Lightroom WONT delete photos from disk

[_MIchael_J_Howard_]

I understand the diffrencce between deleting a photo from LR verses completely deleting from the disk.

However when I try to "delete a photo from disk" through light room it remains on my disk no matter what i do.

I do click the option "delete from disk" verses "remove" from LR

any ideas on what is happening here?

[Wolf Eilers]

>... I've found the solution for this issue on Vista. You need to run Lightroom under the administrator to be able to perform delete from disk.

Although I do not use Vista I find this very difficult to believe.

[jbm007]

Wolf depending on where you have your catalog Vista may require higher permissions to delete certain files and or folders. This happens more often then not when someone has folders and files in their "User" folder.

You can also right click the icon and select properties have the icon "default" load " run as administrator" each time.

Jim

[_KLozaw_]

I am having the same issue of files being deleted from LR but not the hard drive. I tried running under administrator mode and deleting.

The file was still there and appeared again when I synchronized the folder.

HELP!

Win Vista Home Premium
4 drives under RAID 5 totaling 1 TB
4GB RAM
Quad Core

[jbm007]

Find the folder where the inages are.

Right click on the folder.

Check properties\ security and make sure you have permision to change things in the folder.

You may have have a permission setting that does not allow you full control over the folder, even if you are running under adminstraive mode.

[_Matt_Bulow_]

Hi,

To permanently delete a file in Lightroom 2.x I've found it's necessary to first select "Delete photos" with a right-click of the mouse. Simply hitting the delete key will bring up the exact same menu which gives you the option of (supposedly) permanently deleting from disk or simply removing from the catalog. Unfortunately, the files are only ever really removed from the disk if you access this dialog box via the right mouse button - hitting delete on the keyboard will not permanently delete anything. They'll come back from the dead like zombies if you synch the folder, and if you look at the actual file in the OS they were never really gone in the first place. :(

What a stupid bug.

-Matt

[Guest]

There's no bug on this: Most of us are perfectly able to delete images from disk without any trouble.

There is a concurrent thread with various pointers; please see it.

[_Matt_Bulow_]

Umm, thanks for the link err I mean tip, John. I'll go search now.

-Matt

[Guest]

Good on ya, Matt.

Most folk here answering questions are unpaid, overworked, underloved, over hassled, under.... well, only the first is true for all of us. I had confidence that you would and could do your own search after the, um, tip.

[_Matt_Bulow_]

OK, I just spent a half hour searching for whatever John may have been talking about and by chance actually found something on page 6 within the countless threads regarding deleting photos on this forum that actually helped me. I have no idea if it is what John was referring to, and I can't stress enough how much I don't care.

Thankfully for anyone else out there with this problem who might stumble across this, I am going to directly post the solution, right here, right now, in this very thread, in the hopes that I will at some point save someone (or even several people! wouldn't that be cool?) a half hour of their lives.

Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Delete does the trick for me with LR 2.1. The photos are truly gone, out of the catalog, and out of the file on the disk for good, even after a synch.

I repeat: a program that tells you it will delete photos from disk and does not do so has a bug. A stupid one.

-Matt

[_Darlene_Gutierrez_]

THANKS MATT!!

I didn't have to search all morning for a solution to delete photos from my disk. The solution you so conveniently posted worked like a charm!

Bug or no, not being able to readily delete photos from my disk and not just the catalog is definitly a flaw...

Thanks again Matt for doing the legwork for me.

- Darlene

[_KLozaw_]

THANK YOU MATT!!

FINALLY a solution to my problem...no more transfering rejected photos to a special "to be deleted" folder!!!

Merry Christmas

Kevin

[_G_Rob_]

Ctrl-Alt-Shift-Delete; well I'm sorry to say this nor any of the other solutions or recommendations are working for me. This problem has been giving me a fit for a week. Running LR 2.1, Vista Ultimate and everything else I need with negative results. Does anyone have a solution or a recommendation for a better program that might work? I'm having the same problems with Elements 7 where I can only delete from the catalog but not from the drive or disk. All I can say is this is so frustrating. And yes everything runs as Administrator.

TIA
G Rob

[Guest]

You've checked to make sure there are no restrictions on any of the folders that contain images? Can you manually delete in Explorer? (Not that that is an acceptable solution, but to test.)

