Today’s Question: From my initial use with Lightroom, I included a “Libraries” folder on my hard drive, which in turn contains the “My Pictures” folder. I very much want to move the “My Pictures” folder (and all of the contents) up into the top level of the hard drive, so that folder is no longer in the “Libraries” folder. I’d hoped to be able to accomplish this task within Lightroom by dragging and dropping “My Pictures” to the top of the drive. Alas, no can do. Is there a way to rectify this?
Tim’s Quick Answer: In order to move folders (and therefore photos) to the top (root) level of a hard drive within Lightroom, you need to choose the option to reveal the parent folder for one of the top-level folders on that drive. That will cause the hard drive to be represented as a folder at the top of your folder structure, so you can then drag and drop folders to that top level.
More Detail: By default Lightroom does not present the root level of a hard drive as a destination you can drag and drop other folders (or photos) to. The listing for the hard drive in the Folders section of the left panel in the Library module can’t be used as a destination for drag-and-drop operations, making it appear that it isn’t possible to drag a folder to the root level of a hard drive.
However, there is a way to represent the root level of the hard drive as a folder, so you can drag and drop folders or photos to that location.
Simply right-click on one of the top-level folders shown on the hard drive, and choose the “Show Parent Folder” command. This will reveal the root level of the hard drive as a folder at the top of the list of folders. You can then drag and drop any folders or photos you’d like to that top-level folder.
Note, by the way, that at any time you can hide the top-level folder by right-clicking on that folder and choosing the “Hide This Parent” command.