# The folder cannot be found.  And lightroom doesn't make it too easy to find it.



## Uncle Don (Aug 24, 2011)

If you click on a picture that Lightroom cannot find the folder that the picture is in, you get the message "The folder cannot be found"

You should be able to right click (windows) on that picture, and select find file automatically, using windows explorer search function.

After right clicking, you should then be put in Explorer's SEARCH DIALOG, which would automatically search for the file.  (Right now, Lightroom will only go into explorer when searching for missing folders, but not the explorer with the search dialog.  And that is only for searching for folders, not individual files, which lightroom doesn't even offer).

Then, when explorer finds the correct file, you left click on it, and then Lightroom would then reset it's file associations with the correct folder.

Pretty easy to implement, and would be very helpful.


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## clee01l (Aug 24, 2011)

As it works now, Left Clicking on the (?) for the image brings up a standard Windows API dialog with a reference to the previous known location. Clicking on {Locate} opens another standard Windows API dialog in the Last available folder in the last known location path.  If instead LR dumped you into Windows Explorer (or more correctly in the Applet called Search Indexer) , you would not be able to update the LR location since you would no longer be in LR but in another application  I think the inability to pass location back to LR is a limitation of the Windows application not LR.


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## johnbeardy (Aug 24, 2011)

Still, LR's SDK already provides the ability to recursively loop through folder trees, so a brute force method isn't too distant. It might be easier than educating users to do al their file management work in LR.

John


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## Uncle Don (Aug 25, 2011)

Thanks to both of you for your information.  I hope Adobe can somehow implement a search function.  I'd rather know where a file is, rather than where a file was.

Managing files with Lightroom has never been too easy for me.


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## johnbeardy (Aug 25, 2011)

A bit of self-discipline may help. Maybe for a month stop yourself doing any file and folder management outside Lightroom? Another thing I always recommend is to stop work the second you see a question mark on a file and resolve the problem before proceeding. These are things you can do now and without waiting / hoping Adobe will now decide to address this aspect.

John


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## Uncle Don (Aug 25, 2011)

Good idea John, and I agree with you.  But also, the name of this sub-forum is "ideas for a better lightroom, and thus the purpose of my post".


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## Uncle Don (Mar 5, 2012)

I am pleased to see that Adobe has fixed this issue in Lightroom 4 beta.


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 5, 2012)

Uncle Don, I can't see any difference in this area between LR3 and the LR4beta. What am I failing to see?


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## Uncle Don (Mar 5, 2012)

TNG said:


> Uncle Don, I can't see any difference in this area between LR3 and the LR4beta. What am I failing to see?



There is a huge difference between lightroom 3.6 and Lightroom beta 4.

For example, try this ....

Create a subdirectory named dogs on the desktop, and put a picture in that subdirectory.

Import that picture file into lightroom 3.

Now go outside of lightroom, and move that subdirectory file to drive D:

Now go back to lightroom 3.  Go to the library , and right click on the missing folder.  Click Find Missing folder.  Try and browse for dogs subdirectory.  Lightroom 3.6 cannot browse for anything outside of drive C. 

Now do the same thing in Lightroom 4.  

You will get a proper (and standardized) windows search dialog that can browse other drives, and it will return the path location of the subdirectory  back to lightroom 4 beta.


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 5, 2012)

Uncle Don said:


> Now go back to lightroom 3.  Go to the library , and right click on the missing folder.  Click Find Missing folder.  Try and browse for dogs subdirectory._*  Lightroom 3.6 cannot browse for anything outside of drive C.
> *_



It really can. See this screenshot from my 3.6 test catalog:



I put folder 2005 on my C drive, imported it, then moved it to my E drive outside LR, result is a missing folder. When I try to find it using Find Missing Folder, I can browse to all 7 drives on my system. 

And it's always been that way. If it doesn't work for you, then the chances are that you've got too much clutter on your desktop. There is a bug in LR3 which is caused by an excessive number of desktop icons (I kid you not!), and it manifests itself by restricting the extent of the computer entities presented in certain browser dialogs. The workaround is either clean up the desktop, or simply type the actual path to the 'missing' folder in the Folder box at the bottom of the dialog.

Still, it sounds as though they might have fixed that bug in LR4, but there have been no design changes in this area that I can see.


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## Uncle Don (Mar 5, 2012)

Jim, we are both right.

When I try this on a different computer, I get your dialog box.

When I try this on my usual computer, I get a completely lame dialog box.  

My install of Lightroom on my usual computer must be corrupted. I'll uninstall lightroom on my usual computer, and reinstall it, and hopefully it will work properly for me.

Thanks for persisting with me.  The screen grab really helped.


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 5, 2012)

Uncle Don said:


> My install of Lightroom on my usual computer must be corrupted. I'll uninstall lightroom on my usual computer, and reinstall it, and hopefully it will work properly for me.



Uncle Don, there's almost certainly no need to reinstall LR.....as I said it's likely you've simply got too many desktop icons on your usual computer, which triggers a bug in LR3. There's even an Adobe Knowledge Base article about the issue, if I can find the link I'll post it for you (though it doesn't really say any more than what I've just said!).


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## Uncle Don (Mar 5, 2012)

Hi Jim,

I do have lots of icons on my desktop.  The issue I have occurs on all my folders, not just those on the desktop.  I'll clean up my desktop icons, and see if the bug goes away.

Thanks for the tip.

If this problem is due to excess icons, we now know the problem may not exist in Lightroom 4, since lightroom 4 works properly with lots of desktop icons on my system.


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## Jim Wilde (Mar 5, 2012)

Uncle Don said:


> The issue I have occurs on all my folders, not just those on the desktop.



Yes....just to be clear the 'excess desktop icons' bug causes a general problem with certain of the browser functions in LR resulting usually in *all *external drives (and maybe many of the system drive folders) being excluded in the browser window.


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## Uncle Don (Mar 6, 2012)

Here is a screen grab from my dialog box.



As you can see, this dialog's use is rather limited.  

I am disappointed this bug hasn't been fixed, as it must frustrate many people.


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## Uncle Don (Mar 6, 2012)

Jim,

I cleaned several icons off of my desktop, and now I get a proper dialog box.  Thank you for your help.  I am sure you helped many other people as well.


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## clee01l (Mar 6, 2012)

Uncle Don said:


> Here is a screen grab from my dialog box.
> 
> View attachment 1935
> 
> ...


This is a Windows API bug not a LR bug. Adobe has documented a workaround.  Clean up your desktop and ask Microsoft for a solution.


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## Uncle Don (Mar 6, 2012)

Thanks for the advice.

Lightroom 4 works properly with a crowded desktop and lightroom 3 does not work on a crowded desktop.  Adobe may be using a different API in Lightroom 4.  If this is true, maybe they can change lightroom 3's API to use the same API as Lightroom 4.  That would be helpful.

I did clean up my desktop, and now the existing API works fine.

Thanks  again,

Don

( It does appear that Lightroom 4 uses a different API than Lightroom 3, because the API Lightroom 4 uses does have a search function ( as I had hoped for in an earlier post ) and Lightroom 3's API does not have a search function. )


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