# Folder Hierarchy Issue



## rctneil (Mar 23, 2013)

I have encountered this issue several times over the last few months, have no idea how to solve it and have no idea what is causing it. I have my photos organised in a hierarchy in th following directory:

~/Pictures/_Photographs/Master/Images/

However, when I do an import and choose a subfolder of Images to import into, it goes ahead and does the import fine. If I check the Finder, it;s all fine, images in the right place as expected. However, in LR, the new import is showing up as being in:

~/Pictures/_photographs/Master/Images/

_photographs (lowercase 'p'), does not exist. If I right click that directory in Lightroom and click 'Show in Finder', it takes me to _Photographs. When I try to drag the folder of newly imported images to the correct place (from within LR), it states it cannot move them as they are already there.

How can this issue be resolved as it's extremely frustrating.


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 23, 2013)

The problem is caused by Lightroom being case sensitive, whereas the operating system isn't....so "Photographs" and "photographs" are treated the same by the OS, but differently by Lightroom. Probably some time in the past you renamed the folder in the Operating System, and ever since then Lightroom thinks it's importing to a different folder. The solution is fairly straightforward, though a bit tricky to explain without having a sight of the Folders Panel.....can you post a screenshot of it?


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## rctneil (Mar 23, 2013)

Here's the screenshot. By the way: my _Photographs directory has been called _Photographs since the time I originally created it.

http://f.cl.ly/items/0C0z3S0t3v1935263n2A/Screen Shot 2013-03-23 at 21.43.53.png


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## Kiwigeoff (Mar 23, 2013)

How about one of you disk folder structure too.


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## rctneil (Mar 23, 2013)

http://f.cl.ly/items/0r3r3t2n0J2T2I2u243B/Screen Shot 2013-03-23 at 22.09.07.png


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 23, 2013)

I think before we try to fix the problem, we need to find out what's caused it to start. If you didn't rename it at all, where did Lightroom suddenly get the lower-case name from? My concern is that it may start up again after we fix it.

Do you recall when this issue first started? Had you done any software updates around that time?

And could I see a screenshot of your standard import screen (I only need to see the Destination Panel)?


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## rctneil (Mar 23, 2013)

The destination panel hierarchy is identical to the hierarchy shown via finder with capital 'P'


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 24, 2013)

And the answers to my other questions?

In addition, I need you to confirm that in the Library module you have the the Library menu item "Show Photos in Subfolders" *checked.* If so, can you temporarily uncheck it then retake a screenshot of the Folders Panel.....to save you having to scrub out all those sub-folder names, you can collapse the "Images" hierarchy under the "_Photographs" structure, but please leave the hierarchy under the "_photographs" structure expanded (although you can scrub out the sub-folder name, but leave the photo count visible).

Also, I need to know if the sub-folder name that you have scrubbed out under the "_photographs" structure also appears in the "_Photographs" structure?


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## rctneil (Mar 29, 2013)

Not sure where the issue started but it started doing it around the beginning of this year but that is a very rough estimate. Only normal software updates. I am running very latest version of LR 4.

Ok, so with that option unchecked the screenshot you asked for is:


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 30, 2013)

So the last question I asked concerned that single folder containing 92 images, does that folder name also appear under the "_Photographs" hierarchy?

If not, can you confirm that in Finder you do see this particular folder listed under the "_Photographs" hierarchy?


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## rctneil (Mar 30, 2013)

That single folder does NOT appear under the _Photographs hierarchy but DOES show in the directory hierarchy of _Photographs in Finder.

So no in LR but yes in Finder.


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## Allan Olesen (Mar 30, 2013)

I wonder if this is caused by some kind of automatic case correction on folder names, which get confused by the initial underscore. 

Some earlier versions of Windows had a similar problem, though not identical: You could name a folder "abcd" or "Abcd", but if you named it "ABCD", it would be shown as "abcd".

