v confused about a metadata mismatch

[Newmarket2]

Quite a large number of my images are showing a metadata mismatch.

I'm not sure how this happened.

I'm not sure which metadata is out of synch (there is so much that could be)

So, I'm unsure how to approach this.

I'm looking for an expert on this topic who is willing to work with me to sort this all out.

[Theresa J]

Metadata conflicts happen when you work on the image outside of Lightroom. This could be editing a file or changing the metadata like keywords and copyright. I have a pretty detailed video on youtube that should help explain it. https://youtu.be/C3ymCGnHq90

[Newmarket2]

Theresa,

I have never, to my knowledge, made changes to my metadata outside of LR.

And, a major concern I have is that there is a TON of meta-data and I know of no way to determine what fields have been changed....knowing this could help me determine how this got out of sync in the first place

Michael

[Theresa J]

Michael,

Metadata can be as simple as the modification date. What types of files are they? Did you recently move them to a different drive? If you know you didn't do anything important to the files outside of Lightroom, then you can resolve the conflict by choosing to keep Lightroom's metadata and not overwriting it with the conflict.

[Newmarket2]

Theresa,

Almost all of the conflicts are jpg files. 

And, your suggestion to keep the LR metadata (over the file metadata) makes sense to me

But I'm still a bit uncomfortable not knowing what specific MD LR is seeing as out of sync.  LR must "know" in order to set the flag to "conflict".  Is there any way to see the field by field comparison myself - so I know which field changed?  A utility or tool or in LR itself? 

Michael

[Theresa J]

Yes, you can view the metadata with Adobe Bridge. This will show you the metadata outside of Lightroom so you can compare it with what Lightroom has inside of the catalog. I have a youtube for that too https://youtu.be/PPqeDdM4QVA