How to consolidate daily folders into a single year for moving to external hard drive

[kinchimira]

My photos have been imported into an overall Year 2016 Folder (falling under MacIntosh HD --Pictures -- Year), and subcategorized by the date they were taken, each date having it's own folder.  Now I need to move all of these pictures off of my hard drive and onto my external drive, but I would like them to be categorized only in 1 folder for the year, not a ton of subfolders by date.  How do I safely accomplish this?  I already set up a "2016" folder on my external drive.  Do I have to individually drag each date folder into it?  I tried to move a batch of them and it didn't seem to like that.  Thank you for your help!

[dj_paige]

I would strongly recommend not doing this folder re-arrangement. Not only are there better ways to find photos from a given year, but this type of rearrangement is a very tedious manual activity and presents lots of opportunities for errors.

If you want your photos to be on a different drive, then you can do this by the following set of steps:

1. Using your operating system, Copy (not move) the entire hierarchy unchanged to the different drive
2. Point Lightroom to the new location by right-clicking on the parent folder in Lightroom and then using Update Folder Location command.
3. Once you are 100% sure the entire operation has worked properly, you can delete the photos from the original drive using your operating system.

More details are found in "Part 2 -- Updating Folder Location" in this document:

Adobe Lightroom - Find moved or missing files and folders

Whatever you do, please do not try to combine the two actions of merging the date folders into a year folder, and moving to a new disk. DO NOT DO BOTH OF THESE AS ONE TASK! Get one working, and then get the other one working. Or better yet, just don't combine the date folders, as in my opinion there are better things you can do with your time and effort.

Whatever you do, make sure you have backups of your photos and of your catalog file before you start. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP. If you go ahead and try to perform these tasks without first making backups, you are taking a huge risk. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP.

[kinchimira]

Thank you!  I will run back up my catalog first.  I recently ran time machine and also use back blaze, so I think my hard drive stored photos should be safely backed up. 

I only have 17GB free on my 500GB hard drive, so I don't think I can use the suggestion above about copying them all from within the operating system--(by this do you mean working in Finder)?

FYI, There are 8,000 photos in this year's folder.  Also, from what I'm reading I should start a different catalog each year?  I take about 8k photos each year, and have 35k in my current catalog.   What a mess I've created!  These are pictures of my family, so I don't want to lose them and just need to get organized.

[dj_paige]

I only have 17GB free on my 500GB hard drive, so I don't think I can use the suggestion above about copying them all from within the operating system--(by this do you mean working in Finder)?

Free space would not prevent you from doing a copy to the new HD. Yes, you do this in Finder.

Also, from what I'm reading I should start a different catalog each year?

I don't know what you have been reading, but this is the most horrible atrocious wrong-headed advice there can be. But that's just my opinion.

I take about 8k photos each year, and have 35k in my current catalog.   What a mess I've created!  These are pictures of my family, so I don't want to lose them and just need to get organized.

Folders by year is not organization. It is disorganization. As time goes by, you will not remember what year each of your 35k photos were taken. And then you will have to look in several catalogs through 8K photos in that year's catalog to find your photos? No, I don't see that as a  viable option.

To organize your photos, you assign keywords to each photo to describe the content of the photo. You have one catalog. And then at some point in the future when you want to find a particular photo, you open your (one) catalog, and you search by keyword for the photo of interest. This eliminates the "mess" and imposes an "order" to your photos.

[kinchimira]

You are so right, I see what you mean about the disorganization. 

I'm having a hard time with finder.  I know to click on the photo in lightroom and have it open in finder, to see what folder the photo is in.  But I really have no idea how to view all of those various folders in finder.  I see no pictures folder, no user folder, etc.  Just a couple of options like applications, documents, desktop, etc.  Where is the pictures folder?

Sorry, I'm clueless.  You'd think I'm 95, not 35.

[kinchimira]

Wait, I googled it and think I have it figured out in finder.  Geez..

[kinchimira]

I tried to follow your advice, keeping my daily folder structure, and working in Finder to move them to external drive.  Did the copy in Finder to my external drive.  When I opened lightroom, it didn't show my new file structure on my external drive.  I right clicked on the parent folder in lightroom (the hard drive 2016 folder) and hit update folder location.  My new file structure appeared in lightroom under my external drive, but there are question marks beside each date folder.  I right clicked the question mark and followed the find folder missing folder procedure, but do I have to do that 300 times for the 300 daily folders I have??

[dj_paige]

You should only have to do this one time, if you did it right. Updating the Folder Location for the parent folder should update all sub-folders. So obviously you did something wrong.

Can you show us a screen capture of part of the original folder structure on the internal drive so we can see the parent folder and some of the subfolders? Then show us a similar screen capture of the folders on the external drive. I am talking about screen captures of Finder, not in Lightroom.

[kinchimira]

Also, if there isn't a way to fix the ? without repeating that procedure 300 times, should i just redo the file update location back to the hard drive old location and start over?  I'm inclined to do that, and then just move the folders within lightroom the way I always used to (keeping the daily folder structure still). 

[kinchimira]

[kinchimira]

The first image is showing my folder structure on the external drive.  I think this is the problem but not sure how to fix it.  You see the 2016 folder that comes up on my external drive?  Well to get to my photos, you have to click on that, and the photos are embedded in a  another 2016 subfolder, within that second 2016 folder they are sorted each into an individual folders by date.  When I was doing the file location update, I couldn't figure out how to get past that first 2016 parent folder, so that is what I selected.  I couldn't figure out how to eliminate the extra layer of "2016 folders".  Am I making any sense?

[dj_paige]

I can't see the subfolders under 2016, I need to see that.

[kinchimira]

If I click on the first 2016 folder I showed in my first screen capture, it leads to the top image, then clicking on that one leads to the individual folders.  Problem is, I can only "choose" the first 2016 folder, the top of the hierarchy.  That's how I did my find folder location process.

[dj_paige]

Please provide the necessary details. Which drive(s) are these screen captures from? I need to see the subfolders under 2016 on both drives, with appropriate text to indicate which drive is which.