What is the Lightroom Capitalization Bug, (A.K.A. Lightroom deleted my files instead of moving them!):
Lightroom started misplacing my moved files todays. This is the second time this has happened, so luckily I didn’t panic and tried to remember what the solution was last time…. so I’m documenting it here on the blog for myself and for any of you who experience the Lightroom “Capitalization Bug”.
First lets describe the problem,
because you will never know to search for lightroom capitalization error or lightroom capitalization bug if you don’t already know the obscure cause of this problem. So here are some phrases you might use to search for an answer:
Missing files in Lightroom after using the file move tool?
Lightroom says the files are there, but the folder is empty?
Lightroom creates an empty file but doesnt move the images into it?
Did Adobe Lightroom just delete my files instead of moving them!?
Don’t Panic (Yet)
My first reaction was absolute panic. The files were not in the new folder created by lightroom, and they had been moved/deleted from the old folder location. Then my logical toubleshooting mind kicked in and I did a Finder search for one of the missing files. You can imagine my relief when I found the whole folder of missing images. However I was baffled. Why did Lightoom put the files in a different place?
After a lot of stumbling about on the internet, I came across a seemingly unrelated suggestion: the capitalization bug. What’s that?
It happens when lightroom uses a slight variation on the drive or file name. In my case, it’s only happened with my macbook hard drive and the user file.
Normal path: Macintosh HD/Users/sarah
Capitalization Bug path: Macintosh HD/Users/Sarah
For no obvious reason that I can find, lightroom suddenly changes the lowercase “s” to an uppercase “S”. When this happens, lightroom gets very confused, because lightroom is case sensitive. What happens to me is that the folders that were supposed to go to MacintoshHD/Users/sarah/example/ end up having extra folders added to them, something like MacintoshHD/Users/sarah/example/sarah/Pictures/example
How To Fix It (Mac)
- Make a backup of your lightroom catalog. I’ve never had anything go wrong with this fix process, however its ALWAYS better to have backups. This is a safety measure in case something goes wrong or you get confused.
- Create an empty folder on a different drive than the one that is broken. My issue was on my computer’s hard drive, so I used an external SSD drive to create my empty folder. Call this something easy to remember, I used “Fake Location Folder”.
- **Be aware, in the next step, that your images are going to show up as missing in your lightroom database. This is a good sign. Just remember this is why we made a backup, just in case.**
- Go to the top level folder(s) under the drive with the capitalization error, and update the folder location to the empty folder you created in step 2. In my case, I did this for all the folders listed under the improperly capitalized “Sarah” folder. Select the folder in lightroom, right click, choose “update folder location”, and then navigate to the empty “Fake Location Folder”on the external drive and click “choose”.) Next we are going to put it right back.
- (Optional step) If lightroom has previously moved your files somewhere weird, like mine, you can move those files to the correct location on your drive before the next step, using Finder (not lightroom).
- Now we are going to update the folder location back to the correct folder. Select the “Fake Location Folder” in lightroom, right click, choose “update folder location”, and then navigate to the correct location of the image files. Lightroom is going to ask you if it’s ok to merge, as the files already exsist in lightrooms file structure. Click yes and everything should be back to working per usual.
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