So what happens if you create a new folder with a name consisting of underscore + 1 capital letter + several low case letters?

I guess you should try to create one folder from within Lightroom, and one folder in Finder (which I suppose is the file management utility on Mac?)


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## rctneil (Mar 30, 2013)

I have been using the _Photographs directory name for a long time before this issue started appearing though. that's what is strange.


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 30, 2013)

rctneil said:


> That single folder does NOT appear under the _Photographs hierarchy but DOES show in the directory hierarchy of _Photographs in Finder.
> 
> So no in LR but yes in Finder.



Thanks.

To fix the problem (though this may only be temporary, as we still don't know what caused it), we need to merge "_photographs" with "_Photographs" but as you've already discovered you can't easily do that in the Folders Panel. So the way we do it is to switch "_photographs" to a different name and location, then we can merge it back. So, use Finder to create a *root-level *folder (i.e. not in the user folder hierarchy) on your hard drive called something like "Dupe Path Fix", then in the Lightroom Folders Panel ctrl-click on "_photographs" and select "Update Folder Location" and in the resulting browser window find and select "Dupe Path Fix". That should remove "_photographs" and replace it with "Dupe Path Fix", although the folders below (Master, Images, and the scrubbed one containing 92 images) will all have a "?" mark to indicate they are missing. No worries yet, simply ctrl-click now on the "Dupe Path Fix" folder in the Folders Panel, again select "Update Folder Location", now navigate to and select "_Photographs" and everything should merge back into the one single hierarchy. You may get a Merge Prompt message due to the fact that Master and Images will appear in both hierarchies, but this should be OK to click on "Merge".

If you are concerned about this (it should be OK, I've used it quite a few times in similar situations on this and other forums), take a catalog backup first as a recovery point.

Next is to try an import and see whether it works properly or if "_photographs" appears again.


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## rctneil (Mar 30, 2013)

Brill, That has fixed it for now. I have to pop out for several hours so will try an import once i'm back and will report back.

Thanks for the help up to now!


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## rctneil (Mar 30, 2013)

I've literally just started an import and chose a subfolder of _Photographs as the destination and now it's importing it shows that the dreaded _photographs ghost folder has reappeared in the sidebar folders panel.


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 30, 2013)

Oh bother!

Can you post a screenshot of the Import Panel showing the Destination section?

Is there any particular reason why you have the underscore as the first character of the Folder Name? I'm wondering if it's tripping up over that?


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## rctneil (Mar 30, 2013)

Ok, here's the screenshot. I have used that directory name for a long time before I encountered this issue. Basically I have two types of image I use on my system, photographs and graphics like web images etc. So when doing a nice organise and tidy up ages ago I made two brand new directories _Photographs and _Graphics. Each one has both an Images and a Library directory. The hierarchy of actual images files is stored under Images and the library catalog files are stored under library. So LR for _Photographs and Pixa for _Graphics.

It seems to make sense for me. I then add a Master directory as a subfolder of _Photographs and _Graphics as these were my Master libraries so I can add other types of libraries in the future. On my laptop I have my Travel library.






Neil


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## Allan Olesen (Mar 30, 2013)

I don't understand why you don't follow my suggestion and create a random folder with a name consisting of underscore + 1 capital letter + several low case letters. Then you can see if that folder causes similar problems.

That may help you get closer to a solution.


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## clee01l (Mar 30, 2013)

Neil, 
Please open the disk utility and check how your HD is formatted.  Is it "Mac OS Extended (Journalled)" or "Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)"?  This may have some bearing on your issue.


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 31, 2013)

One more suggestion for you Neil, in line with what Allen is suggesting......lose the underscore. I still don't see what the added value of that underscore is, i.e. what's the difference between having your parent folder named "Photographs" or "_Photographs"? I have no idea if that is causing the problem, and if it is I have no idea why it's suddenly become a problem, but I'd certainly be trying to eliminate it from my enquiries. So the first thing I would do is rename that folder from within the Folders Panel, getting rid of the underscore. Then I'd try another import (not forgetting to change the destination folder to match the new name of the parent folder) to see if any similar problem occurred.


