# Question marks on files that were not moved...



## DCW (Jan 9, 2018)

Operating System:Mac
Exact Lightroom Version (Help menu > System Info):LR Classic CC 7.01

I store my master photo files on an external SSD. Being a good little LR acolyte, INSIDE LR I made a minor change to the name (and only the name) of a folder where I store some masters.  All I did was right click the folder name, select rename, and change the name from 2011-2017 to 2011-2018. As you might assume, it's an upper level folder where I store individual years' photos.  Prior to that I had added a folder for 2018 to the 2011-2017 folder, thus the name change.  

First, the 2018 folder and its two sub folders went gray with question marks, then, when I tried to sync folders, the whole 2011-2018 folder structure when gray with question marks. Then I tried the "Find Missing Folder" routine. Still no change after I re-identified the folder in Finder. The entire 2011-2018 folder and all subfolders are greyed out with ?. 

1.  I did NOT move or rename anything at all in Finder. All of the above was done completely within LR. The name change that I did in LR is correctly reflected in Finder, so the change stuck. 

2.  All of the photos are still there in the Catalog. I am not looking just at previews. I know this because when I right click on a specific photo and "Show in Finder" it goes right to the correct master file on the external SSD.

So, in a sense, nothing has changed except now my main folder has greyed out folder names and question marks.  But that should not be and I don't know what it means.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Jan 9, 2018)

You should not have had to find missing in LR.  If you just change the name on the folder, the folder name should change immediately.  No images are moved, just the folder is renamed.  Syncing should not have been needed, and if something went wrong could have made it more confused under the covers.

What is the actual (finder) structure now, compared to what you see in LR?


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## Johan Elzenga (Jan 9, 2018)

Sounds like there may be something wrong with the disk itself. Have you restarted Lightroom? And do you have a backup of this disk?


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## DCW (Jan 9, 2018)

Ferguson said:


> You should not have had to find missing in LR.  If you just change the name on the folder, the folder name should change immediately.  No images are moved, just the folder is renamed.  Syncing should not have been needed, and if something went wrong could have made it more confused under the covers.
> 
> What is the actual (finder) structure now, compared to what you see in LR?


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## DCW (Jan 9, 2018)

I rebooted. All is fixed. Maybe LR needs to do an invisible refresh sometimes? I thought that the original problem was that it had confused the path name when I changed the folder name. Who know. But it seems to be okay now.

Thank you!


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