Light Room Classic getting "stuck" on importing photos.

[benr17125972]

Lightroom has worked fine for me for years until last week. Now I cannot import photos. I am working on a Desktop Windows 10. I plug the camera in like usual. I select the photos that I need to import (ensuring they all have the tick). and I click Import. And the bar opens up but no progress happens. I left it all night and nothing came in. I can manually cancel the import, and when I do it says "No photos or videos were found to import."

I have tried the following: 

- Restarting the computer

- copying the images to a hard drive and importing from there (same problem happens this way too).

below is a screen shot of where it gets "stuck."

{Moved from Lightroom Cloud to Lightroom Classic Forum by Moderator} 

[Ian Lyons]

Have you tried resetting the LrC Preference file? If not, then follow the procedure set out in Method 1 at https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/reset-preferences.html

[benr17125972]

Thank You Ian. I have just followed the instructions and reset my preference file but the problem still persists.

[dj_paige]

Please show us a similar screen capture of the Import dialog box just before it gets stuck.

[benr17125972]

[dj_paige]

Is there one or more videos in the files you are trying to import ?

[benr17125972]

No videos. Just a hand ful of photos. Not even 1gig worth. There is 17 free gig of space on the C Drive. 

[GoldingD · Accepted solution]

Two Observations:

1. I see that you have selected Devices as opposed to Files in the Import source. LrC can be a bit obstinate when you select Devices. Sometime way back, Adobe recommended not doing that. In your case, the source shows up in both Devices and Files, so you could select Files. Try that.
2. I see in the Folders panel that many Folders are missing. The LrC Catalog is a database and as such may not like clutter or misinformation. Try to keep your Folder structure clean. Try repairing the missing folders issue and see if that helps.

[benr17125972]

Hey GoldingD. I have tried to select the new images from the files rather than devices. There issue still persists. 

In regards to the folders that are missing. When my computer has space issues I clear space by cut pasting the Raw images onto external hard drives. That is why several folders are missing. This is something I have always done and it has never been a problem in the past. If I need to re-visit the images I just find them on the hard drives and re-link them. 

[benr17125972]

Hi GoldingD. I was a skeptic about your idea regarding the catalog database. But I decided to re-link some of the missing folders and then run an import again and it seems to be working now! Thank you so much for your suggestions. 

[Amos_Amartey2243]

Hello. I'm going through the same issue. Can you please explain how you went about it

[Srishti Bali]

Hi @Amos_Amartey2243

Sorry for the delayed response. Hopefully the issue is already resolved, but if not, to help narrow this down, could you please share a bit more information:

• Which version of Lightroom are you using?

• What is the file format of the photos you’re trying to import (RAW, JPEG, etc.)?

• Are you importing directly from the camera, or from a memory card / hard drive / network drive?

In the meantime, you can also try resetting Lightroom preferences (after creating a backup) and see if that helps: Reset Preferences.

Regards,

Srishti

[andrewl23271864]

I am having the same problem as the original post.  Since v14 LrC gets stuck importing photos from either the C: drive or an external drive.  It may import (copy or add) a few, but then just hangs.  I've tried reinstalling LrC, updating to v15, creating a new catalog, resetting LrC preferences to default, and restarting the computer.  I've had 3 Adobe techs and one senior tech try to fix this but they can't figure it out either.  The senior tech promised to get back to me with an answer in 48 hours -- that was one week ago!  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

BTW:  I'm on a Windows 11 PC and am importing RAW, JPG and DNG photos.

[Ian Lyons]

Did you read and follow the advise provided in the answer marked as correct? It's shaded green in forum.

[andrewl23271864]

Yes.  I am not importing from devices but from a folder on either the C: drive or the E: drive.  My folder structure seems fine.

[Amos_Amartey2243]

Instead of importing them normally, ensure there are no video files then
open the folder that contains the images, select all the images and just
drag and drop into lightroom

[andrewl23271864]

Thanks for your suggestion but unfortunately it didn't work.  I chose a few images without a movie, dragged the to LrC and it hangs on "importing files at current location".  Nothing happens.

[andrewl23271864 · Accepted solution]

Just for follow up, I spoke to a senior Adobe tech who had me import one image from my group first and then import all the rest.  For some reason, that works.  He says it is not a problem with LrC but it seems strange.