Today’s Question: With the latest update to Lightroom Classic I’m suddenly seeing a black circle with an exclamation point on a few folders. I had never seen these icons before, and don’t know of any problems with the marked folders. Should I be worried about something?
Tim’s Quick Answer: The new icon you’re referring to indicates that one or more subfolders are missing within the marked folder. The actual missing folders would be marked with a question mark icon, but the new exclamation point icon marks all parent folders for the missing folder to help improve discoverability of this issue.
More Detail: Prior to Lightroom Classic 15, only folders that were actually missing would be marked to indicate that status, with a question mark appearing on the folder icon. One of the problems with this approach was that if a subfolder several layers deep was missing, the chances of discovering that issue might be relatively low since subfolders can be hidden from view by collapsing a parent folder.
With the new update all parent folders for a missing folder will be marked with an exclamation point within a black circle. If you hover your mouse over this icon, you’ll see a tooltip with information about the missing folder(s) contained within the applicable folder. Note that every parent folder will be marked in this way, so depending on how deep your folder structure is you might see multiple folders marked with the exclamation point icon. This is to help ensure that you notice the issue so it can be dealt with promptly.
When a folder is missing it simply means that a folder with the expected name is not found in the expected location. This could mean that you renamed the folder in its current location or that you moved the folder to a different location, for example. After determining where the folder actually is, you can right-click on the missing folder and choose “Find Missing Folder” from the popup menu. Once you’ve reconnected the applicable folder, the alert icons for that folder and parent folders will go away (unless there are still other subfolders missing within a given parent folder, of course).
