Catalog partially and randomly synced with disc. Have to find and sync A LOT.  Help!  :(

A little bit more detail on what you're doing will be needed to assess the problem.

How did you build the catalog?

How do you proceed when you try to sync your catalog with your hard drive?

Are all your files on one hard drive or several separate drives?

Regards

Christian

First of all: there are only very few problems that can be solved with re-installation of Lr. Not finding photos cannot be remedied with re-installation.

It seems to me that as a newbie you don't know how Lr works, and that is the main cause of your problems. Since you don't know, you are using the wrong tools.

Please, before you do anything more in Lr, watch some of the video tutorials on Adobe's website. The links are on the main page of this forum. Since Lr works quite differently than other photo software, you cannot just jump in and do things. Or, if you do, the result will be lots of frustration and wasted time.

Two things:

Photos are not in Lr. Photos are on the hard drive wherever they are, and Lr does not change that. Lr builds a database for the photos - called "the catalog" - and references their file names and their locations.

"Syncing", and I assume you mean <Synchronize folder>, is not the right tool to build the database for your photos. To build the database correctly, you have to import the photos via the <Import Dialog>.

Since you are new to Lightroom, are you aware that images must be imported using Lightroom even though the images are already on your hard drive?

No, you are not out in the left field. You seem to understand how Lr works.

You can use the <Synchronize folder> feature - it's basically nothing different than an import.

Initially you asked: "Can I find and sync my entire pictures file at once?"

It is possible, provided that all your image folders are under one (1) parent folder. Then you could just synchronize the parent folder and all its sub-folders would be synchronized, too.

But if you don't have such a single parent folder for all image folders, you can use the Import Dialog. Select <Add> in the top center to import the images without moving them, i.e. they will be imported but remain in their present location. Then on the left side of the Import Dialog, in the <Source> panel, click on your internal drive, probably named "C". A message will appear that says "No photos found" and "Include Subfolders", click on <Include Subfolders>. This will then display all images that are on your drive in the main window. Just above the main  window select "New Photos". Then only images that are not yet imported in Lr will be displayed. Then import the photos.

It sounds like you may have moved files or folders with Windows Explorer or anther program outside of Lightroom. This will cause the files to show as missing in LR with a ? on the image or folder.

As explained image files don't actually get "moved" when imported into LR. LR merely records the path where the file is located on your hard drive(s) in the catalog. If you "move" the files outside of LR it can create the situation you are experiencing.

If you haven't done a lot of editing to the files in LR the simplest solution would be to create a new catalog and import ALL of the image files you want to edit in LR. Notice I said "want to edit" and not "want to move." It is possible to move files on import LR, but I suggest not doing that. Your options are Copy, Move, and Add. You want to use 'Add' for images that are already stored on your hard drive.

Have you tried to use the Import function of Lr as per my post # 5?

There you go!

Just import the remainder of the photos in all of your image folders.

One thing: Lr supports only these file formats: Raw-images, DNGs, JPGs, PSDs, TIFFs. Any other file format will not be imported. So if you have images in any other file format you'll be able to see the files in Mac Finder / Win Explorer but not in Lr. Then you will have a different image count in Lr than in Mac Finder / Win Explorer.

Also, Lr counts Virtual Copies (VC) as images; but you cannot see a VC in Mac Finder / Win Explorer since a VC exists only as a data set in the Lr catalog, and not as an image file.

So this is another cause for different image counts in Lr and in Mac Finder / Win Explorer.

Well, that's a clear indication that the files in question indeed are alreaday somewhere in your catalog; Lightroom is usually right about that. They might not be in the place you expect them to be though.

You might want to look carefully through the folder structure in Lightroom and see if there are any strange folders you don't remember creating.

One thing that might have happened during one of the imports is that instead of choosing 'add' in the import window, you had 'copy' selected. When doing that, files end up in the place defined in the right hand column of the import window. Depending on what was selected (or what was there as default), LR has created a folder e.g. with the date of the pictures as name, inside an other folder, etc.

I encountered this kind of problem myself. An example of what happened:I have my files in folders named by date, in hierarchical year-month-day structure. Using the 'Import' function, I wanted to 'add' the '2011-05-12' to my '2011-05' folder, but erroneously selected 'copy'. Due to the selection I made last time I 'copied' files on import, the folder ended up in the folder '2011-04' - which I didn't notice at first. After the import, I couldn't find the 2011-05-12 folder, and when trying to import the whole 2011 folder with all of its subfolders, it told me that there are no pictures to import as all were already in the catalog. Like in your case, only unchecking 'don't include suspected duplicates' let me see the missing files.

So try to see if you can find folders where they shouldn't be or folders with unusual names. If that's the case, remove them from the catalog, and your problems will disappear.

CASpyr wrote:

 

 

I encountered this kind of problem myself. An example of what happened:I have my files in folders named by date, in hierarchical year-month-day structure. Using the 'Import' function, I wanted to 'add' the '2011-05-12' to my '2011-05' folder, but erroneously selected 'copy'. Due to the selection I made last time I 'copied' files on import, the folder ended up in the folder '2011-04' - which I didn't notice at first. After the import, I couldn't find the 2011-05-12 folder, and when trying to import the whole 2011 folder with all of its subfolders, it told me that there are no pictures to import as all were already in the catalog. Like in your case, only unchecking 'don't include suspected duplicates' let me see the missing files.

So try to see if you can find folders where they shouldn't be or folders with unusual names. If that's the case, remove them from the catalog, and your problems will disappear.

This ^^.

My first thought on reading your posts was that you've unwittingly used a combination of Move, Copy and Add on Import.