[_VishalRJoshi_]

Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Del does the trick for me too... Thanks a TON Matt and you indeed did save 1/2 hour of my life...

The keyboard delete button brings up a button which says files will be deleted from the disk but they are not... I don't think OS should determine the behavior of end user software, the software should be tested for it and made for it... Certainly this is a big usability issue (stupid bug as Matt puts it), this thread started in Nov 2007 and is still being discussed in Dec 2008, why doesn't Lightroom team care...

[Wolf Eilers]

> ... this thread started in Nov 2007 and is still being discussed in Dec 2008, why doesn't Lightroom team care...

I have no idea what the Lr team thinks or cares about but when I delete from Lr and it asks to delete from disk that is what happens. (Actually the file goes to the Windows Recycle Bin).

Why deletes apparently fail to work on other systems is a mystery to me.

[_Melissa_Esterline_]

Wow I can't believe Adobe hasn't posted an answer to this problem. Ok I found the answer/problem. You have to make sure that when you are importing your pics that you are only adding the photos without moving. By doing this you are leaving the pics in the original location and lightroom will then go to that location to delete them.

By default lightroom is set up to Copy the photos to a new location inside lightroom so that would be where lightroom thinks the pics are located. When you click delete from disk, lightroom deletes them from the new location.
So when you click import, find your pics, and a import photo box will appear. In the file handling drop down menu, click add photos to catalog without moving. Then try the deleting process again and you should be fine!

♥Melissa

[Lee_Jay-7OQGJF]

There's no "inside lightroom" for your image files. They are copied to the location of your choice.

[Guest]

Hmmm. I guess this is one of those magic "magnet" threads..........

Melissa-

It could be important for you to know exactly where your images are located- this in case of a crash, a disk failure, backup procedures, etc. It's not you I am singling out, but anyone who is uncertain how images are handled, and what gets backed up by LR: Only the catalog, which itself contains no images nor Previews.

[ElliR]

Um, very interesting. I have my images located on an EHD and backed up to another EHD (thank heavens) because something very strange happened today which I believe now explains previously lost images. With LR open but no editing taking place I happened to look inside the Recycle Bin (Windows). Low and behold within the Bin were six images that were previously contained within the catalogue and somehow mysteriously relocated to the Recycle Bin. Reducing LR's on-screen window size I then expanded the Recycle Bin window so now I had both open on screen. Upon exiting LR the icons for the missing images disappeared from the Recycle Bin so the question is, were they never there really, were the icons in the Bin simply ghosts or did LR simply delete images of it's own free will? Either way, I never now leave LR open whilst doing other work, and most certainly when empyting the Recycle Bin.

And yes, briefly back OT - I too have noticed on many an occasion LR not deleting images from disk when requested, only from the catalogue. In this instance what I do is a fresh import which of course shows these images as being the latest import at the top of the tree and with only these images shown in the main library window. When selecting all and opting for Delete from Disk they are in fact completely deleted and end up in the Recycle Bin.

[_Melissa_Esterline_]

Ahhh come on guys, oh course I know where my images are. (safely located on my externals and burned to back up dvds)
I was using the term "inside lightroom" loosely. I think we all know that we dedicate an area for the file to go when you import them into Lightroom, but yeah thanks John for the warning on knowing where my files are...
Oh and it's a magic magnet thread because people are obviously still having this problem??

[David Ayars]

If you're having problems with this with LR in XP, as I did too, experiment a bit to figure out what's going on. If you tell Lightroom to delete an image, and it asks you whether to "Delete from Disk" (send it to the Recycle Bin) or "Remove" (it from Lightroom), and you tell LR to "Delete from Disk", immediately check your Recycle Bin and click "Date Deleted" at the top so you get a downward arrow, and see if the deleted image file is there at the top of the list. If it is, it *was* deleted by LR. Notice in the Recycle Bin at the top where it says "Original Location". For me that's "[Data Drive]: Lightroom Imports/..." But you may well have the same photo file in a second location on a hard drive or memory card as well, the location from which you imported it into Lightroom. Lightroom won't delete the photo file at that second location. If that's where you've been checking your hard drive and deciding Lightroom isn't deleting your file, then obviously, you're looking in the wrong place. You have to delete unwanted photo files in those original locations some other way.

