Images not showing up in LR folder after import

[Christine7]

On Monday, I imported additional photos from May into LR. I edited and exported a few and then went back in tonight to finish them up, and they aren't in my May 2017 folder (within LR) anymore.  They are, however, still in my May 2017 folder on my hard drive.  I restarted, updated, etc. and still no pics showing up.  LR isn't letting me reimport as they are saying the images are already imported.  I can view them, however, under All Photographs and I tried to highlight and drag them back into my LR May 2017 folder, but LR won't let me...it's telling me that they are already there, but I still can't see them.  Any thoughts??

[JP Hess]

Try selecting one of the images under All Photographs. Right-click on that selected image and choose the option to go to the folder in library. See if that will take you to the appropriate folder.

[Christine7]

Thanks for the reply!  Unfortunately, it didn't work...just stays in the All Pics folder.

[dj_paige]

christine7  wrote

Thanks for the reply!  Unfortunately, it didn't work...just stays in the All Pics folder.

This needs clarification ... did you find the photo of interest in All Photographs? It sounds like you did. In this case, now you know what folder it is stored in, because you can right-click on it and select Show in Finder or Show in Explorer. (Note: All Photographs is NOT a folder, it is a Lightroom construct, sort of a mandatory collection of photos)

What has most likely happened is that you have accidentally imported the photo using the COPY option at import. Now, there is a copy on you hard disk in the original folder, and another copy that Lightroom uses in a different folder. In order to move the photo(s) back to the original folder, Lightroom won't let you do that because there is already a copy of the photo in the original folder in your operating system.

So, to do the move, you'd have to use your operating system to delete the copy in the Original folder, then go into Lightroom and move the photo(s) to the desired location, which is the original folder. Now the move will work because there is not a photo by the same name in the original folder.

[Christine7]

Thank you!  I apologize for the delay in reply...I'll give this a try!