Duplicate File Names

[Jon_Kreski]

I am editing in the most current version of the Windows 11 software and I see I have quite a few photos, in pairs, that have duplicate file names and file information.  This is in Library mode.  How is this possible?  Also, which one should I delete to save space?  Or is there some Find All Duplicates menu function that I am not aware of?  Thanks!

[dj_paige]

It may be that you have (accidentally?) imported the photo more than once.

Which one should you delete? You need to determine which one you want to keep, perhaps one is edited and one is not. If you decide to delete one, make sure you delete it from the Lightroom Classic Library module and do NOT delete from the hard disk.

[tmickow · Accepted solution]

1) What version of Lightroom Classic are you using?  Click Help --> About Lightroom Classic to check.

2) It's impossible to have files with the same name in the same folder.  If that's what you're seeing in LrC, something else is going on.

3) Some screen shots of the Library module, file names, paths, etc. would be helpful.

[Jon_Kreski]

I used Show In Explorer on the image pair and they were, indeed, in different folders.  That explained what I was seeing.  Thanks for inspiring me to check that.  I had imported batches of files by date and then had created seperate folders for copies of photos that I had uploaded to Facebook.  That was before I got much more deeply involved in the database.  Live and learn.

[charlesc3183991]

I have just run a program to identify duplicate files (totalling 95GB!) and find that I have a huge number of duplicates which seem to be associated with Lightroom:

These are "catalogue" files and I don't know:

1. Whether Lightroom needs both

2, The effect of deleting one of them.

Can anyone help please?

[dj_paige]

We don't know if these duplicates have the same edits or not. We don't know if these duplicates have the same user-provided metadata or not. We don't know if these duplicates are in the same folder, or not.

But *YOU* can look at a pair of duplicates and see if these have identical edits, or not. You can look at a pair of duplicates and see if these have identical user-provided metadata, or not. You can look at a pair of duplicates and see if these are in the same folder or not.

And once you have all of that information, you can go ahead and decide which to keep in Lightroom Classic, and whether or not to delete them from your computer.