Help! Lightroom Classic not recognizing folders and photos on an external hard drive - a real mess.

[D R Smith]

Hi.  Hope you can help as I have realy bungled things up this time.  First off I am using a Windows 10 laptop and the latest version of Lightroom Classic 9.0.

I added an external hard drive to keep my raw files on.  I use a folder format of Year and Month within the year.  Ex:  2019 is the main folder, Jan is the sub folder and each days shots are kep wthin the months folder.  

I have moved 2017 and all 12 months folders to the external harddrive, 2018 and all 12 months folders to the external hard drive, 2019 and all the months to the external hard drive.  All I can see from within Lightroom, however, are the monthly folders for 2019 and the images stored therein. (?)  I have to go into Explorer to see the rest.  I want to be able to see all of it from within Lightroom but for the life of me I cannot figure out how to do it and I cannot find any articles or videos that address this particular issue. 

Can any of you fine folks please help me figure this out or steer me in the direction of where to find the information?

Thank you very very much.

Dennis

[JohanElzenga]

Do you not see the 2017 and 2018 folders at all? In that case you probably haven't imported them yet. Lightroom is not a browser. It does not show you every folder on the disk, but only those folders that contain images that it has imported.

Or do you see the 2017 and 2018 folders, but still located on a different (the old?) drive? In that case you have to 'reconnect' the catalog to the folders on the new drive. Right-click on the 2017 folder in the Lightroom folder panel. If it is shown as 'missing', then you'll see a 'Find Missing Folder' menu. Select this menu, and in the dialog that follows navigate to the 2017 folder on the new drive. Select it and the 2017 folder will be 'reconnected' and will show correctly on the new drive. Do the same with the 2018 folder. If the folder is not missing, then the menu is 'Update Folder Location'.

[D R Smith]

Hi Thanks for taking the time to reply. It's baffling. When I set it up I
"thought" I imported everything but I don't see the master year folders
(2017, 2018, 2019) or the monthly folders for 2017 and 2018 (Jan - Dec).

So I guess I must not have imported them?

Thanks

[GoldingD]

Did you move these folders within Lightroom Classic, or did you move them outside of Lightroom Classic?

see https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/

[D R Smith]

Thanks for responding.  I read through the page you sent but I don''t believe it applies in my case.

The folders and photos are on the external drive.  I can see them by going through Windows Explorer, but they don't show up at all in any way in Lightroom which tells me that I must not have imported them (even though I really thought I had).

I guess my next step is to import them.  Wish me luck.

[D R Smith]

I figured it out.Even though I was sure I had imported everything I evidently had not.  I ended up having to ADD the folders and photos to the cataog.  I used this tutorial:  https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/import-photos-video-catalog.html.  I want to thank everyone for their kind responses.  It's greatly appreciated.