# Lightroom stuck syncing 5 photos for days...



## happygun

Hi all, 

I have just started using lightroom mobile again. I am stuck uploading with 5 photos to go on my laptop for a few days.

I have removed the "Sync.lrdata" file at /Users//Library/Caches/Adobe/Lightroom/Sync Data/Sync.lrdata, that forced a re-sync, but still have 5 photos uploading.

On a separate note, how can I manage how much space lightroom mobile uses on my device? How do I set it to download a collection locally, and once I am done editing that collection, to remove it from the local device but not from adobe cloud? I don't see any settings (beyond clear cache) which seems to manage local data.

Lightroom CC 2015.1
OSX 10.10.4

Lightroom Mobile v 1.5.1


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## Jim Wilde

Can't help very much with the first question. How many images do you have synced overall? Is doing a "Delete All Data" and starting again a practical proposition? If you've already done that and you still have the same issue, it would tend to suggest there's a problem with one of those last 5. Can you identify them? If so, try removing them from the sync one by one to see if that frees things up. If you can ID the culprit, anything different about it that might have caused the problem?

Regarding managing space on the iDevice, the best way would be to use the "Offline Editing" option. Lightroom initially downloads a smallish preview which doesn't take up much space, but when you open an image into the Loupe view for viewing/editing the larger smart preview is downloaded. This latter activity can be done for the entire collection before even opening in on the iDevice, using the initial Collections view. By clicking on the 3 white dots on the collection thumbnail you'll get some options displayed. Selecting "Enable Offline Editing" means that all the full-size previews for the images in that collection will be downloaded to the device....the idea being of course that you can then work on those images even if the device goes offline. Obviously that takes up more space on the device, so you can reverse the process once you have done editing, i.e. select "Disable Offline Editing" and the space is then released.


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## Victoria Bampton

happygun said:


> I have just started using lightroom mobile again. I am stuck uploading with 5 photos to go on my laptop for a few days.



Would it make you feel any better to know I have the same problem with 14 mystery photos at the moment?  I have a bug report in.


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## happygun

a little!


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## Moonunit36

*I feel your pain!!!!!*



happygun said:


> a little!



I have the same issue right now!!  Did you guys figure out what the issue is?


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## Victoria Bampton

Well we got a bit further.  It appears my mystery files are videos uploaded from my iPhone that haven't uploaded properly.  No closer to finding a solution yet though.


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## Victoria Bampton

Ok, I think we have a winner.  The problem files turned out to be videos that hadn't uploaded properly from the phone.  The solution was to go to http://lightroom.adobe.com, sign in and check the collections for black video files with exclamation marks, and then delete those problem files.  Once I did so, the desktop stuck sync fixed itself.


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## tjevans

I am also having this problem. I've tried Victoria's solution, but that is not applicable in my case. I have no videos. No photos show up with an exclamation point either.


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## Victoria Bampton

Hi tjevans, welcome to the forum!

Ok, have a look at the Collections panel on the desktop and see if you can find any sync icons with 3 dots directly underneath.


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## Ian Consterdine

I had a few days break in Brussels, and used my iPhone as my camera, importing everything into Lr Mobile on the phone. Whenever I was on WiFi it tried to sync, and by the end of our break I had around 100 images waiting to sync. Turns out the Hotel WiFi was absolute Basic which allowed me to check e-mail and limited surfing.
Now I'm home, the sync is proceeding nicely on my home network, and all the images are transferring across to all the devices. I've come to the conclusion that it depends on the speed or restrictions on the various WiFi sources I've used in the last week. Would I be correct in that asumption?


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## Victoria Bampton

Ah that's good news.  Yes, it getting stuck part way through syncing photos could cause it.


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## Ian Consterdine

Just a footnote to this, I was editing some images in Lr when an image popped up on my phone in the Folders section. Turns out it was a video I'd taken in Brussels on the 19th August.  I thought I'd acidentally deleted it, but it turned up over two weeks later. Looks like it had been in the ether somewhere, and was in the collection too. So they do get through, eventually.


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## happygun

Victoria Bampton said:


> Ok, I think we have a winner.  The problem files turned out to be videos that hadn't uploaded properly from the phone.  The solution was to go to http://lightroom.adobe.com, sign in and check the collections for black video files with exclamation marks, and then delete those problem files.  Once I did so, the desktop stuck sync fixed itself.



Right, I deleted 6 files with exclamation marks from the collections in lightroom online. Lightroom on my laptop now says it is stuck syncing 4 photos (previously 5)

And I do haave 2 collections with 3 dots underneath the sync symbol - what does that represent?


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## happygun

Bump, Victoria - did you get your similar issue resolved?


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## Jim Wilde

Victoria's on holiday right now. Try bumping again in a week or so....


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## happygun

Cheers Jim, will do.


