Adobe Community: Chaos after transferring LR4 catalogue to external hard drive

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1. alfieBB,

Aug 10, 2012 1:16 AM in reply to alfieBB

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I think my description above was too complicated. Basically, after dragging and dropping the LR catalogue and my original photo files to an external hard drive, my LR catalogue can't find these files and I've tried several ways to link them. Can I start over? Is it possible to zap the LR catalogue and reimport all the photos? Thanks! I'm desperate.

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2. Hal P Anderson,

Aug 10, 2012 3:27 AM in reply to alfieBB

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Don't start over. Relinking will work unless you deleted or individually renamed your images, which can make a close-to-insurmountable problem.

Try this:

Open the catalogue that you moved to the new drive. Double-clicking on it will work.

In the Folders panel, right click on a folder with a ? on it. Choose 'Find missing folder'. In the box that comes up, navigate to where you moved the folder on the new drive and choose it.

What happens? If if works for you, repeat the process. Doing it for parent folders will find the missing child folders, as well.

Hal

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3. alfieBB,

Aug 10, 2012 10:19 AM in reply to Hal P Anderson

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Thanks for your reply, Hal. The thing is, under the Folders tab, the folders are all there and I can open the photos. But when I click "all photographs" under Catalogue, then some photos are online and other are offline. When I click the ? on the offline photos, LR taps into the old location and won't let me select the new location. I hope that makes sense.

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4. Hal P Anderson,

Aug 10, 2012 11:51 AM in reply to alfieBB

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Alfie,

When you click on the '?', LR opens a window to where it last knew the image to be. You ought to be able to then, in that window, navigate to where the image now is. Select that image.

What happens when you try that?

Hal

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5. alfieBB,

Aug 10, 2012 3:05 PM in reply to Hal P Anderson

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It's strange. When I navigate to the current location of that image, it does not let me select it. Select is not an option. It's really odd.

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6. Hal P Anderson,

Aug 10, 2012 3:55 PM in reply to alfieBB

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Alfie,

I created a missing image in my catalogue by moving it into a different folder:

When I click on the '?', I get this:

If I press Locate, I get this:

The image I'm looking for isn't there because I moved it to a folder named temp on my desktop. I now navigate to that new folder in the window:

At this point I can click on the image and hit the Select button in the lower right.

Where does this sequence of events stop working for you?

Hal

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7. alfieBB,

Aug 10, 2012 9:38 PM in reply to Hal P Anderson

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It breaks down at the Locate step. It is showing a location the first location where I moved the original files, to an external hard drive. I now have moved these folders (2011,2012, etc) to my new external drive and though I've "updated folder location" I can't open the photos under Catalogue > All Photographs. These do open, however, under the Folders > my new external drive. Thanks for your help!

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Chaos after transferring LR4 catalogue to external hard drive

Aug 9, 2012 1:45 PM

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