Lightroom Classic STILL won’t finish syncing

[musicfan145]

I’ve been using Lightroom Classic CC on Windows 10 (and the mobile Lightroom app on two iOS devices) for a few months now, and the Lightroom Classic just won’t finish syncing. The numbers vary depending on what solutions I try, but it is currently stuck at 2,341 items remaiming, but only 7 or so items (none of which are listed as errors) showing in the sync activity queue in Preferences.

Among the solutions I’ve tried:

- Alt click to Rebuild Sync Data (many times)

- Delete Sync.lrdata folder (numerous times)

- Updated to version 7.5 (more errors)

- Downgraded to version 7.4 (still errors)

- Updated to version 8.0 (still errors)

- Signed out of CC and signed back in

- Installed a new 1TB SSD, performed a clean install of Windows 10 and Lightroom Classic 8.0, moved all my photos from a network drive to the internal SSD, and updated the LR catalog accordingly. Rebuilt sync data again twice (once with each method).

The current Sync Activity queue has the following items:

5 items listed as  “Downloading” and 2 marked “Pending.” 6 of these items are photos that were taken on iOS since the new install. The other pending is a photo that was deleted from Lightroom Classic since the new install (because it was giving a sync error).

Anyone have any ideas for how to get sync to work properly? I’m getting pretty sick of paying Adobe for the privilege of being a beta tester for this software.

[musicfan145 · Accepted solution]

OK, I can't believe I solved this problem myself a day after posting this question, especially since I have been wrestling with this for months. Apparently, almost all of the issues were related to Lightroom's garbage implementation of HEIC. Nearly all of the 2,300 stuck files were photos taken on iOS in HEIC, imported into Lightroom CC mobile, uploaded to the Lightroom cloud, then downloaded to Lightroom Classic on Windows. Some were converted to JPEG, many were copied over as HEIC, but all seemed to have XMP sidecar files with them that were causing a metadata conflict.

I tried a lot of different things, but here's a short version of how I ended up fixing the issue. Obviously, you'll want to back up your catalog and your photos before trying any of this, and you might even want to back up the catalog several times during the process.

First, a baby step:

1. Open Lightroom Classic. Under Library > Catalog, click on All Photographs.
2. Filter by the following parameters:
   • Metadata: Camera = Unknown Camera (This is how I realized the metadata wasn't being read: Lightroom didn't even know what camera was used. It might be possible to accomplish the same thing by adding an a column for Metadata Status = Unknown or error. I didn't know this was possible until I had already finished.)
   • Attributes: Edits = None
   • Text: Filename contains HEIC
3. Scroll through and find a file with the icon indicating an error saving metadata (the icon with the exclamation point) . Click the icon and choose "read metadata from file."
4. If your case is like mine, the file will disappear from the filtered list (because Lightroom now knows what camera it was taken with), and in a minute or so, the number of files remaining to sync will drop by one.

If that worked (or you are just bothered that Lightroom doesn't know which camera took your HEIC files), you can try a bigger step:

1. With the same catalog filters applied, hit CTRL-A to select all the HEIC files with unknown camera and no edits.
2. With all these files selected, click on the "Error saving metadata" icon and choose "read metadata from file."
3. This will read the metadata for each file and write it to the Lightroom catalog, including the files with no errors. All the files should disappear from the "unknown camera" list. Because the metadata is being re-read for all the files, the number of files remaining to be synced may actually increase for a bit, but then it will drop.

Did that work? Now you can start removing filters one at a time and chipping away at the others in the list. Remove the filter for HEIC and see if the problem extends to other formats. Feeling more confident? Reapply the HEIC filter and remove the Edits=None filter. Pick a file you don't mind re-editing and re-read the metadata from the file. Are the edits lost or do they re-appear, along with the camera info? If your edits are being lost, maybe try overwriting the file's metadata with the Lightroom catalog data. You might lose the camera data, but your edits should be preserved. Keep going until you fix all the metadata errors & conflicts!

Note: Mine actually hung up several times when it encountered .MOV files that it could not read (14 of them, to be exact). I moved these files out of the Lightroom folder, removed them from the catalog, and re-started the process. Interestingly, these .MOV files did not have XMP sidecar files, unlike the other .MOV files that did not have errors. All of these were iOS videos shot since August 2018, so it is yet another problem with Lightroom CC mobile sync. Hopefully I can re-import any keepers without sync getting stuck.

Finally, I was left with about 5 files remaining, all of which were actually listed in the sync actions list in Preferences. All were files that came into Lightroom via the Lightroom Mobile app; they had synced down, but would not sync back up to the cloud. For these files, I opened each one in Lightroom Classic, made a small edit, then closed the file. After editing and closing, they synced back up successfully!