Lightroom: Ability to search for Folder Names in Library Module

[Tech Explainer]

Julieanne Kost suggested that I post this feature request for Lightroom here.

Search for Folder names in Library Module. You can search for metadata, file names, keywords, etc. but there is no way to search for folders that contain a certain word (for example "NYC"). I have many folders with NYC in the title. Many are buried in subfolders. If I use the "workaround" that Julieanne and everyone else suggests - smart collections - that dumps hundreds (or thousands) of images, with no indication of which folder they come from, into one big folder. The only way that I know to find all the folders of would be to RIGHT-CLICK ON EACH INDIVIDUAL PHOTO and do "Go to folder in Library". It's faster to just manually go through my hundreds of folder and look.

Thanks,
Charlie

[johnrellis]

See the Any Source plugin -- it lets you search folders by name.

[Kim_Letkeman]

"Right to assume you know this basic stuff?"

Such condescension is misplaced because there are pragmatic reasons to use folder names. Some of us like to manage things using folder names so that we can search in explorer / finder etc ...

Three years later there is still no find folder / goto folder in Lightroom. This is a trivial feature to implement, yet the developers ignore basic pragmatism, as you suggest at the end of your comment. Lightroom is the worse for it.

[Guest]

Often you are presented with a large list of folders and you want to narrow it down based on a search for names of the folders.

Could you please add a search box above the folders that let you quickly filter the list?

[ethans21179425]

I am relatively new to Lightroom, but am also flabbergasted that there is no straightforward way to search for a folder name.  That is the principal way I narrow down my search.  I have thousands of photos in many, many folders.  Even before I started thinking seriously about how to organize photos and even knew the word "metadata," I would name a folder something related to its contents.  Being able to search for that name greatly speeds up my ability to find that folder and those photographs.  Sometimes, through laziness or lack of time, each photo is not keyworded, so the folder name is the only way to go.  

For instance, suppose I know I took a vacation to Paris several years ago, but can't recall what year, and do not want to scroll through hundreds of folder names.  Simply type "paris" in a folder search box and, boom, there the folder is.  

Apple's former Aperture did this search quite well, and it is possible in Bridge and Finder.  Since I would like to use Lightroom to keep track of all of my photos, this seems like a no-brainer.  

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I wish there was a quick search / filter for folders.

ie. if I type in "Vienna" it would filter out all folders but "Vienna 2005", "Vienna 2007", "Roadtrip to Vienna" etc.

[naestyoh]

I'm wondering why there isn't a catalog search for folder name/dates in the Library module. Wasn't that there at one point? I'd like to isolate folders to work on and find work in my archive hierarchy.

[ethans21179425]

Lightroom should include the ability to search by folder name for folders in a given Lightroom catalog.  My main way of organizing photos is by folder.  Each folder generally contains photos from a different event or shoot.  I name each folder consistently, with a date and a short description.  For instance, 2016-12-06 Vacation in France.  While I might also include keywords for photos within that folder, the simplest way to find all of the photos I am looking for is to search by folder name.  People are much less likely to effectively keyword each photo, and even if they did, a search for keywords will often retrieve photos from different shoots on different days or years.  I am not a programmer, but I would think that this basic search function in the Library module (which you can do in Bridge, which doesn't have Lightroom's database functions, or even in the Mac or Windows OS) would not be a hard lift.  Please, please, please consider adding in this basic functionality.  Thank you.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

It would be great to have ability to search by folder name. The folder name is a 'metadata' that already exists. Making it searchable will save users trouble of creating another 'tag' or 'keyword'. 

It is a simple feature. It would tremendously improve user experience. 

If you want to, please see now defuct Picasa to see how to implement this feature. Picasa had (and has) the best implementation of this feature. 

It would be very easy to add feature and will same lots of time to lot of people. 

Thanks.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Why after all these years only Collections get a search bar to quickly and easily filter down the Collections but Folders do NOT get a search bar to quickly and easily filter down the Folders?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I, too, am moving from Aperture (I am a Cert. Aperture Pro), and am astonished LR does not allow filtering by folder name. I have always used long folder names (Projects, in Aperture, similar but not the same) to store information that I use to search, find, and filter by container.  (My naming scheme is ShootName_ShootLocation_[Model1]_[Model2]_Photographer_#ofImages_DevelopmentCode_DDD-dd-MMM-yyyy.)  The utility of this should be obvious.  In Aperture, I used the same naming convention for Finder folders and for Projects.  LR _improves_ on this, by allowing me to use Finder folders as containers ... and then steps on a rake, hits itself in the face, and falls down knocked-out cold by not providing a way to filter the folder list.

This should be added, imho.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Option 2, the ability to filter the list of folders in the Folders panel, seems like a no-brainer.

But, still, after all these years (5 years from this original posted idea) there's no filtering for folders.

[alanterra]

Everyone who is participating in this conversation should check out Jeffrey Freidl's Data Explorer plugin. It allows quick partitioning of a set of files by parent folder, and more than 200 other criteria. I use it often to find images that don't have a certain keyword. It really will solve this problem for you.

Don't hold your breath waiting for Adobe to add this feature--unless you are an anaerobe.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Thanks Alan.  —Kirby.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

This feature was implemented in Lightroom Classic CC 7.2 - please see: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/create-folders.html#search-folders