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## Allan Olesen (Mar 31, 2013)

TNG said:


> I still don't see what the added value of that underscore is,


I can answer that. At least in Windows, an underscore is sorted before any letter or digit when sorting files. So an underscore in front of a name is an easy way of keeping a file or directory at the top of a directory listing which is sorted by file name. I often use that myself too.


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 31, 2013)

Thanks Allan, I do know that but in this instance with only 6 top level folders in the Pictures folder it seemed (to me at least) to have little point, although Neil may have his own reasons for using it. I also agree that it shouldn't cause this particular problem, but so far we haven't been able to understand or explain why it's started happening, so as that's a fairly trivial change I'd certainly think about doing it first. Easy enough to change it back.


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## rctneil (Apr 1, 2013)

My main disk is Mac OSX Extended (Journaled). Allan, apologies for not replying to your post, wasn't intentional to ignore you. I will of course remove the underscore to try it out. I use the underscore to keep those directories at the top. I have the same setup on each of my systems and the one called _Graphics is synced over dropbox too so I have my Pixa library on multiple machines. (Not the LR one). I also ahve many more directories on other systems than on this one so it's just an organisation system.Will update shortly.


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## rctneil (Apr 1, 2013)

oh great. I closed Lr, changed the name of _Photographs to Photographs and ropened lightroom, located my catalog file and then repaired locations of the hierarchy under _Photographs - Fine. I then repaired hierarchy under _photographs and it asked to merge, accepted that and the last import I did of someones birthday I had 100% imported was nowhere to be found. The actual files are in my Images Finder directory structure so I know I imported them. I then checked Previous Import and they show up in there. I then right clciked one of those and clicked Show in folder in Library and it right at that point took me to and expanded out to the hierarchy shown in the image with master. The real Master is the one further down called Master. Master si the one that actually exists on my machine. The birthday images show up under master though!I'm so confused. What is LR doing?http://f.cl.ly/items/1n2M1U0R2I0T0Y0W0L2N/Screen Shot 2013-04-01 at 14.25.39.png


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## rctneil (Mar 23, 2013)

I have encountered this issue several times over the last few months, have no idea how to solve it and have no idea what is causing it. I have my photos organised in a hierarchy in th following directory:

~/Pictures/_Photographs/Master/Images/

However, when I do an import and choose a subfolder of Images to import into, it goes ahead and does the import fine. If I check the Finder, it;s all fine, images in the right place as expected. However, in LR, the new import is showing up as being in:

~/Pictures/_photographs/Master/Images/

_photographs (lowercase 'p'), does not exist. If I right click that directory in Lightroom and click 'Show in Finder', it takes me to _Photographs. When I try to drag the folder of newly imported images to the correct place (from within LR), it states it cannot move them as they are already there.

How can this issue be resolved as it's extremely frustrating.


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## Allan Olesen (Apr 1, 2013)

Ok. So now you have two folders in Lightroom - one folder called "Master" and another folder called "master".

Do they both exist on disk? 

I suppose not, since as I understand TNG's first post, the file system in Mac OS does not allow two parallel folders with same name but different case?

Seems pretty much as a repetition of your _photographs / _Photographs problem.

Perhaps you will have to surrender and only use lower case in all your folder names...


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## Jim Wilde (Apr 1, 2013)

Well that is pretty bizarre. At this stage I'd be thinking some form of corruption, so the first thing I would do is rename the Preferences file which will force a new one to be created. A wonky preferences file can cause all manner of strange problems, so let's hope this is one of them. Instructions for doing that, if you are happy to try it, are here.

After doing that you'll need to locate your catalog using Finder then double-click to launch Lightroom. Would be interested in seeing the outcome in the Folders Panel.

