Lost Lightroom files

[LtDave]

imported about 1600 files into lightroom back in mid february.

need to go back and find some of those files. i only edited and exported about a dozen or so.

i thought i had my portable hard drive plugged back into the exact same port as before but apparently not.

they show up all gray (because theyve been imported once already) but theyre now 'file not found' because LrC is trying to follow the initial path to those files from the original import

ive tried to move them to a new drive, to reimport them but same same. sometimes they dont even show up in the file on the drive!

im currently converting all of the CR3 files to DNGs hoping that being a new format, they might be found so i can at least look at them, and maybe import the ones i need.

i looked in the Lightroom catalog (lastest and the back-up that would have been applicable catalog v13-3) but i get a folder with ....v13-3.lrcat-data that only has a couple of dozen ".blob" files of some unknown (to me) type or the other which looks to be some sort of document that cant be opened..

my Lightroom is all up today with a recent updat from about 2, 3 days ago.

why does lightroom need to be so flipping difficult? its why i sometimes dont even want to do any editing on the road because where i store my images (permanently) is not where i put them when i travel. i like to edit while i travel and for some situations, i HAVE to edit while im traveling.

there has to be a better way

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

What you need to do is point Lightroom to where the folder or the files are now.

If it's a whole folder that is "not found" you can go to Lightroom > Library and right click on the missing folder and then a window pops up with the option: "Find Missing Folder", like so:

Now click on Find Missing Folder and browse to that folder.

If it's just one image, right click on the image and in the list click: Show in Finder (or whatever the Windows equivalent is)

You will then get a warning saying the file can't be found. But you get an option to Locate it. Click on "Locate", browse to your file and select it, then confirm.

 

[LtDave]

the issue wasnt so much as Lr saying the folder wasnt found, it didnt show up in the library (i had imported the images once) and neither were the images. there wasnt any pop up like your last screenshot with "xxx.cr3 could not be used because the original file could not be found...."

the files were mostly scrap anyway (operator error when shooting them) so i moved them around on different drives and then went out for a while. when i came back, they were in the new location. i re-imported them from that drive, decided that YEP, theyre not worth putting any editing time into them and closed Lr...

time to go watch some youtube or something