A way to automate folder consolidation?

[BartonGarrett256]

I have been using LR for many years, and my list of folders grew larger longer than Merlin's beard.  So I began consolidating them into years.  But when I do that I get the question mark next to each  folder and have to show LR where the new folder is.  It's not even smart enough to go to the last folder I accessed as I go through the list.  I have hundreds of folders to go through, it will take many hours of mindless clicking to update.

Are there ways to automate this?  It has to be a common problem.

Thanks.

[john beardsworth]

The way to automate it is to do the "consolidation" in Lightroom.

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

The alternative is to stop using folders as an organizing and search tool, and begin using keywords and other metadata to organize and search, and then the length of your folder list is irrelevant, and the activity of consolidating folders is also irrelevant.