BTW, when you renamed the _Photographs folder, it would have been much easier to do that from within the Folders Panel, so then Lightroom updates itself and no need to relink folders afterwards.

Also, do you look at the disk properties as per Cletus' suggestion? What was the result?


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## rctneil (Apr 1, 2013)

Ok, So the resetting of the prefs file didn't solve the problem. Just completed an import straight after and it ended up inside of Photographs/masterI did check the disk properties, I posted the outcome in a previous [email protected] I have a directory called Master and master does not exist at all on my file system. Just the same as it was with _Photographs and _photographs. As stated previously, I have in the several years of using this directory structure never ever had an issue until now with using capital letters and underscores in the folder names.


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## Allan Olesen (Apr 1, 2013)

OK. I am going to make wild guesses now. No real insight.

It seems to me that this is what happens:
1. Lightroom believes that the folder name is "master". 

2. When you import photos to that folder (you use Move in the Import dialog, right?), Lightroom tells your operating system that the photos should be moved to "master".

3. The operating system doesn't care about case so the photos instead get moved to "Master" because that is the one which already exists.

4. Lightroom sees the Master folder in the file system and thinks "Oh, that is a different one" and then shows this folder along with the folder which Lightroom thinks exists. (This can as well be step 0. I don't really know).

Anyway, I think we have to search for an import step where something leads Lightroom to believe that "master" exists. I can think of two semi-obvious possibilities:

 - A Lightroom plugin which messes with folder names during import.

 - Something left over in the Import dialog.

So if you look in the Import dialog, especially in the right side pane, do you see any places where the folder is called "master" instead of "Master"? Or perhaps some manually written text in the "Into Subfolder" dialog.

Could you describe your Import steps in detail, including the settings for folder names? Or perhaps a screenshot with all panels in the right side pane expanded.

It is not very likely that I can offer any help based on those details, but perhaps someone else can. I am on Windows, and this could very well be a problem which is only reproducible on Mac since folder creation and handling are probably OS specific functions in the program.


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## rctneil (Apr 15, 2013)

Sorry for the delay:

1. Yes, this sounds right.

2. I use Copy as Copy and Copy as DNG are the only available options when importing from an SD for me. The issue happens for both Copy and Copy as DNG

I have no LR plugins messing with stuff on import.

I have checked all Import dialog settings carefully. I will get a screenshot of the import dialog for you now.


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 15, 2013)

Best solution - lose everything, by redirecting it to a completely different path on a different drive, and then find it all again.  If you want to zip up the catalog (just the lrcat file, it'll zip small) and send it to [email protected] via www.wetransfer.com I'll see what I can do.  It's usually the quickest solution.


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## rctneil (Apr 15, 2013)

How do you mean "Lose everything"? I realise this won't make me lose all my data but in what way? Some form of losing the association and reassociating? If so then from where?


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 15, 2013)

Noooooo, you won't lose any settings.

When I open the catalog on my machine, everything will be marked as missing.  I'll create a folder on my computer called rctneil, and I'll 'update folder location' to point _Photographs to that location, merging any multiple copies of that folder.  When I send it back, they'll all be marked as missing, and you can then relink to the correct folder.

You could do the same yourself, but updating all of the folder locations to an empty folder on another drive.  All we're trying to do is wipe out any references to that _Photographs or _photographs folder.


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## rctneil (Apr 15, 2013)

Right, I'll try it out myself with an empty directory on my external drive


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## rctneil (Apr 15, 2013)

Victoria, I did exactly that and tried an import and the imported images show up under "master" and not "Master" as wanted.  It's sooooo annoying.


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 15, 2013)

What case does Master have when you view it in Finder?  Same process again, but check the capitilization of the whole path against Finder.  Lose and find whichever folders have different cases.  You can do it easily by creating a empty _Photographs folder, and an empty master folder within that...  Or eventually we could give up and open it in SQLite Manager and manually change the path to match the case of the path in Finder.


