Can't see the photos in LR

[Ola15D5]

I moved all my photos from the computers harddrive to an external harddrive. Some of the folders don't show in LR. They are in Finder but they don't show in LR. I moved lots of folders and only a few don't show in LR. Has anyone experienced this before?

[dj_paige]

Folders don't "show" in Lightroom Classic, unless there is/was a photo in the catalog (database) that is in a particular folder. So what you are seeing is expected behavior. Lightroom Classic does not know you moved the folders to a different drive. You need to specifically tell Lightroom Classic that these folders are now on a different drive; to do this see this document (particularly Figure 4 and associated text).

[Ola15D5]

The missing folders don't show in LR. They only show in Finder. They exist on the computer but don't show in LR. 99.99% of all the folders show after I moved from one hard drive to the other. Just a few don't show in LR. Strange 🙂

[dj_paige]

Not strange, this is how Lightroom Classic works when you move folders. The instructions I gave will allow you to tell Lightroom Classic where the folders are now.

[Just Shoot Me]

LrC is NOT A file manager. It only shows folders in the Folders section for folders that images have been imported from.

So click the Import button and when the Import Dialog Window comes up in the Source section Browse to the folders that you want to import images from and select that folder. you can Select multiple folder in that dialog window the same way you can do that in the File manager program for the OS you are using. In windows it is the Shift key to select consecutive items and the Crtl key to select individual item.

Don't remember which key on a Mac.

Once selected all the images that are in those selected folder will show in the center section of the import window. You should also check Include Subfolders just incase there are other folders, Subfolder, under the ones you have selected.

[Just Shoot Me]

Let me add that you need to use the ADD option at the top of the import dialog window to leave the imageds in the folders they are already in. If you select Copy or Move the images will be Copied Or Move to a different folder on your drive.

[dj_paige]

Since the OP said he moved folders and now they don't appear, Importing is the wrong thing to do here. It doesn't fix the problem.

[Ola15D5]

Thanks for your help guys! Somehow I have solved the problem to 99%. It was less than 300 photos (of several thousands) so I just missed some editing. I have all the originals. No big deal. When I moved the photos/folders they showed up at the new hard drive but I could inly see them in finder - not in LR. I threw away the folders from finder och moved the folders inside LR.

[Ola15D5]

I think the missing folders were just copied to the new hard drive (not moved) and they only showed in finder (not in LR). This means I had the photos left on the old drive and could move them a second time. I think this was the case ... it was kind of strange. And the folders were from random folders (years) .... a mystery 😉

[GoldingD]

In the future, see:

https://lightroomkillertips.com/pointing-lightroom-classic-new-drive/

http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm