Can't open previously processed photos

[14hannon]

I recently processed a large number of photos from a trip. Now some of them cannot be seen in LRC although I see them in finder. I tried reloading them in the same location but I can't. They show as grayed out. If I click on one, it says possible duplicate. I have thried moving them to another director and load, but same result. They do not show in in find missing photos. Any suggestions?

[Bill Sprague]

You are describing the typical result caused by moving or deleting files outside of Lightroom Classic after the image files were imported.

[14hannon]

Is there a fix for that?

[dj_paige]

If you have an exclamation point icon on the photos or question mark icon on the folders, then the fix is explained in this document. The fix is NOT importing the photos again.

[14hannon]

Thanks. Very interesting article. I found I have been doing two things
wrong. I do move large number of files in LRC on occasion and in Mac OS I
move then using drag-control. Have to change that. That probably explains
had I lost I whole day of shooting Portugal that just disappeared (pretty
sure I moved in in LRC when I was doing a lot of processing and
organizing). However, does not explain current problem. It is a date range
of shots. They were previously processed in LRC. There are 113 files (pics)
in Finder. In LRC, only 3 photos are visible. The others do not show at
all.

[JohanElzenga]

Define 'cannot be seen'. Do you not see them at all when you go to 'All Photographs' and make sure there is no active filter? A file that was moved should be shown as a missing photo, a file that was removed from the catalog should not show dimmed when you try to import it again.

[14hannon]

Thanks for the reply. They only show up in LRC when I try to re-import them and then only dimmed. LRC won't let them back in. I know they are in the directory because I see them in Finder and click on them in finder and see them in Mac OS. 

[JohanElzenga]

Thanks for the reply. They only show up in LRC when I try to re-import them and then only dimmed. LRC won't let them back in. I know they are in the directory because I see them in Finder and click on them in finder and see them in Mac OS. 

By @14hannon

If Lightroom shows them dimmed when you try to import them, then that means Lightroom thinks they are already in the catalog somewhere. If you really can't find them in the 'All Photographs' view with all filters turned off, then there are two possible explanations:

1: They are in the catalog but were renamed. In that case you won't find them when you search by file name, but you should be able to find them by sorting by capture date and then looking at the thumbnails.

2: Your catalog is corrupted. Replace it by a backup catalog. You then may have to import the latest photos again because the backup was made before you did this. The photos won't be dimmed anymore when you try to do this however.