Error Message in Book Module says "Image Off Line and will not appear in book"

[CruzsCS6Guy]

I have been working on a book for about a week. I work on a batch of photos for a day or two and store them in a folder. When I am ready I import them to the book collection. Never been a problem I just did this again this morning and the new images are present in the book collection. Now when I drag any of the photos I downloaded this morning into a the book module I get the the error message in the screen shot below. Never happened before. I uploaded the draft book to Blurb just to see how that worked out yesterday. I had to add a bunch of blank pages to get up to 22 so it would upload. This morning I created a PDF of the same book data and uploaded that to Blub just to see how that worked. I liked the way that worked better and gave me choices then I have in Lightroom. I can't help but think my uploading the book from lightroom and then from Light room to PDF and then to Blurb has something to do with this issue. Ideas? Thanks

[JohanElzenga]

The error message says it all. Your image is 'missing'. Maybe it's on an external disk that is not connected or was assigned a different drive letter by Windows. Maybe you moved it or renamed a folder. You will have to tell Lightroom where it is: 

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/

[CruzsCS6Guy]

Thanks, this helped me figure it out. I've been a Photoshop user for over 20 years and everytime I give Lightroom a whirl I give up, because the way it uses and stores files confuses the heck out of me. But determined now to use it to publish much of my work from the past more than 20 years.

[TheDigitalDog]

Thanks, this helped me figure it out. I've been a Photoshop user for over 20 years and everytime I give Lightroom a whirl I give up, because the way it uses and stores files confuses the heck out of me. But determined now to use it to publish much of my work from the past more than 20 years.

By @CruzsCS6Guy

It isn't difficult if you consider that every image is cataloged (not IN a catalog), just like in a public library, there is a card catalog telling you where to find a book. If the card (image cataloged) isn't in the proper location, well, you can't find it. LR was simply telling you, "here's a preview, you want to use the photo for a book, but I don't know where it is." You, the user, have to show the catalog where the image (book) really is. 

ANY action you can make in the Finder/Explorer (move, copy, duplicate, rename, delete, etc) can and should always be done IN Lightroom so the catalog 'knows' what you did.  If you do all this within LR, the likely hood your photo's go missing will drop dramatically. If you have photo's on an external drive, consider what would happen in Photoshop if the drive were unmounted and you used Photoshop's Open>Recent menu to pick an item that is on that drive: PS will pop an error "where is the photo?" and LR is the same.