Clean up your Lightroom Classic MESS! - How to fix missing images.

In this video we look at the process of cleaning up missing images in Adobe Lightroom Classic. Most of us have experienced "!" marks, "?" marks, and "file is offline or missing" messages. In this video we look at how to fix them!

[forestchaput]

Who has made a mess in Lightroom Classic? Anyone...? 🤯

[Angies-adventures]

Thank you. I am knee deep in a LR MESS. Hope to get direction & clarity as I watch your videos. So glad you've taken the time to post multiple organizing videos!

[Thecalico]

Thank you so much... This info. Saved me.. I was so sick to my stomach thinking I can't access my photos. And it was clearly my fault, so thank you for explaining things and now my world is all better.

[Christinelophotography]

Thank you! Another great video, much appreciated.

[skellam]

Great video. Great delivery. I'm a believer!

[sue]

Happy to have discovered you. Thank you for this. I find your teaching clear and concise. The missing piece for me was using File explorer to find the missing files.

[charlierivera]

Thank you. I lost 3, 293 pictures I took on tennis event and is why I’m looking at this video. They’re gone from my SSD external drive. What a headache shoot. I hope doing what you explained helps me. I wish I could get you on the phone 😂😂😂😂😂. Sand disk and Lightroom support did not know how, correct, they couldn’t help me. They seem to try doing something but, nothing was done to help. But thank you 🙏 so much. I’ll try this ASAP. Thank you

[joaquinposting]

I was expecting to find a magic button to order all my mess, but the video was so clear that you gained a subscriber.

[kathywingate]

Thank you, your instructions helped...So far I'm hating Lightroom, it just takes off and imports 20, 000 photos without being asked...then, it can't find anything. Thankfully, I can find the photos, they are where they've always been, Lightroom still doesn't know they're there...This was to improve my work-flow?

[shubhankargaur]

That was a problem I was facing for a really time and you solved it with such an ease..A big thanks to you Forrest 👍
Subscribing you right away sir.

[Gthesecondpower]

Great Video. I hadn't used Classic for a couple of years (CC is easier and suits my basic needs) but I'm in a photography class where we're learning LRC, and I forgot about not moving files and folders around. I thought, "shoot, my folders in explorer are a mess, here let me re-organize...doh." Fortunately, I didn't have many photos in LRC so after much consternation, I decided that the easiest thing to do was delete everything, organize my explorer folders the way I want them, and then reimport everything carefully! Lesson Learned!

[bassplayer]

thank you for your wonderful info....I did have that problem.😷

[robraker]

Well done! Very well organized explanation that helped me considerably. Thanks Forrest - you da man!

[b]

To find conflicts in your LrC photos permanently create a filter in: Attributes, Metadata. If you are not screwing up your folders and photos in your catalog what should result is that the filter you created will indicate that conflicts are not present. Check the filter before every close out. If conflicts appear in the filter a mistake has been made. Before closing out immediately deal with fixing the problem while you can still remember how your mess-up might have occurred. Make life easier by not letting metadata conflicts pile up.

[bethlangoneal]

That was a great video. Good explanations!! Easy to listen to.

[DogzWorld]

Thank you so much! This was perfect. Exactly what I needed

[kss]

Thanks for this helpful video! It helped me correct a portion of my LR mess that happened when I upgraded my MacBook pro!
I've got another question for images in a folder with over 3000 images, that I' not sure how to correct when importing from my LR backup catalog. For that folder, I can NOT see any images in my library - I can't even see the folder and sub-folders for the images on the left panel.

However, I do see individual blank grey boxes where images should be. Each grey box has an explanation mark, with the file name for each image and all other metadata such as the date the image was shot, the star rating I assigned when I processed the file, as well the keyword tags, I assigned to each image. However, the images themselves can't be seen,

If I click on the explanation mark on the blank image, I get the option to LR to locate the file, or to cancel. As an example, I get the following message for an image:
"_87A5079.CR could not be found because the original file could not be found. Would you like to Locate it?"

If I click on "Locate", the image disappears. For other folders that I was able to recover, there was a folder, and that folder had an explanation mark, and I was able to find where that folder is now. However, in this case, even though I know where the folder is, LR does not give me an option to find the image, and it is unable to find it either.

I would appreciate if you can give me any suggestions on how to recover the images in this folder, so I don't have to reprocess all these images!!

[southflowithfran]

I love this video! Can you make a video on how you back up to two additional hard drives?

[MaryUnderwoodeastbayarts]

I have a Real mess on my hands. Going to give this a try!!

[mauricered]

Is there a way to re link multiple folders, I moved all the photos to an external hard rice.