# How to remove Hard Drive published collections (and other issues)



## eschurr (Jun 12, 2018)

When i try to delete all of my rejected photos I get prompted if i want to remove them from my published folders, and i say Yes.  Lately i've been getting this error message (attached).  You'll note the message is truncated so i can't tell exactly which Hard Drive collection it is having trouble with.  When i look at my Hard Drive Published folders, i note that two of them (which i don't use anymore) have an odd symbol next to them. I suspect the error message is related to them, but I can't edit or delete them. Any ideas how I can determine which Hard Drive collection is causing the problem and what to do?

A little more info: 

one of the Hard Drive services points to another Windows PC where i export my final images to display on the TV in my kitchen.

the other points to an external hard drive attached to a docking station for my PC. 

I recently published a number of new and modified photos to both services.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jun 12, 2018)

The icons are as they should be. The error says that Lightroom expects to find a folder in that path, but in reality it found a file. Did you perhaps move the folder and replaced it with an alias?


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## eschurr (Jun 12, 2018)

Thank you. I don't even know how to replace a folder with an alias, so i'm sure i didn't do that!

I wish i could tell which folder LR is having trouble with.  The error message is truncated.

Can you explain why the icons are different for the folders that have zero photos in them and why i can't delete them?


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## Johan Elzenga (Jun 12, 2018)

Those first folders are the root of the publishing service, representing the destination folder. They need to be there and so they cannot be removed, because that would remove the publishing service itself.


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## eschurr (Jun 13, 2018)

Thank you for your replies. I now understand the folder icons. Can you suggest a way to determine:

-- exactly which publish service LR is having trouble with?
-- diagnose why LR is having a problem deleting files from the service but is ok publishing to it?


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## Johan Elzenga (Jun 13, 2018)

The error message suggests that somewhere there is a file, while Lightroom expects a folder.  I’ve never seen this problem myself, so I can’t give you an easy answer. Check the folders of your publishing services. Do you have folders for each service and subfolders that correspond with the collections inside each service?


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## eschurr (Jun 13, 2018)

Thanks for your reply. I agree that's what it seems LR is doing, but i can't figure out why. Oddly, when i published new and updated photos it works.


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## eschurr (Jun 19, 2018)

Any additional thoughts on this? I'm stuck.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jun 19, 2018)

eschurr said:


> Any additional thoughts on this? I'm stuck.


Like I said before: check the folder path to see if the path contains any irregularities. Also check whether the published images you want to remove in Lightroom still exist on the hard disk.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jun 19, 2018)

BTW,  it should be possible to go to 'All Photographs' and remove the rejected photos from Lightroom there. If you get a warning that they are in a publishing service, then you may be able to ignore that or say that you don't want to remove them from the destination.


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## eschurr (Jun 20, 2018)

Thanks again for your help. Can you please elaborate on what you mean by "check the folder path?" As you can see in the screenshots in the original post there is no folder path noted. The error message doesn't indicate what published service is having the issue or where it's located.

I only have two publish services. Both are Hard Drive, and both work just fine when publishing new or modified photos. It seems that deletion is an issue. One service points to another PC on the network, and the other points to an external hard drive.. As an experiment, i just deleted an old published smart collection that was on the external hard drive and LR had no trouble deleting the collection, the folder, and the directory.

I could probably delete my photos from "all photographs" and leave the photos on the service, but that would defeat half of the benefit of why i want to delete the photos.  It effectively minimizes the value of the publish service.

Any ideas on how to diagnose this further?

thanks again.


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## Johan Elzenga (Jun 20, 2018)

The folder path is the publishing service folder on your hard disk, and any subfolders inside that. The error message suggests that what should be a folder, is now a file. That could mean that you replaced a folder by an alias. Or the error could be bogus.

When you delete the photos from Lightroom, you can obviously manually delete the published version too. That is not a permanent solution, but it could be used to solve this particular error.


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## eschurr (Jun 24, 2018)

Thanks. The reason this baffles me is that if the folder path is somehow in error, why can i publish new and modified folders just fine? It would seem that if the path is erroneous all functions to that collection would fail.

i appreciate the suggestion, but i really don't see how i can manually delete the pictures without a lot of cumbersome effort. Lightroom is not telling me which photos it is struggling with, and even if it did i would have to track them down one by one and delete them.  This would work if there were a small number of photos that were contiguous, but that's not the case. Do you agree or have other suggestions?


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## Johan Elzenga (Jun 25, 2018)

You could try to delete the entire publishing service, but it contains a whopping 33,520 images. Come to think of it, that could also be the problem. I don't know if there is an official limit to the number of photos Lightroom can handle in a single folder, but 33 thousand is excessive by any standard. That would also explain why you can publish a new image, but not delete an old one. Adding a new image is no problem, but finding the one to delete among 33 thousand others might cause some time out. The error would be bogus in this case, but that is not impossible.

Or you could just leave these deleted images there. When Lightroom asks you if you want to delete the rejected image from the publishing service, just say 'no' rather than 'yes'.


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## PhilBurton (Jun 26, 2018)

JohanElzenga said:


> You could try to delete the entire publishing service, but it contains a whopping 33,520 images. Come to think of it, that could also be the problem. I don't know if there is an official limit to the number of photos Lightroom can handle in a single folder, but 33 thousand is excessive by any standard. That would also explain why you can publish a new image, but not delete an old one. Adding a new image is no problem, but finding the one to delete among 33 thousand others might cause some time out. The error would be bogus in this case, but that is not impossible.
> 
> Or you could just leave these deleted images there. When Lightroom asks you if you want to delete the rejected image from the publishing service, just say 'no' rather than 'yes'.


Maybe a call to Adobe support would help.  There might be some "soft" or even "hard limits that are not published.

Phil


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## eschurr (Jul 7, 2018)

Here's an update  and some things i learned:

the problem is not with the size of the folder (e.g, number of photos).  I have two identical publish services; one points to an external hard drive, and the other points to the hard drive on a network Windows 10 PC.  There are no problems with the one that point to the external hard drive. I can publish new and modified photos to either service, but i can't delete photos from the service that points to the networked PC.
i may have to delete the service and start over,  but it will take a loooong time to republish my photos. I wondered if i could delete the service from LR, leave the photos on the target, create a new publish service identical to the one i deleted, and tell LR to publish to that service and hope that it would see that the photos were already there and not put new copies on the target. No joy.  It duplicates the photos.
if you're curious as to why i have so many photos in these publish services it's because i use them to publish my final JPEGs to a network PC that i use to display my photos on the large TV in my kitchen so we can continually enjoy them.

I would still love to find a way to solve this problem without deleting the publish service because of the length of time it will take to republish the photos.


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