"Find nearby missing photos" option has been REMOVED from Locate Missing Photo???

[ofquiet]

Hi I will spare the boring details but all of my missing photos are in the same folder (but have different parent folders so I can't correct it that way). I thought it would be easy to relink them using the "Find nearby missing photos" option in the Locate missing photo dialogue. But apparently that's been removed in v14.4??? Screengrab attached.

WTF Adobe, why would you remove functionality?  I checked the Adobe help page for this and it still tells you to click that option in the missing photo dialogue.

[JohanElzenga]

"Find nearby missing photos" should be an option at the bottom of the next dialog, where you select the missing image. AFAIK, that is how it has always been.

[ofquiet]

I remember it being in the initial pop-up dialogue. It turns out that the box has been checked but Lightroom isn't finding the other files even though they are in the same folder. So my issue isn't that the box isn't checked, it's that it isn't working. Should I make a separate post for this?

[JohanElzenga]

Were these photos always in the same folder, or did you move them there outside of lightroom? Lightroom Classic should only reconnect nearby photos if it knows that these photos should be in the same folder.

[ofquiet]

I had to move them out of their original folders/locations, so now they all share a single folder. The thinking was that using the "find nearby files" would then allow me to reconnect the source files with the LR previews. Instead, it only connects to the single one I manually point it to and ignores the rest in the folder.

[JohanElzenga]

I don't think it works that way. You should have moved the images by dragging and dropping them in the Lightroom folder panel. Is there any chance of starting this over again? Another option is to reconnect the folders anyway. If you reconnect a folder to a folder that already exists in Lightroom, then Lightroom will ask you if you want to merge the two folders. That allows you to reconnect multiple folders to one single folder.

[ofquiet]

Unfortunately I don't have access to the original folders or drives any longer. The idea was to consolidate only the files we needed for this project for the 2 months we were overseas and then reconnect the original files because everything in the catalogue is also in the same folder now. So it's the original previews and the same source files, but LR can't find the rest of them even when they are next to the single file they find when I point LR to it. I guess I underestimated the "find nearby missing files" functionality.

[JohanElzenga]

I don't understand. If a photo is in Lightroom, then Lightroom will show the folder where it thinks this photo is stored. If the photo is not really in that folder anymore, then either that's because the folder is missing, or because the folder is still present but the photo is no longer inside it, or both. In either situation the folder is still in the folder panel, and you can solve this by relinking that folder. Let me give you a practical example:

Suppose I had three folders, called '2023', '2024' and '2025'. I decide to move all the images of those three folders into one new folder, simply called 'Images'. Because I did this outside of Lightroom, the images are now shown as 'missing'. The '2023', '2024' and '2025' will still be shown in the folder panel, either also as missing (because in reality I deleted them), or not missing. So this is what I would have to do:

Step 1: Right-click on the '2023' folder, choose 'Find Missing Folder' (if the folder is missing) or 'Update Folder Location' (if the folder still exists). Select the 'Images' folder in the dialog that follows. That will 'relink' the '2023' folder to the 'Images' folder. The images that were originally in the '2023' folder will no longer be missing  and shown as being in the 'Images' folder. The 2023 folder has disappeared from the folder panel. The other images are still missing, however.

Step 2: Right-click on the '2024' folder and choose 'Find Missing Folder' or 'Update Folder Location'. Again in the dialog that follows I select the 'Images' folder. Because the 'Images' folder already exists in Lightroom, I'll get a warning that this is so and the question if I want to merge the two folders. I click 'Merge'. Now both the '2023' and '2024' folders have disappeared from the folder panel, and all the images that were originally in either 2023 or 2024 are no longer missing and shown correctly as being in the 'Images' folder.

Step 3: Repeat step 2 for the 2025 folder.

[Jonzy]

Having the same issue. What the hell is going on, why remove an important feature such as this?  I have litterally hundreds of photos that has to be relinked to another drive path

[JohanElzenga]

You do not give any more details than just "I have the same problem". The feature hasn't been removed, it's still where it always was. But there may be a bug making it not work, I don't know. Usually you can relink hundreds of photos by relinking their containing folder, rather than individual images. Isn't that possible in your case? And you can avoid missing photos altogether by moving them using drag & drop in the Lightroom folder panel rather than outside of Lightroom. https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/

[Jonzy]

No maam, it has indeed been removed, there used to be a button to relink the photos on the corners of the thumbnail and it no longer there. It was also relinking all the other missing photos automatically

[JohanElzenga]

Nothing has been removed. There was (and still is) a 'missing image' icon (exclamation mark) at the top right of the image (if the image is indeed missing). You will not see that icon if you have a smart preview for that image, however. Could that be the explanation? As already mentioned in a previous message, the 'Find Nearby Missing Photos' checkbox is at the bottom of the dialog you get when you choose to find the image.

Two remarks however: As also already mentioned, there could be a bug making this function no longer work. I don't know if there is such a bug, and I cannot test it because I'm using my iPad right now, but I don't rule that out. And secondly, you did not mention what hardware and software you use. If you use a Mac, and have already installed MacOS 26, then be aware that the current version of Lightroom Classic (14.5.1) has not been verified to work on that OS.

[JohanElzenga]

Actually, nothing was removed, but something was added! If you look at the screenshot in the first message, you will notice that Lightroom offers you to go to 'Locate File', but also to 'Locate Folder' (if the folder of that image is also missing, that is). This is even the default button and this is new for Lightroom Classic 14.5. Previous versions did not point to the missing folder option, you would have to look for that in the folder panel yourself. Maybe this new dialog is what causes the confusion about the aleged (but not really) missing 'Find Nearby Missing Photos' checkbox. This is how the old dialog looked:

[JohanElzenga · Accepted solution]

OK, I finally had the chance to do a quick test on my Mac, running MacOS 15.6.1 and Lightroom Classic 15.4.1. I cannot reproduce any of the compaints. Nothing has been removed and nothing does not work on my system, so there is no bug. The 'Find Nearby Missing Photos' option is at the bottom of the dialog that you use to select the missing photo (where it always was), but you'll have to click the 'Show Options' dialog to see it. Maybe the latter is new, I don't know. It was checked by default, and worked as expected. Selecting the one photo reconnected all of them. 

[ofquiet]

It's not technically a bug but Adobe doesn't offer a category for "errors" or "just not working as it's supposed to" so bug becomes the option best suited to it.