly displays all keywords when running Lightroom Classic 9.2.1 under Windows 7, but the keyword list is abbreviated when running the exact same Lightroom Classic 9.2.1 under Windows 10.  Both machines are using the exact same catalog.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

FYI, my list has a total of 3152 keywords, but under Windows 10 it shows only up to item 1471. 

Also, I believe the max keywords for Lightroom Classic under Windows is 3270 from what others have reported, but I think that limit prevents someone from creating any more keywords and has nothing to do with scrolling the list, correct?

Any suggestions would be appreciated, including alternatives to Lightroom.

[john beardsworth]

Wrong. It's all about visibility. You can create more - you just can't see them in the keywording list. So introduce a little hierarchy into the list, or use the filter box. It's crap that Adobe don't fix this, but who wants to scroll down 1600+ lines anyway?

[John R Ellis]

"My keyword list in Lightroom properly displays all keywords when running Lightroom Classic 9.2.1 under Windows 7, but the keyword list is abbreviated when running the exact same Lightroom Classic 9.2.1 under Windows 10."

The maximum number of keywords LR can display depends on the maximum size of a low-level Windows window and the pixel height of a keyword row in the Keyword List display. It's been years since I checked, but I think the maximum size of a low-level window changed somewhere between Windows 7 and Windows 10, from 2^15-1 (32,767) to 2^16-1 (65,535).  The height of a row in the Keyword List depends on the Windows display scaling (called different names in Windows 7 and Windows 10), and the LR setting Preferences > Interface > Font Size.

On my Windows 10 configuration, with Font Size set to Automatic, the Keyword List displays 3270 keywords, each row of which is 20 pixels high. This corresponds to 20 * 3270 = 65,180 pixels, leaving 135 pixels for displaying the header row and borders.  With Font Size set to 200%, the Keyword List displays 1718 keywords, each row of which is 38 pixels high. This corresponds to 38 * 1718 = 65,284, leaving 251 pixels for the header and borders.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

OK, so now that I'm painted into a corner, I have to change my keywords to utilize a hierarchy, but Adobe Lightroom has a problem there as well !!!  I can only drag and drop items within the top 30% of the already significantly abbreviated keyword list!

Yes, that's right.  I'm trying to implement the recommended workaround to Adobe's well-known problem, and even THAT doesn't work properly!  Right now I can only see items from A to I in the keyword list, and only items from A to the middle D's can be dragged, with the remaining items simply ignoring the mouse drag event.

The hits just keep on coming with Adobe Lightroom.

Lightroom, what a piece of garbage!  How can Adobe in good conscience continue to take people's money while leaving fundamental usability problems unaddressed FOR YEARS???

And don't give me the excuse "it's a Windows problem".  BS.  I was a software developer for over 25 years.  ANYTHING can be done if there is a will and desire to fix it.  Adobe obviously doesn't have the skill, or desire, to fix it.

[John R Ellis]

See this previous post for how to rearrange the hierarchy in the presence of the bug:
https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/i_cannot_access_the_whole_keyword_list_to_edi...

See this post for more technical details on the bug:
https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/bug-that-causes-collections-and-publish-servi...

[JLobert]

Has this issue been fixed (either by Adobe or by Microsoft)? I had that listing limitation and saw only about 1700 keywords. After reading up on here, started using nested master keywords. Since I have been doing that, I can now see all of my remaining keywords and it is about 2800!
Windows 10, latest everything.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

No. I had to go through a very involved process to get mine organized. There was a lot of deleting insignificant words and copying and pasting. I finally organized them alphabetically using the each letter as the master. That way the list can grow without running out of room.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I have been trying to layer my keywords. I have set up various categories (parent keywords) and selected (Ctrl-click) one or more other (child) keywords to move under the parent. Sometimes that works. Sometimes I select a series of child keywords and when I try to move them, nothing happens, or the system thinks about it (whirly arrow) and decides I am trying to move everything other than the selected keywords, or it just crashes the program and I have to restart (Lightroom Classic 2-2, running in Windows 10 on a Core i7 processor). Sometimes I can move keywords down the list order, but not up. This is a huge waste of time. 

[John R Ellis]

Agreed it's a huge waste of time. As a workaround, use the Filter Keywords box in the Keyword List panel to restrict the keywords you want to manipulate, e.g. "people richard" will show just keywords containing "people" or "richard":



Note that I've collapsed People to avoid the display of thousands of child keywords it contains.  

This workaround keeps the number of keywords displayed under the limit where LR starts choking.

[JLobert]

I have the same experience and I believe it has you do with Lightroom's memory footprint. At some point, you need you restart it to make the drag and drop work again. I restart as soon as it stops doing this, I don't push it to crash.

[John R Ellis]

This bug is independent of the amount of memory LR uses. Rather, it's caused by shortcuts Adobe took developing the Windows version of LR:
https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/bug-that-causes-collections-and-publish-servi...

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I have started doing this, but my keywords are not that structured, mainly because I didn't know what I was doing when i started. It is a horrible mess sorting it out now!

[JLobert]

Yes, the bug about long lists is independent, but not the drag and drop behavior. When you try to move keywords into top level keywords, LR will eventually stop doing this, and THAT is memory dependent. It works again after you restart LR.