Finding photos again after moving to a new computer

[Anders Vinberg]

I am moving all my stuff to a new computer which has a different hard drive structure. When I open the Lightroom database, it can't find the pictures, of course. I know there is a way to find a single image. But how do I tell LR that the entire directory structure, from top to bottom, is now on E: instead of C: ? I know I can point to a picture and choose Show in Explorer and then it asks me to locate it, and I go to the right place, and then LR is smart enough to fill in all the pictures that are in that folder. But that folder, of course, is from a single day? How do I realign the whole directory structure?

[wolfnowl]

It depends on how your library structure is laid out.  We'll assume that all of your images are under one parent folder, because that's the easiest.  First, under the Library menu, make sure 'Show items in subfolders' is checked.
Second, go to the top-most library folder in your catalogue.  If you have more than one folder at this level, right-click on one and select 'Show Parent Folder'.  Click on that folder and it should show every image in your catalogue when in the Grid view.  Also, every image in the catalogue should have a ? mark in the upper right.
Third, right-click on one of these question marks and choose the option where you tell Lightroom the new location for this image.  Navigate to that drive/folder and click on the image to complete the link.  Lightroom will re-link every image it can find within that parent/subfolder combination.  It might take a while.

That's it!

Mike.

[Anders Vinberg]

Great, thanks.

It will take a while to copy it all over, anyway...