Problem with Sync

[ErikaTriv]

This is going to be a long post, so I'm sorry in advance!

I usually create a collection and sync it to the phone LR. 

I have a new catalogue each year. Unfortunately when I created the 2020 catalog, and sync the 2 folders I had in there, the phone LR (or on-line LR, I don't know anymore), started syncing those 2 folders on my phone and 50K images in the new desktop catalog (under all photos (???)), making it impossible to work for how slow it was. 

I stopped sync, canceled the 2020 desktop catalog, re-opened the 2 folders in the 2019 catalog and work from there. Today I tried again to sync and the same problem happened. The difference is that now on the desktop catalog I have the images in double... so 2 copies for each pic... and I'm going nut.

If you reached this point, can you please help me?

What did I do wrong? Any way I can fix the problem and not having 50K images moving every time I sync? 

Thanks 

[Just Shoot Me]

LR was and is based on having ONE Catalog that All of your images are imported into.

You separate images using the tools in LR, Collections, Keywords and the Filter bar and using the File System of your operating system. But All your images are in that One Catalog file.

I put images on my hard drive by the year I took them. I have main top level folders for each year, from 2006 when I started using a Digital camera, to 2020.

What you have done wrong is tried to sync more than one catalog. LR, Adobe, the sync system does not allow that.

Even if you copied a catalog that you have no problem syncing to another computer and tried to sync it you would get warnings.

So basicall you can only sync one catalog from one computer to the LR Web and Mobile system.

[DdeGannes]

If you are working with Lightroom Classic you need to be aware that you can not sync folders to the Adobe Cloud Cloud. You will have to create Collections in Lightroom Classic then select the option to sync those collections.

Lightroom Classic will have to create smart previews and upload those files via your online connection to your Cloud Storage this will take some time which will depend on the speed of your connection. Syncing 50,000 image files will take some time. Do the calculation if it takes 3 seconds per image then it would take 41 hours.