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1. Re: Broken Collections path links on new Mac
web-weaver Dec 21, 2011 1:49 PM (in response to Paul SLS)You almost confused me at first with your use of the word "collections".
Collections in LR are not folders and they have no physical location on the hard drive. A collection is a group of images that are referenced by LR to be displayed together. In LR you find the Collections panel below the Folders panel (in Library), or below the History panel (in Develop Module), the Collections panel is also visible in the Print, Slide Show and Web Module (always on left at the bottom). These are Collections.
It seems to me that you speak of folders; folders have a location whereas collections do not.
I understand that you try to point your folders to the new location on the Mac.
Please be a bit more specific what exactly happens:
Do the folders have question marks besides them? When you right-click a folder and you select <Update folder location>, what happens? Do you get an error message? What does it say?
When you copied your image folders to the Mac, did you change the folder structure and or the folder names?
Also, just as an aside: Where your drives on the old computer under Win XP formatted in the NTFS file system? As far as I know you have to use FAT 32 for Mac. I just wonder if that could be the reason for your problem.
WW
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2. Re: Broken Collections path links on new Mac
Paul SLS Dec 21, 2011 5:05 PM (in response to web-weaver)I am aware that the collections are only pointers to file locations, not actual file folders. The icon is what? a box?
Anyway. If I go to any of the collections in loupe mode and select any image, the main window is overlaid with the message "the file named.... is offline or missing". I then right-click on the image in the main window and a dialogue appears "imagename could ntobge used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" Then is listed the previous location which in this case is C:/Paul/My Document/My Pictures/Lightroom/2011/2011-11-15 or some such..
I then select the "locate" button and navigate to the actual folder location that contains the image and check the "find nearby images" box and click on "select". The computer does something, says the images are alreadly there or there is a conflict - whatever. Bottom line, the link is not restored.
Since all my collections were made to the same base directory (C:/paul/my document/my pictures/lightroom) I would like to redirect all the collections to the new place on the mac.
Does that help?
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3. Re: Broken Collections path links on new Mac
web-weaver Dec 21, 2011 5:31 PM (in response to Paul SLS)Can you do two tests and report the results?
1) What happens if you locate 1 (one) image and leave the box <find nerby images > unchecked?
2) Do you have folders with question marks besides them in the folders panel? If you do, right-click one of these folders and select <Update folder location>. Navigate to the correct folder location and click on this folder. What happens? Does the question mark disappear?
WW
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4. Re: Broken Collections path links on new Mac
web-weaver Dec 21, 2011 5:41 PM (in response to web-weaver)In addition to my previous post:
I just realized it's not called <Update folder location> any more. It's now called <Find missing folder>. But it does the same thing.
WW
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5. Re: Broken Collections path links on new Mac
Paul SLS Dec 22, 2011 8:29 AM (in response to web-weaver)Thanks again for your help on this.
My most up-to-date catalog file has been modified by trying to relink as first described. I did make a backkup copy of the catalog from the previous day and I can work with that but it is missing the updates from yesterdays editing etc. I also have a series of backup (daily) files
The folders do not show question marks.
When I try to use any of the older backups, the folder info shows the images, but the collections are now all just showing blank grey data in every image and no links are evident.
I loaded the "good working backup" and now in the Folder Loupe view, the main screen has "offline or missing" message and the filmstrip shows question marks in all images. When I go to the collections in this catalog, I get the "offline or missing" message and the question marks in the filmstrip also. I right-clicked "show in finder", then "locate", navigated to the location, FORGOT to unclick "nearby" and then pressed "select". This did establish the link in both the folders view and collections view, except it brought in the folder (folder name 2011-11-02) in a location Above all my lightroom files, instead of in the chronolgical stack. In this case, it found all the photos from that date and the original folder with that date is still present, but showing 0 images and is greyed out.
This process could be used to relink all 8000 images and then I could drag all the folders to the correct locations. Perhaps you have another suggestion?
I just repeated all the above, except this time UNchecked the "nearby" box. Same behavior, except only for the 1 image, not all in the collection.
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6. Re: Broken Collections path links on new Mac
web-weaver Dec 22, 2011 8:51 AM (in response to Paul SLS)When you get the message <file named ... is offline or missing> you have to re-link LR to the image file. You get this message when image files or image folders are being moved or renamed outside of LR, i.e. in Mac Finder. You are doing the right thing by re-connecting LR to the missing images. When you get the message < ... offline or missing> in the Loupe View you also see a small question mark on the frame of the thumbnails in the filmstrip (at the bottom of the Loupe View) or in the Grid View. Click on the question mark and <Locate> the photo. If the file name has been changed outside of LR you will also be asked to verify that this is the correct file.
It seems you are on the right track to get things in order. Your sequence should be - as you already said - to first re-link all your images and then re-arrange your folders. The latter should be done in LR, or else you get the question marks again. The fact that your folders do not show question marks means that LR recognizes the folders themselves, only individual images can not be found. You must have changed the location of certain photos within the folders when you moved the images to the Mac. Moving images should never be done outside of LR. If you do all your image management (moving and/or renaming of image files or folders) in LR, it will keep track of where things are.
Good luck.
WW

