Today’s Question: Does the screenshot I’ve attached [showing a circle with an exclamation point icon attached to two folders in Lightroom Classic] indicate that I have missing folders? Someone added an image yesterday who was helping me on some printing issues and this showed up.
Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, an icon represented by a black circle with an exclamation point icon connected to a folder in the Folders list in Lightroom Classic indicates that one of the subfolders below that folder is missing.
More Detail: The icon with a circle inside a black circle in Lightroom Classic doesn’t indicate that the folder with the icon is missing, but rather that there is a folder somewhere within the subfolder structure that is missing. You may therefore need to scroll rather far down the Folders list on the left panel and expand multiple folders to reveal subfolders to find the actual folder that is missing. The missing folder will show a question mark icon attached to the folder.
If you suspect there is a small number of photos that are missing in the context of a missing folder, it may be faster to go to the menu and choose Library > Find All Missing Photos. Then navigate to the Missing Photographs collection in the Catalog section of the left panel, right-click on one of the photo thumbnails in that collection, and choose “Go to Folder in Library” from the popup menu. That will automatically navigate you to the folder the image is in, which may very well be the missing folder.
You can also scroll down your folder list, looking for additional icons with an exclamation point in a black circle, expanding each of those folders by clicking on the triangle to the left of the folder to reveal all subfolders. Continue this process until you find the missing folder with the question mark icon.
You can then right-click on the missing folder and choose “Find Missing Folder”, then navigate to the updated location (and perhaps updated name for the folder) and reconnect it. If, however, the folder in question had been deleted, then you can right-click the folder and choose Remove from the popup menu.
It is possible that there had been a missing folder all along, and that you hadn’t noticed the icons previously. But it is obviously also possible that the person who was working in your catalog made a problematic change. For example, they might have imported a photo temporarily in order to print it from Lightroom Classic, and then deleted the folder from the hard drive without removing it from the Lightroom Classic catalog.
