Issues synchronizing folders

[VioletG]

For the last couple of weeks (possibly since upgrading 12.0 or 12.0.1 but I’m not 100% sure of that) I’m hitting a weird problem which I’m not sure if it’s caused by me doing something wrong, a behavior change in LrC, a bug or something else.

My workflow is that I manage my photo files externally to LrC and store them on in a folder synced with OneDrive. After I add or delete photos, I go to my library in LrC, under Folders I select the folder I modified (typically a few levels deep in the folder tree) and do Command click -> Synchronize Folder… This brings up a Synchronize Folder “ABC” window which correctly identifies the changes so I click Synchronize and land on the Import screen. This is where I see the first oddity: even though the From field in the top left looks correct, the Source panel below has the root on my home folder selected and all the folders under it are grayed out and I can’t browse. The central panel shows the correct new photos so I can click Import nevertheless and get them into my catalog. However, the import doesn’t seem to be done correctly: instead of adding new photos to the catalog I was synchronizing, removing deleted ones and keeping the rest unchanged, the result is that the folder I was synchronizing now shows up under Folders as empty and there’s a new folder in the root of my Folders tree with the same name which contains all the right files but none of the edit history etc. for the files that were unchanged.

I tried restoring my catalog from backups as well as creating a new catalog and importing data from the previous one to check if this is an issue with my catalog file but the problem reproduces exactly the same regardless of that. Resetting preferences didn’t help either. I’m on Mac OS Ventura and I granted LrC full disk access.

Is this something that others hit as well? Am I doing something wrong here? This workflow worked for me for many years so I’m not sure what can be going wrong now… Anything I should check or any troubleshooting steps I can perform?

I’m happy to add more details or clarify things if that helps.

[VioletG]

Apologies for a duplicate post but I got no responses when I posted this as a Discussion so hoping to get more traction with a Bug report.

For the last couple of weeks (possibly since upgrading 12.0 or 12.0.1 but I’m not 100% sure of that) I’m hitting a weird problem which I’m not sure if it’s caused by me doing something wrong, a behavior change in LrC, a bug or something else.

My workflow is that I manage my photo files externally to LrC and store them on in a folder synced with OneDrive. After I add or delete photos, I go to my library in LrC, under Folders I select the folder I modified (typically a few levels deep in the folder tree) and do Command click -> Synchronize Folder… This brings up a Synchronize Folder “ABC” window which correctly identifies the changes so I click Synchronize and land on the Import screen. This is where I see the first oddity: even though the From field in the top left looks correct, the Source panel below has the root on my home folder selected and all the folders under it are grayed out and I can’t browse. The central panel shows the correct new photos so I can click Import nevertheless and get them into my catalog. However, the import doesn’t seem to be done correctly: instead of adding new photos to the catalog I was synchronizing, removing deleted ones and keeping the rest unchanged, the result is that the folder I was synchronizing now shows up under Folders as empty and there’s a new folder in the root of my Folders tree with the same name which contains all the right files but none of the edit history etc. for the files that were unchanged.

I tried restoring my catalog from backups as well as creating a new catalog and importing data from the previous one to check if this is an issue with my catalog file but the problem reproduces exactly the same regardless of that. Resetting preferences didn’t help either. I’m on Mac OS Ventura and I granted LrC full disk access.

Is this something that others hit as well? Am I doing something wrong here? This workflow worked for me for many years so I’m not sure what can be going wrong now… Anything I should check or any troubleshooting steps I can perform?

I’m happy to add more details or clarify things if that helps.

LrC version: 12.0.1

OS: MacOS Ventura 13.0.1

[VioletG]

@Rikk Flohr: Photography, thanks for merging the topics! Can you help me understand why moving it to Discussions is more correct than keeping it in Bugs? Judging by lack of responses, this isn't other community members aren't able to help with so I was hoping to have the Adobe team look at it by reporting a bug (since this is a new behavior and it's not what I would expect). I'm happy to keep it in Discussions if that makes more sense but would you be able to help get some traction on this issue?

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Sure,

Here are some things to think about:

• Discussions sees 20X the traffic of the Bug forum so your chance of being seen (and answered) is much greater.
• Bugs is reserved for bona fide confirmed bugs that have issues in our internal bug tracking system cross-referenced to them.

A bug report must have:

1. Complete system information (OS, LrVersion, Hardware Specs, etc)
2. A complete description of the problem
3. Here’s the big one: Repeatable instructions for reproducing the bug

Generally speaking, if a bug can’t be verified, or is missing critical information to verify it, is moved automatically back to Discussions.  We do make exceptions to this if Adobe Community Experts verify they can reproduce the bug or if we have a significant number of customers all reporting IDENTICAL (and that is the key) failures. Every situation is different and there are exceptions in extreme cases. 

A post with a clear descriptive subject line and step-by-step instructions for reproducing is going to get noticed and answered more quickly.  Hopefully one of our community experts will chime in and offer you some suggestions. 

~Rikk

[VioletG]

Thanks for all those details, that makes perfect sense! 🙂

[JohanElzenga]

This sounds like you are the victim of the 'capitalization problem'. That is not a bug in Lightroom, but an issue that can arise because Lightroom is case-sensitive while MacOS and Windows are not. See: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/capitalization-catalog-error/

[VioletG · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the hint, that helped a lot! It's not the capitalization error but something similar: after upgrading my MacOS, I also upgraded OneDrive and the path to my OneDrive files changed - before they were stored directly in my home directory and now they're under Library/CloudStorage/ with a link in the home directory. While it is transparent to me as a user, apparently Lightroom gets the full path, even if the path presented to me as a user goes through the link in my home directory. Updating the path to the root of my Folders tree solved the issue 🙂