# Deleting Photos - Can't



## PuppyDogMom (Jan 8, 2015)

I've just imported photos into Lightroom from Aperture. There are photos that I want to delete but Lightroom won't let me do that. I highlight what I want deleted, but the delete option is not active. Is there something with the import that caused this to happen? Any help would be appreciated.


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## clee01l (Jan 8, 2015)

There are two concepts to understand about LR and "deleting"   It is a two step operation. Step one removes the images from the catalog or *just* from the container that is being used to group the images. Step two is to remove the image from the disk drive (i.e. move it to Trash).   If you are in a container that is a Collection , you can only remove the image from that collection, You can not remove the image from the catalog if your viewing container is a Collection as it has no connection to the underlying file system.  "All Photographs" is a special container in the Catalog Panel and Folders represented in the Folder panels have a connection to the file system. If you select your image(s) in a grid view of a folder or "All Photographs", LR will let you has access to both steps of the "delete process.

If you choose "remove photo" from a context menu or from the menu bar at the top, you will  get this confirmation message box.  The button {Remove} removes the image from the LR catalog but not the disk. The {Delete from Disk} button Deletes the image from the Disk *and* Removes the image from the catalog.  BUT this only occurs when you are in a container that has access to the file system like "All Photographs" to a folder in the Folder panel.







There are other ways to delete images, but IMO, what I've described is the safest and clearest approach to take for some one just starting out.


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## PuppyDogMom (Jan 8, 2015)

Thank you. Appreciate you being around. This helps a great deal.


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## Drkjones (Mar 13, 2015)

Too am having this delete problem.  When in grid view for the "All Protographs" container I select some images, flag them as "Rejected" and hit delete.  The remove from catalog appears to work just fine but when I hit Delete from Disk I get the "Cannot move nnn files to Trash" message.  What am I missing?  I am using latest Lightroom 5.7 on latest version of Yosemite.  The files are on my Macintosh HDD which is actually a 1Tb SSD.


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## clee01l (Mar 13, 2015)

Welcome to the forum.
This is an OS X system message.  You get this when the filesystem does not support the Trash function (any drive that is not formatted HFS+) or when there is not enough free space reserved for the trash function to hold all of the files to be "deleted".    This is a warning message for information only.  OS X is telling you that you will not be able to recover these files if you proceed.  OS X will still delete the files if you proceed.


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## Drkjones (Mar 15, 2015)

Thanks.  I am still learning to speak "Mac" having been raised on Windows.  However, when I saw the OS X system message there was no option to proceed!  Further investigation revealed my mistake ... I was trying to delete the rejected images from the Previous Import container.  When I switched back to All Photographs the Photo>Delete Rejected Photos command worked as expected!  I wonder whether Lightroom could gray out the Delete from Disk option when it is being used in a container that doesn't support delete?


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## Wingnuts (Mar 16, 2015)

Hi, do you  know if you can identify removed but not deleted photos?  I back up my  files online and I've gone over my storage capacity as I removed and not  deleted then, so if I can identity them I can move them to another  drive thus releasing capacity for the important ones to be backed up.   Thanks very much.


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## clee01l (Mar 16, 2015)

Wingnuts, welcome to the forum.  The filesystem folders still contain the image files that were deleted from the catalog. While the images no longer exist in the catalog the folders should still be present in the Folder panel. By using the sync folder function in LR, you can import these "deleted" images back into the LR catalog.  Once imported they exist as a group in the "Previous Import" special collection in the Catalog panel.  Here you can mark them as Rejected (X) and delete them properly from both LR and the filesystem.


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