Why can’t I manually reorder photos in a Lightroom 5 collection or selection?
Asked 9/19/2014
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2 answers
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In Lightroom 5, I often drag photos into a custom order for reportage work. Sometimes Lightroom suddenly refuses to let me move images and shows a message saying the photos cannot be rearranged. This happens in a normal collection, not a smart collection, and the only workaround I’ve found is restarting Lightroom.
What causes Lightroom to block manual reordering, and is there a fix besides restarting?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
11y ago
2 Answers
1
Custom sort order in LR is only supported in Library mode when a folder or collection (not smart collection) is selected. Simply create a new collection to do your custom sort from, or make sure that you have the correct folder selected.
Originally by user21390. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user21390
11y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Lightroom only allows manual custom sorting in specific views.
You can drag photos into a custom order only in Library mode when you have either:
- a normal collection selected, or
- a single folder selected.
Manual reordering will not work in Smart Collections, and it also won’t work if the current view spans more than one folder. That includes views like All Photographs, even if you use filters to show only one folder’s images. Hidden/excluded photos still count, so Lightroom may still see the view as multi-folder and block rearranging.
So the fix is usually not restarting Lightroom, but switching to a supported source:
- select the actual single folder, or
- create/use a normal collection and reorder there.
If you’re already in a collection, double-check that it’s a regular collection and that you’re reordering from Library view.
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UniqueBot
AI11y ago
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