Deleted photos from lightroom and tried to re-import them but now it shows that they are imported but they are nowhere to be found

[kellys6074598]

Okay so I know this is a total newby move so please be kind.  whenever I would upload files to lightroom they were being saved to my computer.  After a photo session I went to upload 800 photos.  Halfway through import my lightroom would no longer upload because it was full.  I realized I needed to store all the old photos from my lightroom and put them on my external hard drive.  I wasn't sure how to do this properly at the time so I just deleted all the photos from that current session out of lightroom so I could reupload them all together once I cleared some space.  I even deleted them out of the Lightroom folder on my finder. (They are now all in that same folder again in finder because deleting them did nothing)

When I went to reupload them once other lightroom files files were stored the correct way on my external hard drive it would not let me hit the check box to upload them (As if they were already in lightroom. attaching a photo of what I mean) The second batch of the photos that didn't upload originally uploaded fine but it's not letting me upload the first half at all.  Does anyone know how I can get these photos to show up in lightroom for me?

[JP Hess]

First thing to clarify is that Lightroom does not get "full". Your images are not in Lightroom. Lightroom opens the catalog which is a database file, and displays your images from the database which simply points to where your images are located on your computer. If your hard drive is that full then I would suggest that you import your images and put them on the external hard drive as part of the import process.

As far as the images that won't import again are concerned, if you go to the library module and click on previous import, does it show those images? This might take a few steps to figure out what's happening. But let's start with the answer to that question.

[kellys6074598]

Yes, I know that.  Sorry I worded that incorrectly. 

Yes I did try that! Not showing up there

[JP Hess]

I'm not sure what's going on. It might just be easier for you to create a new catalog and start the import process all over again. Can you find the folder in the library module? Maybe you could right click and remove the folder, then try to import again.

[kellys6074598 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for your help Jim.  I really appreciate it.  That didn't work however, I did just figure it out!

Turns out they are all in an external folder called NO NAME that I never noticed until now .  Found all of the missing photos in that folder.  They were unlinked but I just linked them back up and they all moved to the correct folder after that.