LR catalog a complete mess, how to move forward and fix

[Francis_C_Daly]

I did not make any attempt at keeping my Lightroom catalog organized, so it is a total mess.  More importantly, I made the mistake of moving LR files to an external drive, which caused the catalog to go absolutely bananas.  It's an absolute mess, and I'm pretty certain at this point that there is nothing that can be done to salvage it.  

I just want to start over and do better.  What is the best way to go about this?  Can I uninstall and open a new Adobe account? Thank you all!

[Moderator: Moved to the Lightroom Classic forum]

[AxelMatt]

...I just want to start over and do better.  What is the best way to go about this?  Can I uninstall and open a new Adobe account? 

You don't need to deinstall Lightroom and/or create a new Adobe account.

Here you'll find a lot of good articles about organizing and managing photos:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom/organizing/

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/rearrange-photos-dated-folders/

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/consolidate-photos-from-multiple-drives/

If possible, you shouldn't create a new catalog and import the photos again. In this case, all of your edits will be lost.

[dj_paige]

"total mess"

"absolutely bananas"

"absolute mess"

We don't know what those phrases mean. It's entirely possible that if you describe (or show) the problem to us, we can help you fix it.

If you just want to start over, which means losing all your edits and losing all your user-provided metadata, open Lightroom Classic and then select File->New Catalog.

[GoldingD]

Additional links

https://photoshopcafe.com/lightroom-catalog-mess-organize-photos-lightroom/

https://laurashoe.com/2011/10/12/help-my-photos-are-unorganized-and-lightroom-is-a-mess-how-can-i-ju...