Legend

Answered

Last few folders missing in Lightroom for last year’s shoots

Forum|Forum|11 months ago
May 2, 2025
3 replies
2236 views

I catalog my folders by year and then inside, by date of shoot. For some reason the last few folders for December of last year are not showing in Lightroom Library view. I've heard that Lightroom on Windows only allows 1600 folders in a folder. Is that true also for a Mac? The folders are there, and were cataloged at the times of the shoots but now they do not show up. Can I repair this or do I need to use a work-around using another program to view the folders? Any suggestion to how to fix this so I can see the folders and images that are there?

macOS

Correct answer Ken Nielsen

I've considered all that is being posted and it occurred to me to "Add" the missing folders to the catalog, as they were at one time. Nothing moved, no changes but it's working right now and adding the missing folders back into the catalog. When it's done, I'll come back here and proclaim success or failure... let's hope for success...

D

drtonyb

Legend

Thanks @Ian Lyons. It's a 32767 pixel limit equating to about 1600 entries.

Ian Lyons

Community Expert

@drtonyb you are correct, not sure why I wrote px

D

drtonyb

Legend

@Ken Nielsen

The limit of 1600 you mention is related to a pixel dimension limit for a panel in Windows, but I'm not sure about any such limit in MacOS. This limit is a display problem, not a limit on the number of folders that LrC can store in the catalog.

If the issue were happening for you, I would expect that you don't have 1600 years worth of Year folders! With the 1600 limit, collapsing all the years' sub folders should list them all. To do that easily, you would need to be showing the parent folder of all the year folders. You can then Alt/Option click the Open/Close icon on the parent folder to collapse all folders, then click again without the Alt/Option key to reveal one level of folders under the parent, i.e. the year folders.

All Photographs is in the Catalog panel. Turn off filtering in the Library Filter bar, which is only shown when in Library Grid view; select Filters Off from the drop down list on the right side next the lock icon. If you can't see the Library Filter bar, press the \ key to show it.

Ian Lyons

Community Expert

The 1600px issue is Windows only, it does not affect LrC running on macOS

Ken NielsenAuthor

Legend

I see you have marked your answer correct, and I disagree. I point this out in case others are in the situation where they can't find a folder in LrC. There are cases where importing is the wrong thing to do. If the photos were already in the catalog, now you have two copies of each photo, with different edits and different user provided metadata, and this leads to confusion and you have not solved the problem, in fact you have made the problem potentially worse.

We see all the time here in the forum people have imported photos into the catalog while (accidentally) using the wrong import settings and so LrC thinks the photos are in a different folder than the human user thinks the photos are in. The user can't find these photos in LrC (sound familiar?). Importing wasn't necessary and will lead to future confusion. And there was no need to import the photos again, the better approach was to find the photos and then fix the location of the photos.

Okay, we're on the same page on this I do think "the better approach was to find the photos and then fix the location of the photos." I may not and do not want to re-create the problem. And I agree with you on 'best approach' but the missing folders were not recognized as 'missing' so I couldn't instruct Lightroom to 'locate' missing items as would be easy to do and I do use when an item that Lightroom knows about has sudddnly lost contact with. Let me run my working routine over the next 24 hours to be sure, but it looks now, that the missing items that Lightroom had completely lost contact with are now recognized, added in place, and 100% restored, but only by going through the process of 'adding' them back to the catalog.

PS: I also add here that I have checked the contents of the 'added' thus recovered folders in place and see that all of my edits and ratings are fully there for all folders. Hooray, I have lost nothing, Whew! I realize that this is no small thing as I have endless hours and days of work poured into my images, over a month's worth of work, all recovered and all there.

dj_paige

Legend

As an experiment, in LrC find the photos from one of these folders some other way. Click on All Photographs and turn off all filters. Then use the filter bar, set it to filter for the capture date of one of these photos. Do you find them?

Ken NielsenAuthor

Legend

I will give this a try, will be looking for where to click on all photos... then turn off all filters... will come back if I need help with that. These were entered into Lightroom at the times they were shot with no problems so everything should be exactly as accounted for. I will report back...

Ken NielsenAuthor

Legend

Okay, I was able to enter 'text' into the filter bar and searched on the date which is contained in the missing folder name and nothing came up. I think I need to 'import' these foklders into the catalog again. Does that sound correct. should I try an import to bring them back in?

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