How can I delete Lightroom photos from disk after removing them only from the catalog?

Asked 9/8/2018

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2 answers

In Lightroom Classic, I marked some photos with X as rejects and accidentally used the command to remove them from the catalog while my external drive was disconnected. As a result, the photos were removed from Lightroom but are still on the drive.

If I use Sync Folder, Lightroom wants to re-import those files instead of deleting them from disk. Is there a way to identify just those previously removed files and delete them from the external drive without having to find them manually?

file-management workflow lightroom lightroom-classic catalog

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

7y ago

2 Answers

If the deleted files are the only ones ‘missing’, they will be the only ones imported.

Import them again with ‘duplicate detection’ activated so that the only items imported are the ones you deleted.

Go to ‘recent imports’, select all and delete.

Originally by user69434. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user69434

7y ago

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

Yes. Since those files were removed from the catalog but still exist on the drive, Lightroom sees them as new files. A practical workaround is to re-import them, then delete them properly from disk.

Steps:

Reconnect the external drive.
Import from that folder again with duplicate detection enabled, so Lightroom only brings in files that are no longer in the catalog.
Go to the recent import.
Select those re-imported photos and delete/remove them again, this time choosing the option to delete from disk.

That should let you clean up only the files that were previously removed from the catalog but left on the drive.

How can I delete Lightroom photos from disk after removing them only from the catalog?

2 Answers

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