# Duplicate Folders appearing in Folder List.



## cgatlan (Mar 23, 2011)

Hello,

I've searched and searched but cannot locate the answer to this. I went through a few pages on here, but couldn't locate the same exact bug.. So I have to post..

Have a look at the screenshot..






For 2011, I have 02 and 03 (february / march) folders broken off from the 'Photo Collection'. However the 2011 folder at the top of the above shot, is *IN* the 'Photo Collection' folder. 

It started doing this on the 6th Feb, and for a long time all subsequently imported photo's would only appear at top section.
I tried to resolve myself today, but fear I may have made it worst. I tried 'Synchronizing' the folders at the bottom, and some photo's were 'reimported' in there, but not all of them. 
What's strange, is in Finder Window (outside of LR), there are NO Duplicates (folders or files/photos), the folder structure is sound. Just inside LR it's gone a bit weird.

Any Help Please?


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## Mark Sirota (Mar 23, 2011)

It is likely that these aren't actually the same folders.  For example, you might have Pictures/2011/02 and Pictures/Photo Collection/2011/02.

I think the easiest way to do this is to show the full path in the Folders panel -- click the little + in the Folders panel header and select "Path From Volume".  Then each top-level folder (2011 and Photo Collection) will be shown with their full path.

If they are confirmed to be different locations, then you can reconcile this by selecting all the photos in the 2011/02 and 2011/03 folders and dragging them into the Photo Collection/2011/02 and Photo Collection/2011/03 folders.

The source of the problem is probably in your Import window -- be sure you've selected Photo Collection as the top-level folder for your date-based organization next time you import.


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## cgatlan (Mar 23, 2011)

Hi Mark,

I wish it was that simple.
But I have double checked - they are in the SAME folder hierarchy in Finder.
Here are two further screenshots..





and


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## Mark Sirota (Mar 24, 2011)

Neat!  That's not supposed to happen.

I seem to recall a bug at some point in the past having something to do with this...  What version of Lightroom is this?


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## b_gossweiler (Mar 24, 2011)

I just recently noticed a user in a German forum with (I believe) exactly the same problem. See this:



I suggested updating folder locations (which should merge them anyway), but it didn't work out.

Can you make a backup of your catalog and try the following (just to see if yours react the same):


  "Update folder location" on the 2nd parent folder (in your case the lower 2011).
This resulted in disappearing of the 2nd parent folder, but propagating the subordinate folders (in your case 01, 02, 03) one level higher, being on the same level as 2011 now:

"Update folder location" on a subordinate folder (in your case 01).
This resulted in the following error message:

If you also get the error, delete the catalog and copy back your catalog backup from before trying. If it works, your problem is solved anyway.

Beat


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## DonRicklin (Mar 24, 2011)

Seams to me there maybe a trick to combine these that I have used before, but I currently can't recall. It has been awhile since this has happened. Alternatively I believe I have heard that Dan Tull of Abode, who we have connected users with to repair catalogs maybe able to do something for this, as well.

Don


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## b_gossweiler (Mar 24, 2011)

I've seen similar symptoms when the same physical folder appeared under two different volumes (one as mapped network share, one with UNC notation, but both designating the same physical location), and "Update folder location" can successfully be used to merge the entries under these circumstances. But this is a completeley different problem.

The user I mentioned notices that import always creates a duplicate structure for him, even after manually getting rid of it.

Beat


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## Mark Sirota (Mar 24, 2011)

How about if you Add Parent Folder on the top one, so then they're at the same depth of the tree?  Maybe it'll notice they're the same then.


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## davidjade (Mar 30, 2011)

Having the same problem here too, under Windows 7. Every time I import LR creates duplicate entries in the folder pane. The files are ending up in the right physical place though.

The only way I have been able to fix this is to remove the newly imported files from LR and then synchronize. LR  won't let me move them since there are already in the right place. Major pain!

Adding parent, promoting, etc... has no effects. It just continues to show duplicates.


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## Kiwigeoff (Mar 30, 2011)

Could this be that the selection of location to import to in the Import Menu needs setting correctly or resetting. Could be a gremlin in there.


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 30, 2011)

David, welcome to the forums.

In addition to checking out your settings in the import panel as per Geoff's suggestion, could I ask where these folders are? Are they by any chance on a network share? Any chance you could post a screenshot of the Folders Panel in Lightroom, as this may give us clues for futher suggestions?


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## Victoria Bampton (Mar 30, 2011)

There's a capitalization difference in the screenshots above - could that be triggering the problem?  And is it only happening to new imports since a specific date?


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## davidjade (Mar 30, 2011)

I've tried that already. Everything seems correct. The folders are located on the system drive (C:\Users\david.HOME\Pictures\Lightroom\). In my case there are no capitalization differences even when I expand the folder parents to see the full paths. (edit: my bad - there was a capitalization difference and that was the root of the problem).

I've also tried updating the folders and something curious happens. If I update the duplicate entry, it does nothing. If I however update the existing folder, it asks to merge. Choosing to merge however does nothing. So it seems something can tell the different between the two and this is perhaps the root of the problem. LR seems to think they are actually different folders for some reason. 

I may crack open the LR database and see what's going on. This catalog has been exported (as a subset) and then moved to another machine so perhaps something just broke in that initial update of folder locations after the move (the original location and second machine use completely different drives and paths, but not network folders).

The next time I do an import (probably later tonight), I will post some screen shots of my settings and folders.


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 30, 2011)

davidjade said:


> I may crack open the LR database and see what's going on. This catalog has been exported (as a subset) and then moved to another machine so perhaps something just broke in that initial update of folder locations after the move (the original location and second machine use completely different drives and paths, but not network folders).



You may well be correct that something has gone slightly awry with the export. When you move the cursor over a folder name in the Folders Panel a tool-tip should pop up with the full path of the folder. When you do this with the 'duplicate' folder, is there *any* difference in the full path?


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## davidjade (Mar 31, 2011)

I figured this out. Lr is case-sensitive to folder names on Windows. 

While hovering over the existing and a newly imported folder, I noticed that a single letter was capitalized in one and not the other. As it turns out, all the older imports had an intermediate folder with a lower case letter and the actual disk folder had an upper case in that spot. I probably renamed it at some point after updating the folders after the catalog move to fix the case. So when importing to the disk folder with an upper case letter it re-added that folder to Lr's folder pane since it did not match the case of the existing folder in that list.

The fix for me was simple since all my existing folders used lower case, I just renamed the physical folder to match and now importing no longer creates duplicate folders in the Lr folder pane.

Anyone no where the best place to officially report this bug is? On Windows, Lr should not be case sensitive to folder names as the OS is not.

thanks


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## Mark Sirota (Mar 31, 2011)

The best place is using the link to the official bug report form in the gray bar at the top of the page.

Ideally, include a recipe to reproduce the problem.


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## Stuart (Feb 6, 2012)

I know this thread is ages old but thank god it was here. Im a pretty experienced user of LR and whilst setting my MBPro with an old catalogue to do a LR intro presentation I was baffled why it imported to the wrong place when I rehearsed my well versed import routine. I hadn't noticed the suble difference between my _Import_ and _import_ folder. That one letter made all the difference. Thanks to you all for ending my last minute 'wood for the trees' moment. How the folder names were different is another matter


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## Victoria Bampton (Feb 6, 2012)

Welcome to the forum Stuart!  Make yourself at home!


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