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## happygun

Bump, Victoria - did you get your similar issue resolved?


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## LouieSherwin

Hi

The only way I have found to resolve this is to unshare the collection and let it get removed completely from LR Mobile and then reshare it. 

-louie


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## Victoria Bampton

Yes, removing the photos that were stuck did the trick and I haven't seen it again since.


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## Jerry Callaghan

I have had this same problem.  It has happened when I work on Lr mobile and then let the edited images sync back to my account.  The first time I was able to remove the files in question from my sync'd collections on my desktop.  That worked the first time but not the second.  I couldn't find the sync.lrdata file so I "Deleted All Data" from Lightroom > Preferences > Lightroom mobile.  That worked. 
When I went online to lightroom.adobe.com I had 16 photos in the problem collection.  My desktop only had 14.  I wasn't able to delete the two extra images from the online gallery so I did the "Delete All Data".   Its a bit of a pain but it did work.

Update:  I again had trouble with the sync getting stuck and not finishing.  It happened when I was in Lr mobile and selected an image to edit in Lr Fix.  Once I was done with Fix I was brought back to Lr mobile.  Everything seemed OK till I tried to sync.  Then it was hung up again.  

This seems to be a fix:

I changes a preference to in Lr on my desktop to tell Lr where to store images from Lr mobile.  
Lightroom > Preferences > Lr mobile
Specify location for Lr mobile Images.  There was no folder picked as default.
These images, which were edited in Lr fix will automatically import to specified folder on Lr desktop.  
Drag and drop within Lr desktop if you want them associated with original images.


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## frostbytes

I have the same problem.  "Syncing 1 Photo" never goes away from LR desktop.  LR Mobile shows that everything is synced.

Is the best solution to un-sync everything and then re-sync?  I've got 16,000 photo synced right now...


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## RikkFlohr

Double check for an unusual video in your Camera Roll attempting to sync back to your desktop. If your system is up-to-date, the stuck single is like a slo-mo, time-lapse or something weird.


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## frostbytes

Thanks for answering.  I did find a couple of slow-mo videos on my phone and deleted them, but that didn't do it.  Any other ideas? Is there no process for identifying *which* photo LR is attempting to sync?


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## frostbytes

This is driving me mad.  I have not found a way to solve this, and I suspect that it's impacting exporting catalogs.  I'm checking in Adobe's forums for any possible solutions.


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## Victoria Bampton

Update to 2015.6 - there's a new Pending Sync Activity section in Preferences, which shows what's currently stuck.


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## happygun

Hi all, 

I have just started using lightroom mobile again. I am stuck uploading with 5 photos to go on my laptop for a few days.

I have removed the "Sync.lrdata" file at /Users//Library/Caches/Adobe/Lightroom/Sync Data/Sync.lrdata, that forced a re-sync, but still have 5 photos uploading.

On a separate note, how can I manage how much space lightroom mobile uses on my device? How do I set it to download a collection locally, and once I am done editing that collection, to remove it from the local device but not from adobe cloud? I don't see any settings (beyond clear cache) which seems to manage local data.

Lightroom CC 2015.1
OSX 10.10.4

Lightroom Mobile v 1.5.1


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## frostbytes

Oh, good!  I'm still on 2015.3 and have learned from experience to not charge into new versions too eagerly.  Is it safe to update?


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## frostbytes

Okay, I've updated my Lightroom but that seems to have made the problem worse.

Now the syncing message just under the file menu shows "syncing 12,075 photos" but after several minutes that tally hasn't changed at all.
If I click the down arrow next to the logo it shows "syncing 1 photo" with Lightroom Mobile.
Going to Preferences > Lightroom Mobile > Pending Sync Activity shows "0 uploading, 0 downloading".
Any other ideas?


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## Victoria Bampton

And a restart doesn't change the count?  Are the mobile devices up to date?  And do they all show on the web interface?


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## frostbytes

Victoria Bampton said:


> And a restart doesn't change the count?



It wasn't for a while but it does now.  Now it's back to "syncing 1 photo" showing up under the program menu.  Preferences > Lightroom Mobile > Pending Sync Activity still shows "0 uploading, 0 downloading".



Victoria Bampton said:


> Are the mobile devices up to date?  And do they all show on the web interface?



I'm only using Lightroom Mobile on one device, an iPad Pro 12.9".  It shows that syncing is up to date.



Victoria Bampton said:


> And do they all show on the web interface?



I suppose they do.  I've removed on my synced collections in LR Mobile to try starting over.  But the web interface shows 16682 images while LR Mobile shows a "Lightroom Photos" collection with 13197 photos in it.  And I notice in Settings > Usage on my iPad that LR Mobile is still using 16 GB of space.  I assume this is Camera Roll photos, which I don't really care to access in LR Mobile.

Thoughts?


