# Find photos not in a collection



## dcr13 (Mar 20, 2014)

New to Lightroom. How can I find photos that have not been added to a Collection. Some photo may have Keywords attached.
Thanks.


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## clee01l (Mar 20, 2014)

Welcome to the forum.  There may be other methods that work, but the one that I use is a Smart Collection with at least this criteria:
{Collection}{doesn't contain}{a e i o u} 

This works because the Collection name presumably will have words that contain at least one of the vowels listed.  In the criteria field the vowels are separated by a space.  The space acts as a OR clause (a or e or i etc.)
As you might notice this only works with Static collections where individual images are assigned manually and not with any dynamic "Smart Collections" since in reality the image membership in a Smart collection is determined by characteristics of the image and not a conscious assignment.

Note:  Corrected (Thanks Jim)


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 20, 2014)

Slight adjustment....I'm sure Cletus meant to say that the Smart Collection criteria should be:

{Collection}{*doesn't *contain}{a e i o u}


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## LouieSherwin (Mar 21, 2014)

Hi,

Another option is the Any Filter plug-in that has an "is empty" test for Collections as well as a whole bunch of search capabilities that are otherwise impossible in Lighroom.

-louie


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## braziwi (Sep 21, 2014)

I found the smart collection tip to be a great help, I have made a modification as my collection structure is

YEAR > BUSINESS UNIT > CLIENT > SHOOT DATE

This means almost all of my photos were sorted as not in a collection, I adjusted the string to read: 
*{Collection}{doesn't contain}{a e i o u 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9}

*This takes into account the dates in the collection name. 

Thanks again for your help!


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