Today’s Question: I’m wondering if it’s possible do a search to find all the images in a Lightroom Classic catalog where the original image is missing.
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can locate all photos that can’t currently be found where they’re expected by going to the Library module and choosing Library > Find All Missing Photos from the menu.
More Detail: A “missing” photo in Lightroom Classic is simply a photo that can’t currently be located in the specific location and with the specific filename that is expected based on the catalog. For example, if you disconnect an external hard drive that contains photos being managed by Lightroom Classic, all the photos on that hard drive would show as missing. However, all you would need to do is reconnect the hard drive to your computer and the photos would no longer be missing.
So, to get started with this task the first step would be to connect all hard drives so that as many photos are available as possible. You can then choose Library > Find All Missing Photos from the menu. This will cause a collection called “Missing Photographs” to be created (if it hadn’t been created previously) in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module.
You can then go through the images in the Missing Photographs collection and either reconnect photos you’re able to find or remove photos that you decide you won’t be able to locate. Note that it can also be helpful to reconnect folders rather than individual photos. For example, you could right-click on a missing photo and choose “Go to Folder in Library” from the popup menu. That will navigate you to the applicable folder in the Folders list on the left panel, where you can hopefully reconnect the entire folder rather than individual photos one at a time.