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## rctneil (Apr 16, 2013)

Ok, So an update on this:

I tried your suggestion of losing and finding directories several times and that didn't make any difference.

I then opened up the .lrcat file in Base.app and searched through all tables for any sign of "master" (lowercase) and none were found. Very strange.

So I kept renaming directories, reopening LR and finding missing folder and choosing the newly renamed directory and trying an import and I ahve now got it to stop the issue and it is working. Hopefully this is the last i'll see of the issue but will report back if it pops up again.

My directory structure is now back to: (notice Photographs is back to _Photographs as that is how I prefer it)

-neil
  |-Pictures
      |-_Photographs
           |-Main
               |-Library
               |   |-Main.lrcat
               |   |-<Other LR directories and files>
               |-Images

So hopefully this will all stay working.

Thanks all for the help!
                   |-<hierarchy of image directories>


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 17, 2013)

Excellent, I hope that does the trick!


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## rctneil (Apr 21, 2013)

Unfortunately, this issue has come back again. Any ideas?


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 21, 2013)

The offer to send me the catalog's still open.  No promises I can fix it, but I'm happy to take a look.


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## rctneil (Apr 21, 2013)

^ On it's way. Thanks again.


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 21, 2013)

And on its way back..


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## rctneil (Apr 21, 2013)

Thanks. Just downloading now at our super speed internet at 1.02Mbps! Speedy eh! - 10 minutes to go.


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## rctneil (Apr 21, 2013)

Much appreciate you sending that back but sorry to say it didn;t have any effect. I imported a photo, double checked all the importer settings beforehand and it imported it but shows up in the Folders panel as being under "_photographs" rather than "_Photographs"


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## rctneil (Apr 22, 2013)

Any thoughts anyone? Could LR devs become aware of this as it is looking like a bug of some sort.


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## Jim Wilde (Apr 22, 2013)

I can't explain it, and I guess nobody else can either. How about setting up a new clean catalog and running some test imports to see if the problem still occurs. If it does, next on my list would be a new (test) user account so see if the problem occurs there. Last on my list would be a system software re-install.


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## rctneil (Apr 23, 2013)

If I uninstall LR and reinstall it, what settings would I need to re input?


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## rctneil (Apr 23, 2013)

Ok, Tried a new catalog and couldn't replicate. It's a bit hard to attempt to replicate as to the type of issue it is.  An uninstall and reinstall didn't help either.

A workaround i'm using at present is, import photos, they show up in the folders panel as under "_photographs". I right click that folder and update folder location, choose "_Photographs", it says it already exists so I click Merge and that solves it. Why it is happening in the first place is the annoying thing!

Neil


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 23, 2013)

It's definitely the capitalization issue, but I can't explain why it keeps happening.  As a long shot, what happens if you change _Photographs to _Photos as a semi-permanent change - do you get the same issue when importing?


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## rctneil (Apr 24, 2013)

Changing "_Photographs" to "_Photos" seems to have solved the issue but that is my experience importing a single sample jpg. I'll be able to confirm fully after a full import with multiple files


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## rctneil (Mar 23, 2013)

I have encountered this issue several times over the last few months, have no idea how to solve it and have no idea what is causing it. I have my photos organised in a hierarchy in th following directory:

~/Pictures/_Photographs/Master/Images/

However, when I do an import and choose a subfolder of Images to import into, it goes ahead and does the import fine. If I check the Finder, it;s all fine, images in the right place as expected. However, in LR, the new import is showing up as being in:

~/Pictures/_photographs/Master/Images/

_photographs (lowercase 'p'), does not exist. If I right click that directory in Lightroom and click 'Show in Finder', it takes me to _Photographs. When I try to drag the folder of newly imported images to the correct place (from within LR), it states it cannot move them as they are already there.

How can this issue be resolved as it's extremely frustrating.


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 25, 2013)

Oooooh that sounds more promising!  Maybe a gremlin didn't like the word Photographs!


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