Tips for cleaning up keywords in large catalogues?

[Tschenni]

I've been building up a large database of photos over the years. The keyword structure is sloppy so I've been trying to clean it up. The biggest issue I come across is that duplicate keywords at different parts within the hierarchy can't be easily merged. For example, Who > People > Students and Who > Students. (There's a workaround that involves selecting everything, but it's pretty time-consuming.)

Does anyone have recommendations for a plug-in or standalone app to make it easier to organize large amounts of keywords? I'm ideally looking for something that will let me move keywords around as easily as a file organizer. 

I appreciate your input!

[dj_paige]

For example, Who > People > Students and Who > Students. (There's a workaround that involves selecting everything, but it's pretty time-consuming.)

I don't know what the workaround is that you say is time consuming, but to me the solution is simple. You select the keyword you don't want, then Ctrl-A to select all the photos with that keyword; then assign the keyword you do want to those photos and remove the keyword you don't want from those photos. Wouldn't even take a whole minute to do this for a given pair of keywords.

Does anyone have recommendations for a plug-in or standalone app to make it easier to organize large amounts of keywords? I'm ideally looking for something that will let me move keywords around as easily as a file organizer. 

You can move keywords around in the Lightroom Classic Keyword List panel. Just drag and drop. No need for a plug-in. As far as there being a large amount of them ... as far as I know, there is no substitute for human effort to get this done.

[Tschenni]

Thanks for your reply. That works for keywords that don't have duplicates, but my issue is when there are duplicate keywords in multiple parts of the file structure and those requite the workaround. This is for a database of 160,000 photos (and many, many keywords) so Lightroom takes a while to do anything, even select files and move keywords. 

It's possible to do it in Lightroom, but I'm looking for a more efficient way to do it. 

[dj_paige]

So are you saying that even the approach I explained above, selecting all photos with a keyword that you don't want and so on, even that takes a very long time?

[Tschenni]

Correct.

[dj_paige]

Well, this doesn't chage my thoughts on the matter, which is: allowing some piece of software, or some "workaround" to decide how to re-organize your keywords will most likely lead to confusion as it will make decisions that are the opposite of the decision you might make, and then you can't find your photos. I would still recommend manual effort to do this, despite the time involved. I think in the long run, you will be happy with your keyword organization and that will save time; rather than letting some software do it for you and then you will have to spend time to find where your photos are. You probably have heard the phrase: "The amount of benefit you get from something is proportional to the amount of work you put into it". I advise you to put the work into it.

In Lightroom Classic, under Metadata, there is an Export Keywords command that creates a text file. You can do all your searching for duplicates in any text editor, and even re-arrange the list in the text editor so you can see the desired list of keywords in the text editor. Then, you have to do the re-arranging of the actual keywords in Lightroom Classic.

[Tschenni]

I appreciate your time but your suggestion is not what I was looking for as outlined in the original question and further replies are not necessary.

[Rob_Cullen]

You have given up on answers from here, but I post for others who may be reading this thread.

My method is this-  (as suggested by @dj_paige )

Using the example- Who > People > Students and Who > Students.

1) In the Keyword List panel- Search for "Students".  (Now shows all instances of "Students".)

2) Click the white arrow to view photos with KW Who > Students. Press [Ctrl+A] to select all.

3) Tick (check) the box next to Who > People > Students (This ADDS the photos to this KW)

4) Click the box (uncheck) next to Who > Students (This REMOVES the photos from this KW)

5) FIlter for another duplicated KW and repeat.