How do I rearrange existing photos into a new dated folder structure?

Last week, we discussed how to create, rename and delete folders, and how to move photos between folders. If you’re moving to a dated folder structure, Lightroom won’t create the folder structure automatically, but it can help. Here’s how:

1. Create your new dated folder structure in the Folders panel. Month folders inside of year folders is usually plenty – creating day folders inside each month takes a long time with minimal benefit. (You could create these as you need them, if you prefer)
   
2. Select All Photographs in the Catalog panel.
   
3. At the top of the Grid, select the Metadata Filters (discussed in more detail in the Finding & Filtering Photos chapter starting on page 179 of my Lightroom CC/6 book)
4. In the Date column, highlight a single month of photos, hiding photos/videos shot at other times.
   
5. Select all of the photos in the Grid below and drag them to their applicable month folder. Regardless of where they’re currently stored, they’ll all be moved to the new month folder.
   
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until all of the photos are in the new dated folder structure.
7. There may be many leftover empty folders in the Folders panel – these can now be deleted.
   

Hopefully, by the time you’ve finished all of the tidying up we’ve been doing over the last couple of months, you’ll have a wonderfully tidy catalog, and you can concentrate on actually working with your photos instead of managing them.

Next week, we start on a whole new topic… Lightroom mobile!

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