Help! Moved from Cloud to Classic and now Classic can't see photos to import!

[gilliano24802115]

Hi!

I am so stuck! Just moved from LR CC to LR Classic  - synced my 130K photos that were in the cloud   - so now they are on a 5T external harddrive connected to my Macbook Pro  - BUT - when I try to use LR Classic to import from a card reader or from my desktop, no photos appear to be there. LR Classic is not "seeing" any photos to import! BUT LR CC sees them just fine!  I have tried

1. updating my operating system - it is now totally up to date

2. restarting

3. uninstalling and installing LR Classic

4. quitting LR CC

5. changing privacy settings on Macbook ot make sure LR Classic has access 

So far no luck!

I am working with a paid expert and he is stumped too! 

Any thoughts?

Thanks so much!

Best Regards,

Gillian Overholser

[GoldingD]

What is your MACOS version?

and

5. changing privacy settings on Macbook ot make sure LR Classic has access 
 

By that you mean:

Catalina and  later

[gilliano24802115]

Yes! I made sure those boxes are all checked 

[gilliano24802115]

I just updated to Big Sur ... 

[GoldingD]

How about a screenshot  of your import screen, full screen

[gilliano24802115]

So I kept going over mad over the various preferences in both Lightroom and Mac and it suddenly worked. The scene looked totally different all of a sudden. But I'm wondering if that's because Lightroom was importing photos from the cloud for all the rest of  of the time it couldn't import from elsewhere? Could it be the import from CC ended and THAT Was what was preventing the program from importing from elsewhere? 

[GoldingD]

yes

[Theresa J]

synced my 130K photos that were in the cloud   - so now they are on a 5T external harddrive connected to my Macbook Pro

---

How exactly did you do this step? Can you show us a screen capture of the folder structure on the external drive? Lightroom (cloud) does not see photos on a hard drive. Whatever it sees is in the cloud. If you did a "sync" and not a "download or export" Lightroom Classic will not be able to access the photos to import them.

[gilliano24802115]

It was all downloaded to the external drive ... but it seems to have resolved!