Lightroom classic library has stopped creating new folders

[andrewz63596914]

I have a white bread folder system in classic Lightroom. It was set up to create a new folder for each date on which photos were taken. It is probably my fault, but things suddenly changed in October. Lightroom no longer creates new folders when new files from a new date are uploaded. The files appear in the 'all photographs' folder but no new folders are created.

This is probably some mistake I made but my efforts to find a fix have failed. If anyone can figure our what's happening and how to solve it, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks.

Z

[Rob_Cullen]

In "All Photographs"- Select one of the recent imported photos and [Right-Click] to choose "Go to Folder in Library".

What Folder- in the Folders Panel- does this image exist?

A Screen-clip of this Folders Panel view would be helpful.

It is possible that the options in the Import 'Destination' Panel have changed, but first you need to determine the physical Folder location of the files.

'All Photographs' is NOT a folder- it is simply a list of the last imported files, and it will be changed and updated when you next do another session of importing.

[richardplondon]

"All Photographs"presents all images in the whole library. There is a separate option to view only those in the most recent batch of imports. Both of these disregard the physical folder location of the images.

The filing of newly imported images depends on your import options. Doing this is not possible with an "Add" import, only when your import does a Move or a Copy. A Destination location is then chosen. The images will copy (or move) inside this location but there are further options governing subfolders to be used. It is usual to leave this main destination the same for all your imports, and to vary the subfolders depending on each individual case.

One way to achieve different subfolders is to check the "into Subfolder" option and to type in a suitable name for this, for each batch. If so, this becomes the new main destination.

There is another choice as to how the imported files are to be organised inside that.

If set to "Into one folder" everything is just put straight in. If set to "original folders" a subfolder is made to correspond to each folder in the source location  - such as, the camera generated folders on an SD card. If set to "by date" the photos are filed according to their capture dates according to a date scheme. One such scheme is YYYY / MM / DD, or there are others provided, or you can define your own.

IMO it is not helpful to use both the "into subfolder" and the "by date" options together - because the order in which these are applied is not useful IMHO. Say one time you make subfolder "A" and year / month / day filing happens within that: next time if you make subfolder "B" this will create an entirely different date structure inside; you will get two completely independent "2019" year folders, etc... and not, a unified date structure as you would if filed directly into the standard Destination.

Once an import setup is defined that gives the desired result - ideally, carried out by LR alone without your needing to manually intervene, hence naturally consistent and pilot-error free - it is a very good idea to save this setup as a named import preset. Then you will not rely so much on LR's remembered last import settings, being what you next want to do. You can at will recall some tried and tested settings by name. 

[andrewz63596914]

Thanks. A great suggestion.

It took several tries for Lightroom to respond to the request to go to the library, but when it did, the missing folders all suddenly appeared..

I still don't know exactly what happened, but for the moment, everything appears back in order.

Z.