Also, as noted above, Lightroom does behave differently when you tell it to delete a photo depending whether you're looking at the photo in a Lightroom Folder or in a Lightroom Collection. In a Collection, if you tell LR to delete the photo, it removes it immediately without asking whether you want to "Delete from Disk" or "Remove", but only from that collection; the file remains on the hard drive at the location to which you told Lightroom to import it. If you want Lightroom to truly delete the file from that location on the hard drive, delete it when highlighted in a Folder, or from All Photographs (found in Library module in the column on the left side) and make sure you get and accept the choice to "Delete from Disk". If you don't get that choice, you're probably not removing it from the hard drive.

/LR2.3 on XP Pro SP3

[Guest]

> I was using the term "inside lightroom" loosely. I think we all know that we dedicate an area for the file to go when you import them into Lightroom, but yeah thanks John for the warning on knowing where my files are...

Yeah, it's now clear you know, but based on what you first wrote, it wasn't, and, truly, some do not know, and think... well, all kinds of things. Sorry.

[FG_Photography-QuwSIV]

Hello everyone, surprisingly I'M ALSO SUFFERING THIS BUG !!

LR use to ask me if I wanted to delete a photo from the disk or just from the catalog when I hit the delete button, I'm doing it exactly in the same view that I use to, Library > loop etc.. same all, no joy.... basically the delete choice is the menu Edit is greyed out, also Cut, Copy and Paste are.

I'm on local, not network drive...

I'm running LR 2.4 in a PowerBook G4 on Mac OS X 10.5.7.

I would be very interested to know how to fix this BUG, as it's costing me time and money having to go to the folders and delete my rejected pics manually !! that sucks....

Also tried from Menu > Photo > Delete Rejected Photos/Delete Photo and same all, not joy... the pics disappear from the collection/catalog.. but they are still in the folders....

I also tried to reset all warning dialogs in the Preferences > General, thinking that I was missing the menu or that I could have tick the box to "stop bothering me with the bloody message ! " but not ! ... there was not change, Lr will not let me delete the pics from the Disk.....

After all this time using the appl i have to say that is the only flaw that I have come across with, and it's a shame to do so...

If anybody find a solution please let me know, however the developers from Adobe should start looking at this blogs !!!!!!!!!!

Good luck to ye all

[mjdsullivan]

I'll go a step further, as one who managed software testers for a living...  this is what one would called a straightline bug, should be in the build verification tests for the product.

for me, unfortunately ctrl-alt-shift-del doesn't work either, though it does bring up a different dialog box which says "Trash the ## selected photo files?  This operation is not undoable.  Files selected in this way will be removed to the Recycle Bin in Explorer.  They will be removed from Lightroom."

No dice with either method.

1. I have LR 2.4 (64-bit) running on Windows 7.  While the latter could be related, all the posts on this forum make me think it's not.

2. I've run in both normal and adminstrator modes.

3. files and parent folders are NOT read-only.

4. files are on local disk only.

Incidentally, ctrl-alt-shift-del should not be required.  When the button on a dialog box says "delete from disk", it should function just as written, not require an obscure feature (thanks Matt for finding that) buried deep in the doc.  the diff is not clear to the user.

Smaller issue, I actually first found this topic in forums while trying to figure out why "Photo-->Delete Rejected Photos..." was grayed out.  I gather it's an internal reason (e.g. app has decide what to show after the delete), but why not permit me to delete photos from a collection view.

All that said, rest of this app rocks!  but this straightline of a bug bugs me.  I have to use explorer now to clean out files, but I can find a way with keywords, e.g. use the windows photo viewer after keywording files as "to delete".

[BobL727]

I"m having a similar problem.  After marking images to delete with "x", I go to photo/delete rejected photos and get the message asking if I wish to delete from disk.  After saying yes, I get the message that "8 photos could not be moved to the recycle bin"  I've tried this several times, in Library/grid mode.  The recycle bin is empty.  The images are on a remote hard drive.  If I go to the drive and delete the image, and then return to LR, I do get the ? on the image showing it was deleted, and I can then delete it from the LR catalog.  But this is VERY tedious. 

Lightroom 3.1, Windows Vista 64 bit.  Hope someone can advise!