Folders in Lightroom 2

[dave_dejoy]

<p>I have what I think must be a simple question, but I did not locate it in the archives. My apologies if I missed it. I am trying to straighten out my folders within Lightroom. Basically, I have some folders which are inside other folders within Lightroom. All I want to do is to "promote" those inside folders and get rid of the "higher level" folder that contains them. That way all folders for a given year would be listed by date and not organized in higher level folders. When I try to do this, Lightroom tells me that these folders or files are already within Lightroom. Thanks for any help. </p>

[howard_m]

<p>how *exactly* are you trying to do it?</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>Just treat creation or moving of folders IN Lightroom as if you were doing this in the Finder (Explorer) and you are good to go. You can make, delete, move, rename folders and move images inside those folders to other folders all within LR. IF you do this outside LR, it has no idea what you did and you hose its links to the folders. </p>

[mariosforsos]

<p>What Andrew said. At the Library module, right at the left hand side, just above the Collections tab, you should have a tab called "Folders". There you can make any such movements you want without problems. IF, for whatever reason, you cannot see that tab, right-click anywhere on the left hand side and check the appropriate box.</p>

<p>That way LR will know and re-reference any photos contained there and you won't be faced with the dreaded question marks...;-)</p>

[dave_dejoy]

<p>Thanks for the responses. Folders was already checked on the left panel. Let me describe the situation another way. I have a folder named 2010 and inside thhis folder there are numerous folders identified by date. Within these various folders are individual photos. However, also within 2010 is a folder labeled 2010 B. This particular folder contains other folders arranged by date (also within 2010 in same naming format). What I want to do is eliminate the <strong>2010 B</strong> folder so that I will have all same level folder in 2010 arrranged by date. The simplest way to do this, to me at least, is to grab the indiviudal folders within 2010 B and drag them into the main 2010 higher level folder. When I try to do this, I get the mesage: "A folder named 2010-03-16 already exists at this location." That is, indeed, true. I am just trying to restructure files witihn that single higher level folder (2010). As some have probably guessed, I earlier made the rookie error of thinking I could more easier re-organize my files outside of Lightroom. I do have some of the dreaded ? folders. That will probably be another question. Again, thanks for your help and patience.</p>

[howard_m]

<p>the operating system wont let you (obviously) have 2 folders of the same name at the same level. </p>

<p>You will probably have to temporarily rename one of them in order to get the move to work and then deal w/ how you're going to rename it back or make a new name that doesn't conflict w/ what you want.</p>