Missing files

Hi all

I have a problem that I am not able to solve.

I took a series of photos with three different cameras at the same time, two DSRL (RAW + jpg files) and a compact (jpg files,) but I forgot to synchronize the machines, so I found myself with three series of images not synchronized.

To solve the problem, I imported it into three different Lightroom folders, modified the times and moved them to a fourth folder, again using Lightroom.

I deleted the three original folders now empty and I examined all the photos to verify the synchronization, a perfectly successful operation.

I then began to process the photos, starting from the first; after a few days of work, the photos are around 5000, I realized that 160 of the photos taken with the compact were gone, some of which were certainly present in the original import.

Assuming I have deleted them by mistake, I have imported them back into a Lightroom folder, which is very simple since Lightroom highlighted the missing photos during the import, I corrected the date for the synchronization and tried to transfer them to the work folder.

The operation failed because Lightroom told me that it was impossible to move the photos because they were already there!

I then tried to synchronize the folder, but the answer was that there was no photo to sync in the folder.

I opened the folder in the Finder and I could verify that all the photos were actually present in the folder on my Mac but absent in Lightroom’s grid view (no filter in action).

I then deleted some of these photos from the folder and I repeated the move operation between folders through Lightroom; so I was able to make these photos reappear in the grid view and in the Mac folder.

The problem, however, is not solved because, synchronizing the folder, Lightroom tells me the new photos added as missing in the folder and proposes to delete them from the grid view!

Summarizing: the photos are there, but they are not seen; you cannot replace them even if Lightroom indicates them as missing photos when importing; manually forcing the replacement Lightroom refuses to recognize the photos.

What to do?