Moving child keyword out of parent list to make it a top level key word in Lightroom 6

[davide70602713]

Hello.. this is just what the question is asking... I have a large number of child keywords that have been inadvertently listed under a parent. I want to move them from being a child to be a top level but if I try to drag and drop them from out from below the parent, they can only go into another top level keyword and can't be a top level themselves... any ideas?... thaks...

[Rob_Cullen]

Dragging the Keyword to a new place needs superfine mouse movement to place it where you want.

As you drag you will see the cursor change to a pointer with a rectangular box.

The place to drop the keyword has to be highlighted- and that is the subtle detail- To place it to a top level you need to see a fine highlight line between other 'parent'  keywords, or at the top of the Keyword list (it will sort alphabetically).

If a Keyword line is 'fully' highlighted, then you are placing it as a 'Child' under a 'Parent'.

[davide70602713]

Yes, that is how the "science" is supposed to work... but I've had to turn it into a low tech video game as there is no rhyme or reason as to when the slot will open. Some folders will not open it no matter how much it lingers. Some groups won't open the slot but then if I drop two or three folders then the slot will open. And then when I grab one of the folders that was in the last group that wouldn't open the slot, then the folder will open the slot... then I grab another from the group but it won't open the slot....  the slot seems to be very tempramental and seems to reject larger files or larger groups more than it does folders with 1-5 photos in it.... not a very efficient way to move keywords... I think it's going to be a 2-3 hour process!

[davide70602713]

Can you try to move a keyword that has say 300 photos in it and see if the slot opens and also try to grab about 20 keywords with maybe 100+ photos and see if the slot opens?.... those larger ones(and some of the smaller ones) are giving me a lot of trouble...

[Rob_Cullen · Accepted solution]

I agree- it is tricky getting the highlight to appear is the hard part.

Perhaps it is just your word description, but a "slot" does not open, or expand the keywords apart. It will only be the feint highlight to see that determines 'where' your keyword drops in the hierarchy.

The number of photos with a Keyword assigned should have no bearing on the ability to re-arrange Keyword hierarchies.

I can select multiple keywords (Hold [Ctrl] and click) and drag them to a 'top' level to appear as 'Parents'  (Numbers sort before letters)

And then drag them back as 'Child' keywords under "WHEN#"

[John R Ellis]

David,

Are you on Windows and do you have a very large number of keywords?  Windows LR has a long-standing bug that causes the Keyword List panel to go wonky when more than about 1500 keywords are being displayed in it (keywords in collapsed parent keywords don't count). 

If this might apply to you, try completely collapsing all top-level keywords -- hold down Alt when you click on the triangle to the left of the keyword. Then as you incrementally expand the hierarchy to rearrange it, it's more likely that less than 1500 keywords will be displayed at any one time.

[davide70602713]

I have about 1500 and most are top level... I've been moving my identified people into children under "people" keyword.... but again, not all the named people keywords can be moved from the child position and once I do have them all moved and close the de-expand the "people" keywords, they'll be less than 100 which is only going to keep me up a little below 1500. In the modern world, you wouldn't think that 1500 text keywords would be a problem!!

[John R Ellis]

One trick for making it easier to drag-and-drop keywords, regardless of whether you're encountering the 1500-bug, is to type the source keyword and destination keyword in the Search box of the Keyword List panel, e.g.

Then only keywords containing the two words you typed will show in the Keyword List. This ensues that you're not trying to display 1500 keywords and triggering the bug.

[davide70602713]

thanks John... that helps to make less words to sift through, but I think my bug is not the normal 1500 Keyword bug... even with only the one keyword there, the slot won't open....

[John R Ellis]

even with only the one keyword there, the slot won't open....

Two generic troubleshooting suggestions:

1. Post a screen recording of what's going on. That might give additional clues.

2. Try resetting LR's preferences: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/articles-page/how-do-i-reset-lightrooms-preferences/ . That often fixes mysterious problems with LR's user interface (unfortunately).

[Rob_Cullen]

Have you calibrated your monitor?

The grey highlight that would indicate where a keyword would drop as it is dragged, is VERY feint. A poorly calibrated monitor may not show the difference between the 'drop zone' and the normal grey background of the keywords.

Here is what I see-

[davide70602713]

thanks ..... it works absolutely fine with some keywords and not at all with others... and when it does work, it works fine! So it seems to me that it's something to do with the individual keywords and something to do with them... the 1000+ that did work were very easy to do and the slot opened up but the ones that don't work just won't open the slot... it will only highlight on or the other of the top level keywords.... I have about 50 keywords now that just won't work... not matter what... so I'm opening up all the photos and removing the "<top level keyword" in the list of keywords....and once I do that it's moving the last keywords out of the child position to top level...

[Gawrobryk]

I had Chinatown under Locations. I had the same issue - could not move up sub-keyword in hierarchy. I changed the name for Chinatow_1 and boom! On that occasion Chinatown_1 appeared near another Chinatown (with 2 photos only) which I forgot about. I opened all the photos in Chinatown and changed the keyword for Chinatown_1. Then removed empty Chinatown so the system allowed me to change the name of Chinatown_1 back for Chinatown. Of course it would be easier just to change all pictures with Chinatown_1 to Chinatown then empty Chinatown_1 can go to hell (no need to change name again) but I did not sleep long enough and did that mistake 😁.

[nxf2]

I am very methodical so tried as many different ways to achive this with about 10% success rate. It appears that newly made (or edited) or made with a newer version of LR, keywords do not 'seem' to exhibit the dropping inbetween problem. Time is important so the quickest way to do this with older keywords is ...

1) Rename the keyword (i.e. Sunset becomes Sunset1)

2) Move keyword as suggested by the clever Rob Cullin (No entry icon should change to rectangle and when moving a narrow highlighted line should appear between parents, drop on to this line)

3) Rename back to original (Sunset1 becomes Sunset)

Not sure if this is a bug but as software develops often little hiccups get left behind.

If for some reason this does not work (I only tested on a few devices), the following should be 100% ...

1) Select (highlight) the original child keyword, rename slightly (i.e. add suffix 1 to end of name), then use the right arrow that now appears to show all keyworded images,

2) CTRL + A to select all

3) Create New Keyword Tag (+ icon left of Keyword List), then in pop-up, Keyword Name: add same name as original child keyword, then in the Creation Options section at the bottom ...

     3a) Ensure only Add to selected photos is ticked 

4) Delete the old sub-keyword.