Do you know these police movie shows where suddenly the detective says to his secretary: ‘I want you to put out an APB on that man ASAP’. Now, I already knew a long time what ASAP stands for, but, thanks to this blogpost, I now know that APB stands for ‘All Points Bulletin’.
Well, sometimes Lightroom also puts out APB’s: more importantly if you decide to remove or relocate files outside of Lightroom. I always urge people(ask the attendants to my Lightroom workshops: they hear it a couple of times during the day) not to move, delete or even worse: rename files outside of Lightroom. Lightroom has got plenty of organizational features to do those tasks from within the software, allowing the Catalog to catch up with your changes.
Now, if you do change things outside of Lightroom, Lightroom will lose track of those files or folders and it will put out it’s own version of an APB: it does so by putting a question mark next to the folder or in the top corner of the image thumbnail. That question mark actually replaces the whole question ‘Why on earth did you go behind my back and move stuff outside of the beautiful piece of software that I am?’ 
If you’ve lost track of a folder, then you can redirect Lightroom to that folder’s location by right-clicking on the folder and choosing ‘Find Missing Folder’ from the list. (Screenshot, left) You subsequently navigate to the folder’s new location. If the folder contains subfolders that were also in Lightroom and have also been moved, then the software is clever enough to update those locations as well.
If it’s not an entire folder, but only a photo that Lightroom’s putting an APB out on, you click on the question-mark and choose ‘Locate’. (Screenshot, right) And afterwards, you solemnly promise Lightroom never to go behind it’s back again. ASAP!
This article was translated and adapted from my Dutch-language book ‘Lightroom 2 Ontmaskerd’. The book not only covers the five Lightroom modules, but pays very close attention to the way they work together and offers strategies on how to get the most out of the software. The book also features a lot of shorter tips and tricks, and an overview of interesting Lightroom Plugins. ‘Lightroom 2 Ontmaskerd’ is published by Easy Computing and isavailable in bookshops across Belgium and the Netherlands. Also available online at www.easycomputing.com or www.hcw.be.
