“No photos in selected folder” – but there ARE !

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

Background
Apple Mac.  I have an external drive attached to my Mac on which there is a folder containing all my image files and the Lightroom catalogue.  When I go on a trip I clone this folder to an SSD drive.  I use a MacBook Pro whilst I am away and add folders and images to Lightroom on the SSD.  When I return home I clone the SSD back to the Mac’s external drive.  In the past I have not experienced any problems.  Lightroom sometimes needs some help pointing to the right folder but it finds the images and their edits, and all is well.

“No photos in selected folder” – but there ARE !
So, on this recent trip I updated my copy of Lightroom the latest version and it upgraded the catalogue.  I added two new folders and images and did some editing.

On my return I upgraded my Mac’s Lightroom to the latest (and same version).  I cloned the folder from the SSD to my external drive and opened Lightroom.

The first thing Lightroom wanted to do was ‘upgrade’ the already upgraded catalogue which I let it do.  I opened Lightroom which now has the two new folders but which it claims has “0” image files in each and it says “No photos in selected folder(s)”.  OK, so I right-click on the folder and try “Update Folder Location…” and, yes, it’s pointing at the right folder in the right location and there are all the image files !  I try confirming the folder selection (still zero images, Lightroom says).  Next, I try “Synchronize Folder…” which imports all the images but without the edits I had completed on my MacBook Pro.  Finally, I point Lightroom at the folders on the SSD.  The same result “No photos in selected folder”.

Going back to the MacBook with the SSD and all the images and their edits are there in Lightroom.

HELP!

This sounds like a corruption of the Lightroom catalogue but I’m not sure how to fix it (and, yes, I tried optimizing the catalogue).

Any ideas and suggestions welcome !

[digitaldog]

After the clone, did you try the Update Folder contextual command?

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

Hi Andrew.

Many thanks for your suggestion.  I had actually tried this, but with no success.

After pondering overnight I did some more investigation on the assumption that the catalogue was telling Lightroom that there were no photographs in the folder even though there were.

I then found that the XMP files had not been copied across, which was odd.  I wondered if the copying process had not therefore properly copied all the files (catalogue and image files) to their new location.  So I then re-copied the catalogue and the folders containing the images manually and now all is well.

What appears to have happened is that the backup utility I was using to do the copying had not properly copied everything across.  Since this is not the first occasion I have had difficulties with it I'm afraid it's destined for The Bin.

[dreed]

I ran across this today with LR 11.5. It was a result of me moving images from one folder to another. Something didn't get updated right. Might be because there was a panorama merge running in the background but that's no excuse.

What I did to solve my problem was "Show in Explorer" in the original folder. This forced LR to realise the image was missing, which I then located in the new folder and then LR was clued in about the contents of the new folder that it seemingly forgot about.

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

I ran across this today with LR 11.5. It was a result of me moving images from one folder to another. Something didn't get updated right. Might be because there was a panorama merge running in the background but that's no excuse.

What I did to solve my problem was "Show in Explorer" in the original folder. This forced LR to realise the image was missing, which I then located in the new folder and then LR was clued in about the contents of the new folder that it seemingly forgot about.

That's interesting.  Translated into ‘Mac’ that would be “Show in Finder”.  I’ll give that a try next time something like this this happens.

Normally, allowing Lightroom to locate the missile folder or file usually works.  I think in my case the Lightroom database, or some other related file, wasn’t properly copied across so although the images were in the folder the database thought they weren’t (if that makes any sense at all).  Lightroom wa confused; and so was I !

[David Eckels]

Did you try synchronizing?

[Simon J.A. Simpson]

Did you try synchronizing?

Yup.