LR contains duplicate images after syncing LRC Original and Virtual copies

[Tommo Smith]

There are 32,658 photos listed in the content in my ItalyCollection in Lightroom Classic, which I started to sync to Lightroom because I wanted to cull this collection using multiple devices away from my desktop. While this collection was syncing,, I was browsing the Library in Grid View and noticed the Library Filter "Attributes"  and the "kind" attribute with its three icons buttons located after the colors on the far right side:  Original photo negative icon button with horizontal sproket holes; virtual copy icon photo button with boarder and lower left corner upturned "dogear" and video icon button with its typical vertical sproket holes. For my collection, I was shocked to realize that both the Original photos and Virtual Copy buttons were "selected" or switched on. When I switched off the virtual copy photo icon button, leaving the Original photos on my Italy Collection, I had 1606 photos! Not wanting to cull virtual copies in LR - I realized I needed to create a new collection of just originals (Am I thinking about this in the right way?) I selected 'All' because the Originals were being displayed in the Grid and created a new collection titled 'ItalyOriginals'.

I had been syncing 32,358 photos, but now I had the knowlege that there were only 1,606 originals. LRC had been syncing for 12 hours. I had been monitoring this and was surprised to see the same image uploaded multiple times - see attachment. I immediately paused syncing because I was using the wrong collection, which included virtual copies and duplicates that were being uploaded.

In Lightroom, I have now have 7813 photos, and none of the thumbnails have the virtual copy "dogears"
 and duplicate images have been synced.  After catching the error of both Originals and virtual copies In LRC, I restarted syncing the "ItalyOriginals" collection, and it now appears in LR as an Album Named "ItalyOriginals".  Out of the 7813 photos in LR, which ones are from the "ItalyOrginals" LRC collection - which contains 1606 photos? I want to keep these 1606 photos and delete the rest from LR - is there a way to sort it out? Is there a way to select all the images in a particular album, given the total number of photos in LR? Should I work on culling the 1606 images in the ItalyOriginals Album and ignore the 6,000 or so other images?  Any advice for cleaning out LR would be much appreciated or how to start over.

[Rob_Cullen]

I cannot be certain what will happen if you interrupt syncing, but to remove the Virtual copies from Lightroom-

1. View the ItalyCollection in grid view

2. Select all Virtual copies (you can filter with the VC icon)

3. Go to the 'All Synced Photographs' list in the Catalog panel  (Note the VCs will be selected)

4. [Right-CLick] on one of the selected images and choose [ Remove from all synced photographs]

This will delete them, the VC versions, from Lightroom and empty them from the italycollection.  The un-selected originals will remain in the LrC italycollection and the Lr italycollection album.

Strange that you had so many Virtual copy images in that italycollection! How did you add them?

The 'dogears' that indicate a VC in Lr-Classic do not appear in Lr.

If you have synced the same original photo twice by having the same photo in two LrC synced collections- Lr will recognize it is the same image but will show it in two Lr Albums {italycollection  and  italyoriginals). So I suspect you will see  1606 images in the Lr italycollection album, and the same images included with the 7813 photos in the italyoriginals album.