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## Victoria Bampton

That Syncing 1 Photo is probably one that's stuck uploading from a mobile device, rather than actually downloading, although I can't explain why the web interface shows a much higher number.  How many photos do the mobile apps show?


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## frostbytes

Victoria Bampton said:


> That Syncing 1 Photo is probably one that's stuck uploading from a mobile device, rather than actually downloading



But how to figure that out?



Victoria Bampton said:


> How many photos do the mobile apps show?



13197.

I've sent a diagnostic log to Adobe.  Hopefully that sheds light on this!


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## frostbytes

I found a solution with the help of Adobe tech support.  The diagnostic log didn't help, but clearing the sync data and forcing a resync did.  I renamed the sync folder, restarted LR on my desktop, waited for the sync to complete and... no more stuck image!

*You can find the  sync.lrdata file here:*
*On Mac it's at /Users/<user>/Library/Caches/Adobe/Lightroom/Sync Data/Sync.lrdata*
*On Win it would be at C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Adobe\Lightroom\Caches\Sync Data\Sync.lrdata*​


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## Victoria Bampton

Thanks for reporting back with the solution.


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## frostbytes

Of course!  This is how we help each other.  Thank YOU for hosting this fine forum.


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## Guthrie Watson

After trying various options and having the same issue with one photo stuck syncing I found the 'delete all data' button in the preferences worked for me.

Obviously you want to make sure you have backups of any photo's which in my case was fine.

I setup a new sync and tested it with eight photo's and had it work as it should.

I think my issue was that I'd tried the mobile app periodically and update my software frequently and over time have optomised my catalog which disrupted the photo's from the synced folders and caches.

It seems like there is a distinct need for a Lynda.com style tutorial about iPhone to Lightroom desktop workflow as this is a common issue and I found it hard to find consolidated troubleshooting anywhere.

On a side note it seems like the workflow has significantly improved for the app, now if only we could get support in there for Apples live photo's, panorama's and the various video formats!


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## Victoria Bampton

Guthrie Watson said:


> It seems like there is a distinct need for a Lynda.com style tutorial about iPhone to Lightroom desktop workflow as this is a common issue and I found it hard to find consolidated troubleshooting anywhere.



I don't know of any videos, but I have an eBook about the mobile apps Adobe Lightroom mobile - The Missing FAQ - eBooks


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## StuartOnline

I also had this same issue with 3 images stuck in Sync for months.  Finally did what Guthrie Watson did and used the Delete. Now all is back to  normal.

Cheers!


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## Packhorse-4

Victoria Bampton said:


> Ok, I think we have a winner.  The problem files turned out to be videos that hadn't uploaded properly from the phone.  The solution was to go to http://lightroom.adobe.com, sign in and check the collections for black video files with exclamation marks, and then delete those problem files.  Once I did so, the desktop stuck sync fixed itself.



Thanks Victoria!  This fixed my sync issue.  I had a few videos that failed to sync and they were showing online as a black video with exclamations just like you said.


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## Matthew Doudt

Victoria Bampton said:


> Update to 2015.6 - there's a new Pending Sync Activity section in Preferences, which shows what's currently stuck.


Hey Victoria, 

Do you have any idea how to clear these things??  I've have 2 uploading, 3 downloading and then one just labled error and it seems to be related to a LR catalog issue.  I was able to get several other uploading errors to go away by re-syncing those specific pictures (they were all tiff files, post PS edit) but they worked fine the second time.

I'm having a weird thing with sync where my clients "Favorites" are not showing up.  I can see them online or on my iPad but I'm not getting the notifications all of a sudden on my desktop.  If I search through each pitures, the likes will show in the Comments area but I'm not getting the yellow notification under collections and I'm not getting the icon that used to show up in the scroll bar at the bottom.  So strange... just started happening because I use mobile favoriting daily with clients and now its jacked up.  I'm wondering it if has to do with "stuck" syncing issues.


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## Victoria Bampton

Yeah, removing the photos from the sync and then adding them again usually does the trick. Odd that you're not getting the yellow notifications though. Unsticking the stuck photos would be a great place to start troubleshooting.


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## Henry Harris

The post from Jerry Callaghan in which the hint "Specify location for Lr mobile Images" worked for me. There was nothing specified originally.

Many thanks Jerry.


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## bevalorschvegas

Hi, hoping for help...

I've got an issue with my user account in my MacBook that is preventing the sync between my MacBook and iOS devices. I can sync from iOS to LR but not MacBook to LR. With the help of Adobe we isolated it to my MacBook user account (user ID). How do I know this? We created a test user account on my MacBook and 'presto' the sync worked using my LR logon. Apple attribute it to a corrupted interaction between my user account and LR rather than a problem with my account overall.

Has anyone seen this or got a fix for this? I'd rather not delete my LR files and start again.


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