Moving/reorganizing photo collection (and not confusing lightroom)

[TheStupidForeigner]

Right now I have my photos in C:/photos/2014/Germany/ (or what ever country they were taken, I travel a lot) and I have a lightroom catalog for each country in the same folder (eg. /germany/).

I always figured if I moved the whole folder, lightroom would realize that it's cat had been moved along with all the photos but just found out this isn't the case, as lightroom then can't find the original file.

So how can I move these folders to arrange them? I wan't to move the whole collection, and maybe also move the country subcategories into different folders as well.

Sorry this is such a simple question, just didn't know how to search for it.

 

[KmH]

You have to do it using LR, not your computers file management system.
That's the only way LR will know where the files have been moved to.

 

[JacaRanda]

It's been suggested to maintain the catalog in a different location than your photo files.

 

[MOREGONE]

So what you will need to do in Lightroom is find the highest folder in the folder structure in either Grid (G) or Loupe (E) view. It should have a question mark on it. Right click it and you should be given the option to Find Missing folder. Navigate to where the folder is stored and Lightroom should do the rest.

Another thing, say the Folder view Doesn't show the parent folder only the sub-folders, then you will want to right click the the highest folder and enable "Show Parent Folder"

I mention this as you may have moved C:/Germany/ and when you look in your folder structure of Lightroom you only see the nested folders of C:/Germany/ listed, lets just say the cities /Frankfurt, /Munich etc. If you can cannot see their parent folder then you may have to locate each one. But, if you can Show Parent Folder then you can locate the Germany folder that is you moved to C:/photos/germany for example, and you will not have to locate each and every folder

**I am recalling this from memory so whether it's right click or left, and the phrasing may be off a little