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6 months ago, I bought a new computer and transferred all of the drives and the Lightroom catalogue over. I then started a subscription to Lightroom Classic and followed all of the directions given. Recently I went looking for files that I know appeared in my original catalogue, but don't show up now. If I go looking in the folder for them with Windows File Explorer, I can see them still there, but when I try to import them, Lightroom says that there's already a file with that name in the catalogue. If it's already in the catalogue, why doesn't Lightroom Classic see it?
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This usually happens when a file is moved outside of Lightroom after it was imported, or during the import a "copy" was used instead of "add".
Search the "all photos" collection for one of the images then right-click and "show in Library folder" to see where LR things the file should be.
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Thanks for replying. I was able to retrieve the photo by synchronizing the folder. I had tried it earlier but wasn't patient enough (apparently) to allow the synchronizing to complete. My fault.
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It may seem sensible to synchronise the folder tree where the images now are - or, which amounts to the same thing, to import them again from that folder tree. It may even, on the face of it, seem to have achieved what you thought was required. But that's not what has in fact happened.
Analogy: you are in charge of a company's employee records. You discover that the address details you have got on record, for each employee, have (some, or all) become wrong because of a recent external change. Say: the area postal code has changed. So when you try sending mail (to what it currently says in the employee record, still showing the old postal code), that mail won't get delivered any more. But otherwise these employment records are fine - salary, next of kin, training history etc.
You now have two alternative courses of action. Which one makes more sense?
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Why? Because most likely you accidentally imported them with COPY instead of ADD, and so Lightroom CLassic thinks the photos are in a different folder than you think they are in.
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You need to find these photos in Lightroom. Follow all of these four steps in order:
1. In the Lightroom Library Module, on the left, under Catalog, click on All Photographs
2. Turn off all filters (Ctrl-L once or twice)
3. Turn off all stacking (Photo->Stacking->Expand All Stacks)
4. Search for at least one of these photos by file name using the Lightroom Filter Bar
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Thanks for replying. I was able to retrieve the photo by synchronizing the folder. I had tried it earlier but wasn't patient enough (apparently) to allow the synchronizing to complete.
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Synchronizing the folder just imports the photo a second time, without your edits and user-provided metadata; or to be blunt, you have made the problem worse now, with the photo imported twice in Lightroom Classic's catalog but each one has different edits and different user-provided metadata.
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Apparently it hasn't made anything worse and I'm considering the case case closed.Thank you for your help.
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And for others reading along, I will maintain my advice that importing a photo more than once (or trying to synchronize its folder after Lightroom Classic says the photos is already in the catalog) is not a good solution. It creates two versions of the photo in your catalog, which then can each have different edits and different user-provided metadata, leading to confusion and frustration. Having the same photo in your catalog twice (or more than twice) should be avoided.
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I know this is an old post but dj_paige's steps outlined above saved the day today (for me at least). All attempts to find two files I had been editing yesterday failed and LR would not allow them to be re-imported (as a last resort) because it said they were already cataloged. Expanding all stacks or turning off all filters did the trick - don't have to redo all the edits I had made - thank you dj.
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Thanks for replying David. I was able to retrieve the photo by synchronizing the folder. I'm going through all my folders and sychronizing them. I have almost 500,000 photos so it may take a while.
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Response deleted by the author.