Why does lightroom not allow me to import from certain folders?

[Tavorguy]

So basically i just started using lightroom so i can stack photos in photoshop and when i'm trying to import images and i click on my desktop folder so as to make my way to another specific folder, the desktop one is greyed out. Why won't lightroom allow me access to it?

[dj_paige]

Please show us a screen capture of the problem. Use the "Insert Photos" icon; do not attach files.

Also please state clearly if you are using Lightroom (Lr icon) or Lightroom Classic (LrC icon), and please state the version number.

[Tavorguy]

i'm using lightroom classic

[Jim Wilde]

The "Desktop" folder isn't greyed out in that screenshot, so why do you think it is? The dotted arrowhead to the left usually indicates that there are no sub-folders within the Desktop folder, whereas a solid light-grey arrowhead indicates that a folder does have sub-folders and clicking on that arrowhead will expand to show the folder hierarchy below.

If you think that there should be sub-folders within Desktop, perhaps post a Finder screenshot showing the Desktop folder and its contents.

[Tavorguy]

ok i don't know anything about sub folders. basically i thought i could just click on the folder and import images but being unable to click on the desktop icon i don't know how to get to the other folders on my desktop.

[richardplondon]

Do you maybe have your Desktop (also Documents and Pictures) synced to OneDrive?

That caught me out. When you accept to sync all this stuff to OneDrive, the actual locations for these library items silently change on disk.

For most applications, you can still refer to 'Desktop', 'Pictures' or 'Documents' by name without seeing any difference - the fact that the actual location has changed on disk, is not evident to you.

But LrC deals only with actual locations and will not have automatically followed that change. Specifically, within the user profile area, instead of the previous username/Desktop folder, you now need to look in username/OneDrive/Desktop.

Personally I avoid using any such virtualised 'library' named location, for anything that LrC cares about the location of. Also, these locations will have user-specific access permissions, which I prefer to avoid. So I keep Catalog and managed files in explicit, user-neutral folders elsewhere - ones that OneDrive will never meddle with. I do export to 'Pictures' though, and do allow all that to be synced to OneDrive - since exports can't affect the Catalog in any way.