Problems moving and renaming folders

[Benderino]

I have numerous issues when I try to move or rename a folder.

Often I get error messages like "The folder ... could not be renamed or moved". Sometimes a variant.

It's not a permissions problem as eventually it works.

Sometimes I need to go play a video in an other folder. Sometimes I need to deselect the folder to move it. Sometimes I need to select it to move it. Sometimes it only helps to wait for another day and try again.

When searching this forum I see people complaining with the same issue from years ago. So why is this issue still not solved? It seems to be mostly with folders that have videos in them.

Even if there is a good reason not to move/rename a folder, it should give a better error to indicate what is wrong (but really it should solve the issue itself or wait until the issue is solved).

[GoldingD]

LrC is not actually meant for video, oh you can manage the file location, but editing, yell not. As such Adobe may be not exactly treating issues with any concern like this one. 

One workaround to consider, locate your videos in their own folder, not commingled with photos. That way, hopefully, only that folder will be a pain in the...

[JohanElzenga]

I have never encountered this problem myself, but a solution would be to move/rename the folder in Windows Explorer. The folder in Lightroom Classic will then become 'missing' (question mark and its name in italics), so you need to 'reconnect' it as follows. Right-click on the folder in the Lightroom folder panel and choose 'Find Missing Folder'. In the dialog that comes up, navigate to the folder in its new location/name on disk and select it. Done.

[Benderino]

It also happens when moving/renaming folders without videos in them. It happens when moving photos. It happens when trying to delete photos.

It looks like Lightroom has a photo locked for some reason and that is the reason why it can't be moved, but in that case Lightroom knows it did that and should at least tell me that and possibly provide a retry button.

[Benderino]

Once again I'm trying to move a folder and I'm getting "Could not complete the folder move. An unknown error occurred".

This is a real pain as I have to find the right folder again and drag it to the correct folder (there's a lot of them).

Surely I can't be the only one with this problem

[Geoff the kiwi]

A pretty good start would be star your Lightroom version, OS, where the files are located and where you are trying to move them. 
see Lightroom is a database and calls the OS to move the files so the issue you have (and it is not anything common I can tell you) is related to the OS operations. But you have provided no information. Please do so.

Screen shots inserted using the Icon for photo insertion in the Reply tool bar would also help.

[Benderino]

I'm sorry for not providing more information.

My Lightroom Classic is the latest version 13.2.

I'm using Windows 11 pro (but recently 10).

The files are on an external USB drive.

I shall see for screenshots

[Benderino]

Just had this one when moving files. The second attempt did succeed.

[Benderino]

Now I'm pretty sure it's because there is a video in it that I played last and I also cannot delete/move that video.

Only solution now is to go play some other video and then retry.

[Benderino]

I didn't even play this one

[Benderino]

Idem

[Benderino]

This time there was no video involved. It worked on second attempt.

[AEStagge]

I get the same message frequently. It is aggravating, and it has been happening for many years through many versions. It seems Adobe just doesn't have a fix.

[richardplondon]

Are your photo folders within 'Pictures'? If so, there can be problems with occasional OneDrive interference as it syncs user files to the cloud (everything within Documents, Pictures, Desktop etc being considered to be user files). And moving or renaming a folder will kick off a further flurry of OneDrive activity while it catches up with that change and mirrors it up to cloud.

I find it more robust to avoid that whole OneDrive issue by storing the LrC managed (imported) image folders outside of those library locations. And the same for the Catalog and its support folders. This does mean looking for some different (less officiously intrusive) backup method for all that.  One can still IMO happily direct exports to Pictures though, and let OneDrive back those up normally online - since the Catalog does not care about the moment-to-moment access status of its past exports (assuming not imported back to the Catalog).

As an immediate test, you might try pausing One Drive syncing and see whether that helps.

[AntonioEdwardo]

Thanks Richard for the advice! I could see OneDrive causing some issues for sure, but it is not part of my config. It seems to be related to video files, but I'm not certain. I think I will start taking notes to look for common threads.

Best,

AE

[richardplondon]

Perhaps it may be worth taking a look at the LrC Preferences / Performance tab, where there are controls for Video Cache. Just speculating that if LrC's video cache has ballooned (and it will tend to do so, if videos are being viewed inside the Catalog) to the point that it has hit its size limit - in which case clear space may need to be regained for this cache, which is probably not instant. If it were me, I would click the Purge Cache button after ensuring the cache size was not impractically small, but it makes sense to me to set some limit rather than eventually fill up the disk. How many GB is appropriate: no clue, sorry!