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rickt51014092
Participant
April 6, 2024
Question

Missing files, unable to find in search attempts

  • April 6, 2024
  • 1 reply
  • 539 views

Hi everyone!

I have found myself in a situatuion as a fairly novice LR Classic user that I cannot seem to resolove.

 

After a recent import  I found exclaimatiom marks on every image (no changes to cat or file location or name changes  to files).

After several youtube tutorials I have since attempted to 'find missing files' on my portable drive but with no luck and have searched in finder on my apple mac drive with nothing - I have never stored images here but checked anyway.

 

Back ground info....

1) the only variation from 'normal' before this import is that I imported a couple of JPG's straight to my phone during the shoot via Fuji X app. I didn't think this would have an effect on my problem?

 

2) I don't recall backing up data as i didn't actually close the app before discovering missing images (I always do this when closing LR).

 

3) There is a remote chance that we had a power outage while LR remained open but asleap. Could this have corrupted the files on portable drive that is powered from imac? I cannot confirm this even happened

 

4) My memory if foggy now but there was a light grey cat folder under my previous imports with an exclaimation mark. I followed this link to find them but unknowingly told LR to look in a folder of a previous import and followed this by saying to merge with this folder...the previews are now located in shoot folder from a previous day.

 

5) I can still see all previews from the shoot but when searching any of the file names on internal or external drives, nothing comes up.

 

Please help!! This was a tricky to recreate shoot and i'm very stressed that they are unusable at the moment.

 

Many thanks in advance 🙂

Rick

 

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

D
dj_paige
Legend
April 6, 2024

For one such example file which has an exclamation point icon, write down the actual file name, and write down the folder that Lightroom Classic thinks the photo is in. Then in your operating system, use the OS search feature to search all folders on all disks for this file name. Write down what folder it is found in.

 

Then in LrC, click on the exclamation point icon (see Figure 2 here) and then point to the folder where the file is actually found in, which you just wrote down when the OS search found the file. 

 

If your OS doesn't find a photo by this name, you need to restore the photos from the camera card or recent backups.


Question: are there exclamation point icons on the folders in the Folder Panel? If so, the same linked document will allow you to fix an entire folders or entire hierarchy of folders with one action.

R
rickt51014092Author
Participant
April 6, 2024

Thanks for your reply but unfortunately I have already done these searches with no result.

Oddly when the images first came in I very quickly cropped a couple of them so I assume LR must have had access to the original file at that point?? A couple days later I can't access the develop module but these images remain cropped in preview grid with grainy detail

 

Cheers

D
dj_paige
Legend
April 6, 2024
quote

Thanks for your reply but unfortunately I have already done these searches with no result.

Oddly when the images first came in I very quickly cropped a couple of them so I assume LR must have had access to the original file at that point?? A couple days later I can't access the develop module but these images remain cropped in preview grid with grainy detail

 

Cheers


By @rickt51014092

 

This sounds like the originals are still on the camera card, and were never on a hard disk. So, the first part of my instructions still are valid: "For one such example file which has an exclamation point icon, write down the actual file name, and write down the disk and folder that Lightroom Classic thinks the photo is in."

 

Does Lightroom Classic think the photo is on some external drive, which could be the camera card?

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